Information for Students (and Others) Reading Who Rules America? Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance
Dear Readers:
Welcome to this supplementary web site for the latest version of Who Rules America?, which has been updated and improved in many ways. I hope your arrival here means that the book has proven to be readable and informative. I'm also hoping you will find this web site useful and that some of it is enjoyable as well.
There are nine specific on-line articles that are mentioned in the 6th edition of Who Rules America:
- First, there is document on How To Do Power Structure Research. It provides all the background information that is needed to do research of your own at the national or local level, including step-by-step suggestions on how to proceed and where to find the necessary information.
- Second, there is a detailed article on the relationships between Wealth, Income, and Power. The analyses on which this document is based come for the most part from economists who focus on wealth and income studies using a range of careful studies, many of them based on government information. What we do is to put their findings into the context of a power structure analysis, which is not often done.
- Third, the document on Interlocking Directorates In The Corporate Community provides the opportunity to go through the issue of corporate interlocks in a more deliberate and step-by-step fashion than was possible in the book. It also illustrates what interlock networks look like. I hope this docment reduces any confusion created by the quick overview in the book itself.
- Fourth, there are documents on Growth Coalition Theory, which explains power conflicts at the local level, and on Santa Cruz: The Leftmost City, which is a study of a rare instance where a city is run by neighborhood leaders and environmentalists, not those who want to make their land move valuable no matter what the impacts on ordinary citizens. In addition to explaining the history of urban power struggles and the devastating impact of urban renewal on large cities, the document on Growth Coalition Theory discusses some of the progressive regimes that have had successes in a few cities.
- Fifth, there is a lengthy essay, including photos, on The Bohemian Grove, a private campground in the redwoods of Northern California that has served as a midsummer retreat for the power elite since the 1890s. This one is meant to be fun as well as informative, and I reveal some of the problems I encountered in order to get to the bottom of the story. Links to other authors' Grove experiences are included.
- Sixth, there is a document entitled Pension Fund Capitalism, which examines the claim that public employee and union pension funds have acquired power over corporations. It shows that there is no substance to this idea. Their efforts starting in the late 1980s to have an impact on how corporations are governed were as good as dead by 1993, after a brief flurry of minor efforts and much publicity. But the myth of their potential power lives on. It is also interesting to see how management gurus and researchers can become enamored of an unlikely possibility.
- Seventh, there is an account of the Ford Foundation's involvement in the inner city through its funding of programs to smooth the way for urban renewal. It is a case study of how the corporate-financed policy-planning network evolves to deal with new problems. Although the network started out as a way to deal with tensions caused by urban renewal, it later developed a focus on reducing conflicts between neighborhoods. But two key goals remained constant: preserving land values for wealthy landowners and trying to quell unrest.
- Eighth, there's a more complete discussion of Federal Advisory Committees than could be presented in the WRA chapter on how the power elite dominate the federal government. Drawing on several different studies, this document provides detailed evidence about one small but often very important part of corporate involvement in departments of the executive branch. Dozens of similar studies exist on how the same corporations lobby Congress and deal with regulatory agencies.
- Ninth, there is a document on how and why corporate moderates created the Social Security Act. It goes into historical depth using archival documents to show that a program often attributed to the infiuence of liberals and unions was in fact the product of corporate moderates and the experts they employed within think tanks that are part of the policy-planning network. This document is important because it shows that the theories put forth about power in America by pluralists and historical institutionalists are based on inadequate analyses of key pieces of legislation.
In addition to the aforementioned documents, there are additional materials that allow you to pursue other topics to whatever depth you may wish. They range from the history of power structure research to a more complete statement of a general theory of power (the Four Networks theory) that is only touched upon lightly in the book. For those who would like to do their own power structure studies at the national or local level, I provide highly detailed step-by-step suggestions.
There are also critiques of rival theories, and information on what social scientists have to say about social change, including what seems to work and what doesn't.
Whatever your theoretical interests or political orientation, my goal has been to make the site informative and useful for everyone.
G. William Domhoff
Santa Cruz, California
July 2009
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