Intensity of Conflict among Constituencies

Constituencies, in this analysis, are groups of people who patronize and support the commission and act as advocates for it before the government. They have some stake in the way in which the commissioner goes about providing services to clients. Constituencies also include bodies that are involved in or served by the commission-sometimes even clients when they become their own advocates, which causes confusion between clients and constituents. Some client groups are latent and even reluctant constituencies, preferring to handle their own problems or avoiding the stigma of public identification, as Edward Lawlor points out in his examination of the AIDS controversy. Constituencies often include providers who serve or supply client groups. Two very salient constituencies are organized advocates for clients or for the general mission of the commissioner's organization, and opponents of the client advocacy groups. Public officials, who authorize, oversee, and appropriate funds for the commission are almost always a powerful, albeit often indifferent, constituency that also responds to its own constituencies. A commissioner's employees in the bureaucracy beneath him or her are certainly a constituency that makes demands on the commissioner and requires persuasion and other inducements to comply with policy as set by the commissioner and public officials. Perhaps most deceptive is the case of the special master, whose dominant constituent seems manifestly single: the federal judge who appointed him or her. Yet, hidden constituencies (often themselves subdivided) exercise exceedingly strong influence on the actions of the special master.

The fortunate welfare commissioner may have only a single dominant constituency of public officials who act in concert as advocates for the clients of the welfare commissioner. However, such elected advocates are almost always opposed by another group of elected officials. When a community develops an organization of welfare advocates, whether composed of the clients or their friends, another constituency is formed that must be addressed. For instance, the mental health commissioner does not typically have a single dominant constituency of the families of the mentally ill. Rather, the variety of interests involved may cause constituencies to proliferate: The community may develop an organization of advocates for the mentally ill, or the families of the mentally ill may come into conflict with another community group, such as one seeking a site for a halfway house.

Advocacy groups often ally themselves with public officials. Whenever they take an interest in a commission, elected public officials are always a very powerful constituency. When advocacy organizations are also strong, a dynamic triad develops. The advocates address the commissioner as long as he or she responds to their satisfaction; when they are not satisfied, they turn to the public officials to whom the commissioner is responsible. The commissioner can form a coalition either with the advocacy group in order to influence (or oppose) the public officials or with the public officials in order to influence (or oppose) the advocacy group. The commissioner is acutely vulnerable to the joint demands of a coalition of the advocacy group and the public officials. One function of multiple constituencies is to provide the commissioner with a variety of options in forming coalitions, but this also exposes the commissioner to control (and opposition) by coalitions of constituencies.



The personnel of the commission, acting in concert as a constituency, add yet another factor. The interests of the employees in their employment give them common cause with the clients, but in other respects, the two groups may conflict. For example, the staff's concern with controlling the clients puts them at odds with the clients' interests in minimum restriction.

In contrast to government authority in most other democracies, constituencies in American public administration are strong while the authority of the commissioner is weak. This characteristic of the American polity is the result of the constant counterforce of the checks and balances in the structure of government; of opposing political parties who can neither easily unify government structure nor mobilize the public against interest groups; of the strong ambivalence in American political culture about the powers of bureaucracy and about leadership. That ambivalence induces the citizens to demand decisive actions by their leaders to solve their social-political problems-but only in the desired direction and not at the sacrifice of individual privacy or freedom.

As a result, when constituencies are multiple, public executives often find themselves entangled in a web of no-win contests. Any action will be too little for some people and too much for others. The very structure of the situation is against the public executive. Bargaining may eliminate conflicts in the short run, but long-term resolution requires that the relationships must somehow be recast in order to overcome the deadlock of the no-win situation.

The genesis of such conflicts among constituencies is interdependent with focal concerns. In this context, the concept of "focal concern," as defined by John Glide well, means the focus of the concerns of a particular constituency about the plight of the clients of the commissioner. The development of a focal concern begins with the communication of individual hopes and fears, often stimulated by a dramatic, visible incident. A murder committed by a prisoner on furlough always concentrates attention on crowded prisons and on the furlough policies of the corrections commissioner. The calculation of prospective costs and benefits of applying the commissioner's furlough policy to a group that included both recidivistic and law-abiding furloughed prisoners could show a balance in favor of benefits. Such a calculation, however, simply does not defuse the strong, popular emotions surrounding the murder committed by one prisoner while on furlough. Research has shown that a protest of a policy under such conditions is most often prompted by the recalled outcomes of vividly remembered events rather than by a careful consideration of all the possible outcomes of all the possible actions. Moreover, given the current state of knowledge, the costs and benefits are only partly measurable and the probabilities of the outcomes of the choice between occasional furlough and sustained imprisonment are imprecise. The calculation would not satisfy even the most coldly dispassionate statistician.

The uncertainty of outcomes leads people to try to reduce the ambiguity of the real world by seeking some confirmation from others, which provides the reassurance of shared views. Opinions are usually sought from those most proximate, most visible, most respected, and on whom the person is most dependent.