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Here are the books we’ve covered this year:

• Neil Gross: Richard Rorty, The Making of an American Philosopher
• Tina Fetner: How the Religious Right Shaped lesbian and gay activism
• Steve Teles: Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement
• Michael Lindsay: Faith in the Halls of Power
• Isaac Martin: The Permanent Tax Revolt
• Fred Wherry: Global Markets and Local Crafts
• Matthew Frederick: 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
• Richard Scott: Institutions and Organizations (new edition)
• Christopher Alexander: Notes on the Synthesis of Form
• Tim Harford: The Logic of Life
• Randall Collins: Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory

Post your own nominations for great recent social science writing - or not so recent! Authors, don’t hesitate to plug your own stuff.

Seems like we’ve got a lot of good books on politics and intellectual life coming out these days! Neil Gross’ new book on the philosopher Richard Rorty is an ambitious attempt to recast the sociology of intellectuals. To make his case, Gross covers topics as varied as Erickson’s identity theory, neo-functionalism, habitus, analytic philosophy, biography, and American higher education. This book is not for the meek. Once must really process these diverse materials to get the most from the book, but it’s worth the effort.

Let’s start with a summary of what Gross is trying to fight against:

Many theorists (Bourdieu, Collins) posit that intellectuals struggle to gather attention, status, or symbolic goods. These theories suggest that people shape their intellectual trajectories to maximize these things.

What’s Gross’ project?

Theories of utility maximization in attention space/fields are not enough. To truly understand intellectual trajectories, you have to consider the intellectual narrative of self and how it fits into these attention/status maximizing processes. Identity formation/effects and career maximization are distinct, but interacting, processes.

The case study? Richard Rorty:

Super duper famous philosopher Richard Rorty dumped analytical philosophy for pragmatism. Some people might think this was just an attempt to get attention. It’s not. His trajectory stemmed from ideas he appropriated early in his life course. His whole career is shaped by the tug and pull of his personal identity and the demands of academia.

To get there, Gross goes through an extensive review of the sociology of intellectuals, theories of identity, and, of course, a detailed review of Rorty’s life. This book is a serious contribution to a number of areas.

First, it represents a much needed attempt to integrate biography into the study of intellectual institutions. There have been earlier attempts, like the psycho-analytic biographies of scientists, but this one rings more true and doesn’t require any dubious psychology. Second, this will likely be one of the standard contributions to the study of Rorty. I am not an expert on his ouvre, but I suspect Gross’ book will be the best account for years to come. Third, this sort of book is a healthy antidote to neo-institutional theories that harp on conformity within organizational fields. Yes, I know people talk about change, but you won’t read many accounts of deviance in the orgs lit that measures up to this one.

Criticisms? One is that this sort of theory may describe latent tendencies in most intellectuals and not actual behavior. Why? As Gross himself notes, the average intellectual does not spend a life doing high power theory. They do a little normal science and a lot of teaching. So there won’t be many chances for biographical tendencies to shape intellectual output. They have to wait for a movement (see Gross’ earlier work!) within the profession to come along so they can express their “true” identity (see my work!).

Second, Gross tries to evade a simplistic demographic theory or historical theory that translates social trends/ethnicity/gender into intellectual life. This is a good impulse to follow, but it’s hard to pull off and intellectual self-identity doesn’t quite get you there. If we were to examine a large number of Jewish, of Black, or American, intellectuals, we’d probably observe commonalities in self-identity. So doesn’t that draw back toward the simplistic theory?

Regardless, these are the issues raised by good books. Recommended!

Sudhir Venkatesh and Steven Levitt argued that gangs look a lot like corporations. Gangs, at least at the local level, have hierarchical leadership and a division of labor exists to which which certain duties, responsibilities and incentives are attached. One of the Venkatesh’s and Levitt’s main points is that the emerging corporatism of gangs changed their relationships and the form of solidarity that bound them. Gang members began to feel like Tony Soprano, who constantly bemoaned the transformation of his gang from a good-old boy network based on allegiance and trust to one motivated more by personal business interests.

