Systemic Power in Community Decision Making: A Restatement of Stratification Theory

Abstract

In their continued considerations of political inequality, urban scholars are especially concerned with less visible influences surrounding community decision making, and have employed such concepts as potential power, nondecision making, and anticipated reactions. However, these concepts leave some patterns of influence unexplained. There is also a dimension of power in which durable features of the socioeconomic system confer advantages and disadvantages on groups in ways that predispose public officials to favor some interests at the expense of others. Public officials make their decisions in a context in which strategically important resources are hierarchically arranged. Because this system of stratification leaves public officials situationally dependent on upper-strata interests, it is a factor in all that they do. Consequently, system features lower the opportunity costs of exerting influence for some groups and raise them for others. Thus socioeconomic inequalities put various strata on different political footings.

Maiden Partisan Rural Local Government Elections: Bangladesh Experience

“…Apprehensions are that these local partisan leaders are going to be the queue for national level politics competing between existing Upazila Chairman or MPs (Rashid, 2015). It may create confrontation among the party leaders at the local level and may pave the way for a dangerous dividation at the grassroots level (Chowdhury, 2015; "EC failed to conduct free and fair election,", 2015; Rashid, 2015;Stone, 1980).…”

Through Another Lens: American Democracy Viewed through Race/Ethnicity and Subnational Institutions

“…Blacks, Latinos, and Asians hold diff erent positions in the second tier of two-tiered pluralism but the effi cacy of their political eff orts is constrained by the fi rst tier. While Hero begins with an interest group pluralism assumption, and acknowledges the extent of political activity among ethnic and racial groups, he hews closer to Stone's (1980) view of "systemic power." This is not an antipluralist stance but one incorporating the limits on pluralist energies built into a capitalist, liberal democratic system.…”

Network Analysis Functionality in Environmental Policy: Combining Abstract Software Engineering with Field Empiricism

“…Inversely, actors, who have already gained the trust of others, thanks to their multidisciplinary staff and their stable and lawful behavior have better chances to present their interpretations as more convincing [11,13,18,22,24,31].…”