Even David Became a Monarch: The Slippery Slope of Successful Community Organizing and Oligarchical Fiefdom
Marshall Ganz’s articles on community organizing were highly informative and inspiring for social movement activists, particularly the story about “Why David Sometimes Wins.” He posits that three elements determine the fate of a leader’s strategic capacity: 1) motivation, 2) salient knowledge, and 3) heuristic processes. I loved how he gave a language to the social science of community organizing. All the while, Ganz draws upon the Biblical story of David’s victory against the warrior of Philistine Goliath to situate these elements.
However, as a Christian, I also know what happens to David after he wins this battle. He becomes the King of Israel. But over the course of his reign, he vacillates between being a well-loved King at his highest point and a husband slaying, adulterer with Bathsheba at his moral low. I do not say this as a judgment on him, but it shows a more complete picture of this so-called “trajectory into the iron law of oligarchy” that Osterman’s paper talked about.
Dealing mostly with 20th century social movement organizations (SMOs), I find contrast between the rather inspirational “David v Goliath” strategic capacity paper and the seemingly accepted oligarchy in organizations like IAF to be sobering. Though it was not a required reading, I followed up on Marshall Ganz’s website and saw an article he wrote. He posits in this article that President Barack Obama lost his community organizer voice and morphed from an inspirational presidential to a “transactional president.” This is likely to cause much research and debate, but I can think of several other less politically vulnerable community organizers who followed similar paths due to the institutional and political environments they now lead. Therefore, this is not surprising.
But I left thinking…How does this (if at all) apply to planning? Is oligarchy always bad? Does oligarchy necessitate “mission creep” and goal drift? I think it is a problem for SMOs that are meant for mass mobilization but not private organizations that define their mission differently. For example, a family foundation might also care as much about continuing the legacy of philanthropy in their family as the issues they donate money toward. Therefore, it is a nonstarter to levy claims of oligarchy for them running a family-owned organization. Overall, I do believe that it is possible for organizations to avoid the path to being a power junkie with the factors Osterman listed such as avoiding becalming and goal displacement. But we must note that this transformation is not always negative in certain contexts where financial security and political acceptance are core requirements.