This morning I picked up a book at the library that sharply contrasts with the Venkatesh and Levitt depiction of gangs.  In his book, A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture, John Hagedorn argues that gangs are more identity-based than business-motivated.  Hagedorn draws on organizational theory, especially the institutional theory of Philip Selznick, to describe how gangs are organized.  Gangs, he suggests, survive, not because they necessarily satisfy the economic demands of its members (although they can be profitable for a few), but because they satisfy the identity needs of members who feel alienated from a society that regularly excludes and discriminates against them.  Thus, gangs, while perhaps initially created to accomplish some end, become institutionalized as ends in themselves and take on a transcendent quality that surpasses any individual personality.

Major gangs in Chicago, Cape Town, and Rio de Janeiro have been around for more than forty years. These gangs have all spread outside their original neighborhoods and have a history and an identity that go far beyond wild peer groups….[S]uch gangs have institutionalized…

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Tina Fetner’s new book on gay/anti-gay movement interactions is a very good contribution to the study of gay rights movements, social movements, and recent social history. Drawing from interviews and secondary sources, Fetner unpacks the often complex back and forth between gay rights advocated and their counterparts among religious conservatives.

The book has much to offer. First, this is a welcome expansion of the themes developed by scholars such as my colleague Elizabeth Armstrong, and her student Suzanna Crage, who have examined the organizational development of gay rights politics. By embedding the story within a larger arc of American politics, Fetner shows how the intense anti-gay activism was reshaped by the likes of Anita Bryant in the 1970s and a generation of family values activists in the 1980s /90s.

A second strong point is that the book is a concerted effort integrate social movement accounts with conventional politics. It’s something I’ve pushed in my own articles as well. For example, I liked very much the discussion of how the Democratic party adopted various pro-gay rights planks. It wasn’t from a concerted effort to woo gay voters. Instead, it was a sort of reaction to what the GOP was doing, who in turned were often dragged into this arena by intense conservative activists. If elites in both parties had their way, they would have preferred to just avoid the whole issue. It’s a credit to both sides of the dispute that they could change the party agendas in significant ways.

Let me end this review with a few critiques of an otherwise solid book. Perhaps my biggest beef is same that I had with Isaac Martin’s good book on the tax revolt. We really need to expand movement theory with insights from research in soc and poli sci on interest groups. Basically, Fetner documents how gay politics shifted from contention to rather conventional forms of influence, which triggered lobbying from conservatives. That in turn displaced the original organizational goals. This strongly suggests that we need to draw on research in poli sci about issue niches and their dependence on interest group interactions. Such a theory isn’t explored, but it should be. Another minor quibble is that I wanted more explanation of sources such as interviews and archives. I’m a stickler about that.

I don’t know if this review has the impact that Tina jokingly suggested, but here’s your blurb for the 2nd edition jacket cover: “Tina Fetner’s study of gay rights activists and their opponents is required reading for anyone interested in the struggle for equality in the 21st century. It’ll be discussed in seminars on sexuality and movement politics for years to come.”

In this week’s book forum, I asked Steve Teles if liberal legal academia had effectively responded to the conservative challenge. Here’s what Steve wrote:

On to Fabio’s next question. He asks, about the “impact on liberals and push back.” How did liberal legal academia respond to the CLM? Did it revitalize them? Did they launch new efforts? Is there a new liberal legal theory being pushed, one better than critical race theory?” I want to be very careful about his, since my research has been on the conservatives, not the organizations created in their wake. But I do have a couple of suggestive points.

The most important “counter-counter-mobilization” organization in this field is the American Constitution Society. ACS was created—no accident—in 2001, at the same time as a number of other organizations designed to respond to the “giant right wing conspiracy” that had by that point become quite an object of fear (and admiration) on the left. Large donors like George Soros and Bill Moyers(through the Schumann Foundation) opened up their wallets to fund ACS, Center for American progress, Media Matters for America, and others, most of which had specific analogues on the right (CAP with Heritage, ACS with the Federalist Society). In the case of CAP and Media Matters, my sense is that liberals picked up on the least significant part of the conservative infrastructure—its ability to influence the short-term news cycle.

