Iron Law Of Institutions: Preserve Power At All Costs
There are people who would prefer a thousand times more to govern in a pile of ruins than to recognize that their administration is not going well, and the iron law of institutions describes this phenomenon very well. Let’s see it below.
Jonathan Schwartz described in 2007 the iron law of institutions, which postulates that the people who control a certain organization is more concerned with preserving its power within the institution itself than with the power of the institution itself That is, according to this law, people who have won an important position in a certain organization or who preside over it would prefer to maintain their position, even if this would lead to the ruin of the institution, before ceding power to someone more suitable.
This phenomenon is not strange at all. It is very common to see it in all types of human institutions, from primary schools, medium and small businesses and, at a very high level, large corporations, political parties and governments of sovereign states. It is something that has always been in history and, for better or worse, will continue to happen forever.
Origin of the concept
Schwartz used this term for the first time to refer to Nancy Pelosi’s management within the Democratic Party. Pelosi, who is currently the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, ran into trouble in 2007 when trying to address the opinion of left-wing voters regarding the Iraq war issue The left was being very opposed to the conflict, but the Democratic party, supposedly belonging to the same spectrum, seemed to be in favor.
Nancy Pelosi was reluctant to consult this issue with other fellow Democrats, who did want the conflict to stop or be better managed, a useful slogan in her race for the presidency of the United States. It seems that Pelosi feared that by giving a voice and vote to other Democrats, she would lose her position to a candidate closer to the average American leftist voter.
Examples
Let’s look at some examples of the iron law of institutions.
Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party
A more recent case in American politics in which we can see how cruel the iron law of institutions is is the case experienced by the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential elections. In these same elections, the Democrats lost the presidency, with Republican candidate Donald J. Trump winning.
Bernie Sanders stood out among Democrats for his truly leftist views, critical of issues such as Palestine-Israel, civil rights and wages. This ideology was especially controversial for the Democratic leadership, who, despite supposedly being leftist and liberal, saw Sanders as a threat to his power within the party.
Sanders was gaining quite a bit of popularity, something that made other Democrats, such as Neera Tanden and David Brock, take the initiative to discredit and belittle both Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
The fight to preserve the leadership and hierarchy within the organization preventing Sanders from climbing it and becoming the party’s main candidate instead of Hillary Clinton, was crucial to the collapse of the Democratic party in the 2016 elections.
The rest is history. Hillary Clinton did not win the elections as the new president of the United States and Bernie Sanders ran for the North American Senate as an independent senator, not limited to the Democratic Party.
Stalin’s purges
Another case is that of Joseph Stalin. The Soviet dictator ordered purges within the Red Army, killing many competent officers who would have strengthened the Soviet Union militarily, in addition to guaranteeing the security of the federation. By assassinating them, Stalin caused a serious problem in the Union, since it was greatly weakened, remaining at the mercy of Adolf Hitler when he tried to invade the Soviets.
Difference with the iron law of oligarchy
There is another law whose name may cause confusion with the one explained in this article. We talk about the iron law of oligarchy and, in it, a phenomenon is described that would be more or less related to that of institutions, although it is not the same.
This law was proposed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in 1911, in his book Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie (On the sociology of parties in modern democracy). He stipulates that Within a political party it is inevitable that an oligarchy appears that is, a power group that is above the others and that manages it in a more or less authoritarian way, regardless of how democratic the institution was in its beginnings.
Michels came to this conclusion when he saw that, in complex institutions, It was very difficult to carry out direct democracy, that is, each of its members gives their voice and vote without intermediaries. To streamline the process and make the organization work, sooner or later a few will be in charge of managing the entire institution.
With the passage of time, in any organization, be it a political party as is the case that Michels describes in his book, like any other type of less political institution, a ruling class will be formed. This same ruling class will be in charge of controlling the flow of information within the organization, allowing it to retain power and prevent dissenting opinions from arising.
The difference between this law and that of institutions is that the second describes how the ruling class prefers to retain power, even if this means harm to the organization, while that of the oligarchy would describe how this ruling class is formed in within the organization, and what it does to continue maintaining power.
