Freedom and Reform: Essays in Honor of Henry Steele Commager

Commager, Henry Steele; Morris, Richard B.; Hyman, Harold M.; Levy, Leonard W.

doi:10.2307/1851526

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The chiefs unilateral right to rearrange his aides to suit his needs helps sustain their responsiveness to him. Indeed, staff organizations have been established and maintained by a variety of rulers in geographically and historically diverse administrations precisely because they reliably produce loyal and manipulable subordinates (Coser, 1964(Coser, , 1972Wittfogel, 1963;Weber, 1978;Hamilton and Biggart, 1980). Like all forms of organization, however, staff arrangements may prompt actors in ways unintended by their organizers even while functioning in accordance with their structural properties; dysfunctional behaviors may not be anomalous but, rather, predictable consequences of a given social form.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The social structure of personal staff organizations supports members' view of the executive as central and the ultimate justification for action. Structural attributes have been described in previous studies of patrimonial and modern political staffs (Coser, 1964(Coser, , 1972 Hamilton andBiggart, 1980, 1984;Biggart, 1981Biggart, , 1984, but five dimensions will be summarized briefly here. This work builds on and extends those earlier analyses of a staff's political functions to describe the unintended consequences of staff organizations.…”

Section: -160)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sprengel's more comprehensive study of gubernatorial staffs found that "some 54% of the [personal] staff people are under age 40, nearly double the proportion of any other elite grouping" (1969: 13). Selection for youth is a strategy of assuring dependence on the chief (Hamilton and Biggart, 1980;Coser, 1972).…”

Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Scandals in the White House: An Organizational Explanation*

Biggart

1985

Sociological Inquiry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Watergate scandal involving the president's personal staff brought forth numerous analyses and explanations. Most analyses located the cause of the scandal in the psychology of Richard Nixon, the breakdown of institutional arrangements, or a societal tolerance for corruption. The author, however, argues that Watergate was but one of many staff incidents that undermined presidential power and that the persistence of such phenomena requires a sociological explanation. The author argues that deviant staff behaviors are a direct consequence of the organizational structure of personal staffs, and that such behaviors derive paradoxically from the characteristics that make staffs useful to chief executives. The argument is elaborated through an analysis of publicized scandals and disruptive staff practices of presidential staffs since Franklin Roosevelt's administration.The Watergate affair was arguably the most important crisis of institutionalized U.S. politics in this century. It drove a president from office, undermined the legitimacy of an entire political system, and left a nation in search of explanations for the illegal behaviors of highly placed persons. Explanations were offered by journalists and academics both, most seeking to understand the scandal so as to root out or prevent causal factors from emerging again. The analyses of Watergate were both many and diverse, but three types of explanations were common. One located the scandal's origins in the psychology of Richard Nixon, finding personality flaws or an inherently evil nature (e.g.,

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: -160)mentioning

confidence: 99%