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Here is Steve’s response to Monday’s questions about social movements and conservatives. More later this week from Steve.

Ok, I’m going to jump right into it. Fabio asks a number of really interesting and important questions, and I’m going to get to each of them in separate posts.

Fabio’s first question concerns ideology and organizational Form. There is some evidence in my book for the contention that conservatives do not feel the need to legitimate their organizations through the use of egalitarian organizational forms. That said, the alternative to egalitarianism isn’t just hierarchy. The best example of this is the Federalist Society. Despite being a large, participatory,
chapter-based organization, the Federalist Society does not have any democratic structures for the choice of its national leadership. The core group that runs the Society—determines its programs, makes decisions about expansion, etc.—is basically the same people who created it while they were in law school. I found some evidence that the Society’s founders considered having elections for leadership when they were just starting out, but that quickly dropped out and they settled on a self-reproducing board (that is, when new members of the Society board were chosen—when, for example, one of them went into government—the existing leaders chose who would fill their slot).

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This is round two of the forum on The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. Click here for Steve’s remarks from last week.

My topic this week: how does the fact the RoCLM depend on the fact that Teles writes about conservatives? It’s apparent that Teles uses the intellectual framework associated with contemporary movement scholarship, even though most of that framework was developed to explain events such as the civil rights movement. It’s a dual story about the framing of legal scholarship and networks/institutions designed to promote that new framing. Here are questions for Steve:

1. Mitchell Stevens’ work on home schoolers shows that the social organization of home school groups depends on the ideology of the group. Liberals are less likely to employ hierarchical models when setting up their parent networks and educational practices. In contrast, conservatives tries to strongly mimic traditional schools and their parent groups often have a “top down” flavor. Can this lesson be carried over to the CLM?
2. Impact on liberals and push back: As we’ll see later this month, Tina Fetner shows that liberals were strongly affected by conservative politics. How did liberal legal academia respond to the CLM? Did it revitalize them? Did they launch new efforts? Is there a new liberal legal theory being pushed, one better than critical race theory?
3. How does conservative ideology dictate which issues get the most effort? In a later chapter, you mention that a severe limitation of conservative legal efforts is that most of the effort goes into hot button issues with limited impact, such as campus speech codes. Liberal seem more willing to fight on bread and butter issues. Can you say more about that?
4. How does this affect the debate over conservatives in academia? I’d argue that CLM is one of the few intellectual success stories in academia for conservatives, in addition to market economics and, perhaps, Straussian/conservative political theory. Otherwise, a-political theories or theories associated with liberal or left politics are most popular in the rest of the humanities and social sciences. Two of these movements had substantial money backing them. Is it money? Or are there other factors that link these two movement successes? What can their counterparts in philosophy or literature take from RoCLM?

Add your own questions in the comments.

On Monday, I asked a few questions about The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. Teles responds here. Next week, I’ll add some more questions. Feel free to ask more in the comments, or write your own and link here:

First of all, I want to thank Fabio for hosting this forum on my book. Although I’m a political scientist, my book draws on a lot of sociological theory, and my hope was that it would be of interest to sociologists interested in social movements, political organizations, and the sociology of knowledge. In fact, I think it has at least as much to offer sociologists as folks in my home discipline.

Ok, so let’s get right into it. Fabio asks a number of questions about law and economics. One thing that is important to note, and that I try to emphasize in the book, is that L&E is peculiar in that, especially in its early days, it was both an ideology and a methodology. That is, L&E practitioners had a critique of the generally pro-interventionist slant of most existing legal scholarship—especially in private law areas and anti-trust—but they also were attacking the way that legal scholarship was done, focusing mainly on interpreting existing case law. So if we want to ask if L&E was successful, we need to think of it as having these two elements simultaneously.

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Over the next week or so, we’ll have a back and forth with Steve Teles, whose 2008 book chronicles the emergence of the conservative legal establishment. The book has been hailed by many as an important account of late 20th century American politics. In a nutshell: Sometime around the 1970s, conservatives realized that their electoral victories could be undermined by the courts. The reason is that courts are highly dependent on legal theory and precedent. Without a serious alternative to liberal jurisprudence, it was often impossible for conservative policies to survive judicial review. The solution? Create an intellectual alternative to liberalism so that judges could rely on rigorous thinking when overturning liberal policies or approving conservative ones. This intellectual alternative was hatched in a network of scholars and organizations in the 70s, 80s and 90s and allowed a generation of judges to support new laws.

We’re lucky to have Steve with us for this forum. I’ve decided to post my thoughts and Steve will later post his own responses. I think this is a neat opportunity to hash out a sociological approach to the conservative legal movement (CLM). So let me start with some questions and comments about the facts of the case:

1. RoCLM focuses a lot on the academic specialty of law and economics, especially in elite law schools. This makes sense because elite law schools are often the incubators for innovations in the legal world. How popular, exactly, is L&E? Do elite law schools all have a few L&E practitioners? Or is it limited to Chicago and its satellites? In other words, is L&E a few gurus, or is it a movement that has deeply affected the way legal scholarship is done by the average law prof?

2. On a related point, how do we know that L&E helped CLM law firms actually win cases? For example, how many cases actually cite L&E scholarship? Are the citations limited to a few hot-button cases, or is L&E used in a wide variety of cases? In your answer, exclude opinions writen by Posner.

3. Where are the religious conservatives? The book has three main characters - L&E profs, public interest firms like Institute for Justice, and the big tent Federalist Society. But the historians and social scientists tell us that conservatives rode to power on the votes of social conservatives. These folks seem to be absent in the book - or is elite law really run by economists and libertarians wannabes?

Aldaily links to this Dissent article on Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. It’s a bit more supportive than one might expect, though the author doesn’t adopt Hayek’s support of free markets. A few key points from the review.

1. Hayek’s fight against the abstract ideal of social justice seems bizarre in retrospect:

“Hayek doesn’t seem to grasp that human beings can exist both as individuals and as members of a society, without necessarily subordinating them to the needs of an imposed social plan (although he acknowledges that the state can legitimately serve social needs, he contradictorily views collective benefits as incompatible with individual freedom). He rejects the very concept of social justice, for much the same reasons that he rejects the arbitrary valuation of labor: in Hayek’s view there is no way to put an objective value on a grievance or to weigh it against other claims. And because he locates all responsibility and agency only at the level of the individual, he sees no way in which any claim can be generalized to society. Hayek’s political philosophy recognizes only negative rights. Positive fulfillment beyond the most basic needs is a matter of individual striving.”

I think only the most hard core atomist would deny the benefits of living in a healthy community. We could think that communities where most people lead fulfilling lives beyond subsistence would have positive benefits for everyone. People of different political stripes may disagree with how that is to be done, but it doesn’t seem to crazy, at least to me in 2008.

2. Hayek claims are more limited than the hype would have you believe. This is kind of obvious if you have read Road. Hayek’s strongest arguments apply to Soviet style socialism, not the more mellow social democracy of Europe. While one could argue that Sweden, for example, may be inefficient, it’s hard to argue that that nationalizing labor bargaining has lead to Stalinism. Political liberty doesn’t seem so strongly tied to economic liberty as one many claim.

3. As Marc Schneiberg’s work makes clear (see Brayden’s recent post), you can have collectivism and capitalism at the same time. There are lots of instances were collective economic organization exists pretty well within a larger market system. I don’t think Hayek would be against that per se, but the thought didn’t cross his mind. It’s either Western individualism or Soviet gulags, or nothing else.

4. Road does remind us that many socialists did advocate a totalitarian vision. They literally wanted to force people, or else. Who can forget Hayek’s devastating quote of Trotsky? “In the country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” There was a period when Western socialists were quite willing and able to use force to install their vision. Let’s hope that day will never return

New Left Review has published Benjamin’s last report on the French literary scene right before WWII. Worth the read for Critical Theory heads.

Based on a recommendation from Chris Bertram, I decided to pick up Hubert’s Freaks at the library this week. Turned out to be a great decision. HF is an exceptional book that is both interesting as a biography and as a piece of economic sociology (not that the author intended it as the latter). The book looks at the time that the photographer Diane Arbus spent working with subjects at Hubert’s Museum - a freak show in Times Square - as well as the curious series of events that led Bob Langmuir, an antiquarian book dealer, to find an archive of lost Arbus photos of the museum freaks and his attempt to put the photos on the market.

The book would make a perfect contribution to any undergrad course on economic sociology or the sociology of culture. The book hits on a number of conceptual issues: the structural organization of information, brokerage as a process, commensuration, social comparison and certification, hedonic versus transcendent valuation, and the intermingling of emotion and exchange. Take, for example, this passage, which talks about Bob’s experience of setting prices for his goods:

He’d discover a book or a pamphlet for which there was no recent record, or no record at all. His instincts would tell him it was a terrific piece, and usually his instincts would be correct. But the moment he sold it, he’d be overwhelmed by the feeling that he’d sold it too cheaply. His brain would teem in that particularly anxious, uncomfortable ADD way - What was that piece worth? Who could truly know? There was only one answer. The fact that someone bought the item proved, in the most perverse way, that he had sold it too cheaply. Otherwise they wouldn’t have bought it (70).

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One source of organizational heterogeneity that is often overlooked in our theories is life-stage variation. If you believe that organizational structure, character, institutionalization, and other important features vary by age or level of development, then the life-stage of an organization matters. From the 1960s to the 1980s understanding processes of “growth and decline” in organizations was an important part of the organizational theory agenda, but over time the theme itself has declined. This may in part be due to the mechanistic nature of early explanations (e.g., first stage A, followed by stage B). These theories became seen as incompatible with the increasingly dominant open systems perspectives, and issues surrounding life-stages became irrelevant. The exception to this was that organizational age concerned ecologists during the 1990s, but I think it’s a stretch to say that ecologists were explicitly explaining differences in organizational life-stage.

So why should we care about life-stage variation? One reason is that the current wave of research on entrepreneurial organizations could use a good theory to explain why and how new organizations (like those they study) are different than older organizations. When you study entrepreneurs you’re not just studying creative individuals, you’re also studying a special type of organization. Better theoretical explanations for life-stage variation would help us understand in what ways they’re different (and consequently how our theories need to adapt their scope conditions when considering entrepreneurs). Another reason to care about life-stages is that it’s an important source of variation when trying to explain larger process like diffusion, institutionalization, etc.

Philip Selznick, in his excellent book Leadership in Administration, talks about how the development of organizational character is a life-cycle process (similar to the formation of a personality in an individual actor). He argued for explicit attention to the developmental processes in organizations, suggesting that several processes were consequential in the early stages of an organization’s life. While it’s not clear that they have to unfold in this order, these three processes necessarily take place in organizations that make it past this early stage.

1. Selection of a social base - organizations must find an audience. If they’re going to be recognized by others as a legitimate social actor, a new organization must commit to a particular membership group, set of clients or customers, or set of donors. Until organizations find that base, their designs are malleable.
2. Building the institutional core - by “institutional core” Selznick meant that organizations had to select particular personnel or individuals to guide the organization. Organizations had to selectively recruit future leaders that would be able to imprint (although he didn’t use this word) their identity on the organization. Further, leadership needed to set up training procedures that reproduced this core.
3. Formalization - Organizations needed to develop the rules, procedures, routines, etc. that would make operational maintenance and internal communication possible. Selznick was fairly clear that this process usually occurred after the other two. “Premature formalization, sometimes reflecting an overemphasis on the quick achievement of clarity in communication and command channels, may seal off leadership during the early stages of organization building, when it is most needed.” Organizations that formalize too quickly can ossify before they have the chance to adapt sufficiently to their environment.

See pages 102-112 of the book for more about life-stages. Also, see my earlier post on why this book is underrated.

On page 40 of Philip Selznick’s Leadership in Administration:

The study of organizational character-formation is, then, a phase of institutional analysis. Here the emphasis is on the embodiment of values in an organizational structure through the elaboration of commitments - ways of acting and responding that can be changed, if at all, only at the risk of severe internal crisis. As in the case of individuals, the emergence of organizational character reflects the irreversible element in experience and choice. A great deal of management practice, as in the hiring of personnel, may be viewed as an effort to hold down the number of irreversible decisions that must be made. On the other hand, a wise management will readily limit its own freedom, accepting irreversible commitments, when the basic values of the organization and its direction are at stake. The acceptance of irreversible commitments is the process by which the character of an organization is set.

This paragraph comes from what is, in my mind, one of the greatest but also one of the most underappreciated books in organizational theory. Selznick, mostly known for his wonderful TVA and the Grass Roots, summarizes his theoretical contributions in this elegant essay. The main premise is that organizations are institutionalized when they become “infuse[d] with value beyond the technical requirements at hand” (17; an insight that I’ve claimed is the major contribution of organizational theory ). While that statement has become well-known and is often cited, less cited is the idea that values become infused in an organization through the process of decision-making. Certain choices are so critical to organizational functioning that they represent “irreversible commitments.” Reversing those commitments would fundamentally alter the nature or character of the organization and could potentially lead to identity crisis. Examples of critical decisions include choices about product emphasis, decisions regarding personnel recruitment; implementation of particular training program; establishment of a system to coordinate subgroups and to resolve conflicts between those groups; and formation of interorganizational alliances.

In this slim book, Selznick lays the groundwork for what becomes contemporary institutional theory (forget the differences between old and new!), theories of organizational identity (even the ecological variety), and contingency theory. In addition, Selznick prepares the way for much of Stinchcombe’s work that would appear in the next decade.Leadership in Administration ushered in the contemporary era of organizational analysis, focusing on how environments shape organizations, but what is unique (and still fresh) about Selznick’s perspective is his focus on the important meso-level - the internal decision-making functions of organizations. Selznick, like his contemporaries in the Carnegie School, was primarily concerned with how the environment translated into organizational action. It is this ability to move between macro and micro that really appeals to me as a scholar and makes Selznick’s Leadership a potentially very useful perspective for those of us interested in revitalizing a focus on meso-theory.

Long time Berkeleyites have a special place in their hearts for Cody’s Books. Along with University Press Books and Moe’s Books, Cody’s provided one of the best book buying experiences around. In their nifty glass walled shop, Cody’s offered all kinds of great books. It wasn’t that Cody’s had the largest selection, though it was big. The owners selected a phenomenal range of materials designed to do well with profs, grad students, writers, policy wonks, and anyone else with a taste for high brow material. They also had a pretty good selection of more routine books, from gardening to car repair.

I grew up in a small resort town, I didn’t have access to fancy book shops or universities. Cody’s provided me with an access point to the intellectual world. At the news stand, you could find Time Magazine next to Anarchy: A Journal of Desired Armed. Around the corner, you could pick up a reader on Chomsky’s linguistics and then read the elegant and masterful Characteristic Classes, by Milnor and Stasheff. My time spent there gave me a view of the intellectual world distinct from the graduate seminar. Life was not about arguing esoterica among experts, it was about creating something that one of Cody’s highly intellectual customers might pick up and say, “that looks important.”

Sadly, Cody’s has now closed after 52 years in the business. The cards were stacked against them. They actually did ok in the Internet age. Die hard fans would still buy books. But Cody’s simply couldn’t survive booming rents. Multiple moves - opening extra branches, going online, moving around town - didn’t solve the problem. June 20, 2008 was the last day. I’ll miss you!

I’ve really enjoyed past discussions we’ve had — both with readers and among co-bloggers — about our respective summer reading schedules.  No such discussion this year though, yet anyway.  We know that Fabio is busy moving to Michigan and Brayden is busy moving to Northwestern, but, what are others (orgtheory readers and writers) reading this summer? What’s the best thing you’ve read thus far? I’ve got a vacation coming up and still have some room in my vintage leather fanny pack.

Stanford’s Bob Sutton has taken his bestselling book to new heights, he now has an online “arse” test. [Here's Brayden's complimentary review of the book.] The test is short and unscientific, but fun nonetheless.

If you take the test with an eye toward blogging or academia, it can get interesting:

The question on the right could describe some of the comments I’ve gotten on blog posts or in seminars (I admit, I’ve had my moments too.)

Other yes-no questions include:

• “Are you quick to point out others’ mistakes?” [Think seminars, blog posts…) Boy, it surprises me how within minutes any mistake (logical or otherwise) I may have made in a post (or, seminar) is vetted by some genius. However, I really don’t have any qualms with this.
• “You constantly interrupt people because, after all, what you have to say is more important.”
• “You feel surrounded by incompetent idiots - and you can’t help letting them know the truth every now and then.”
• “You have the feeling that people are always very careful about what they say around you.”

Isaac Martin’s “The Permanent Tax Revolt” will likely become a standard account of the movement to limit taxes in California and other states. Starting from a social movement perspective, Martin gives a succinct but highly insightful account of why there was a sudden outburst of radical anti-property tax sentiment in the 1970s and how it changed American politics.

Martin makes a few key claims about the anti-tax movement that movement scholars should heed. First, the movement was not initiallty tied to any single political ideology. Tax revolt began when various states decided to end the ad hoc valuation of property and insist that taxes be levied in accordance to market values. The problem? People really can’t handle abrupt market-driven tax hikes, especially if they have fixed incomes, like the elderly or the poor. Thus, it was common for conservatives, liberals, and moderates to adopt the issue as their own. It was only later that people perceived property tax revolt as a conservative issue. Second, the movement was a response to “good government liberalism,” not a repressive regime. The issue was that ad hoc property valuation created a class of people with a strong interest in the status quo. Standardized valuations threatened that and drew people together. Martin’s other main point is that American federalism prevented top down reforms and permitted tax limitations via referenda, which were favored by political conservatives who wanted to curtail the state.

It’s a really sharp book, so let me conclude this short review by drawing out something that I wish had gotten more attention. Martin makes a big deal about the trans-ideological character of the movement. That returns us to a political science view, which emphasizes interest groups focused on specific policy issues. The essence of the poli sci view is Weberian - issues can define groups, in addition to ideology. Here, as long as you had sympathetic elderly people who couldn’t keep up with taxes, it was relatively easy to keep the movement together.

Martin also points out that anti-tax leaders had experience in 60s movements, which suggests a merging of repertoire. The anti-tax revolt case may be unusual in that it was a classic interest group whose repertoire resembled a movement. This pushes us back to an idea that I’ve tossed around - that there is no solid distinction between political science “interest group” and sociological “social movement.” It’s a continuum defined by ideology, goals, and tacts. Perhaps one might say that the anti-taxers were a classic interest group that got drawn a little closer to scruffy movements. If so, we have to work harder at aboloshing these categories.

The Guardian recently profiled the thriving career of Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions and a million or so journal articles. The article is cleverly written, partly because it has so much interesting material to draw on (do read it if you haven’t heard much about Ariely’s research). In the middle of the article is this fun anecdote, which illustrates why orthodox economics so desperately needed the behavioralists.

Do mainstream economists really approach shopping and life with such clear and cold eyes? Listen to the story of Oz Brownlee, late professor at the University of Minnesota. One Friday, he and a colleague stopped to buy some steaks. Finding a long queue, they offered cash to the person in front to swap places. The shopper was dumbstruck - which the academics took as a bargaining ploy, so they raised the price. As news spread down the line, other customers turned hostile. The Minnesota department of economics alumni newsletter goes on: “Attempts to explain that they were … trying to ascertain whether there was a mutually beneficial trade of time for money that might improve their welfare and that of the next person in line without disadvantaging others met with little success.” The economists left without any steak.

Brownlee’s mistake was to put into practice something that worked only in theory. That, Ariely and other critics say, is the point: conventional economics tries to make the man fit the model, rather than the other way around.

Maybe I’m correct in thinking that orthodox economics is less a theory about human behavior than it is a theory about market design (focusing on a very special kind of market).

I noted that Saku Mantere, former orgtheory guest blogger, has a book out on Strategic Reputation Management. Congrats Saku! It looks like the book might have links to some of his reputation-related posts. (And, here’s a Business & Society piece of his on [pdf] corporate political activity.)