Speaking Private Authority. Roberto J. Flores
public attention with an opportunity for power and authority.37 Communication takes place not between individuals and firms, but between institutions and society at large.38 It is thus in this space that discourses are constructed by organizations that shape the public imagination, and images and identities are constituted by the process. It is for this reason that understanding the structure of social networks and the positioning of actors within them becomes so crucial. The social structure of the network, and the position of each actor within the network, creates a certain opportunity structure.39,40,41,42 Depending on the number and quality of connections, trust among actors, obligations of support, and so on, actors in networks will be more or less effective at accomplishing their goals.43 Therefore, it is not just material capital or traditional power structures that can be leveraged by networked actors to affect outcomes, but just as much so social capital.44 Core to this social capital is the construction and generation of trust and legitimacy.45,46 Developing these has as much to do with the network of contacts any given actor(s) has as with the strategic positioning of that actor with that network of contacts. Both can lead to a competitive advantage.
Yet, as networks tend to consist of actors of similar identities that congregate around discursive nodal points, they bring together those with similar interests.47 As a result, trust and legitimacy tend to be high in these insular networks, which translates into a wide diffusion of social capital.48 In other words, similar actors, with similar identities, tend to trust one another, and legitimacy is given without great difficulty. Information tends to flow freely among these actors, and there is little challenge to that common identity they all hold. Yet in an information society, where competing networks develop that can challenge social identity, or can challenge the legitimacy of competing networks, social capital comes at a premium. Take the case of the ENGO Greenpeace. Greenpeace operates as a decentralized organization within a greater environmental NGO network. The organizations in this network have similar goals, operate on similar premises, as well as have similar identities. Social capital is diffuse within this network, and although all the organizations in the network do not always agree on common strategies, they all have a common goal—the preservation of the environment. Additionally, they all congregate around common discursive nodal points—identified in the chapter 3 as the preservation discourse, and to a lesser extent the sustainable development discourse. Entrenched within the ENGO network, and using the tools provided by networked governance, Greenpeace tended to focus on direct action campaigns that aimed at grabbing media attention; leveraging its social capital to challenge industrial actors, states, and international institutions that possess greater amounts of material power. By using the social capital provided by modern communications technology, along with the information processing technology that allows them to make science-based arguments, Greenpeace has revolutionized the environmental space. In their ability to attract widespread media attention they were able to raise public awareness and direct unwanted publicity on industrial actors targeted by their actions. Thus, it was only through Greenpeace’s position within a highly decentralized network of environmental organizations, and their leveraging of the power of advanced communication and information technologies, that they were able to shape outcomes.49 Therefore, understanding these dynamics of the network is important.
Greenpeace, however, has only made limited efforts at private authority (some of which will be discussed in the empirical chapters). Rather, it primarily aims to wield influence. Greenpeace’s tactics are targeted at certain actors behaving in certain ways, but they are not rule makers. They do not create regulatory systems that can institutionalize specific behaviors within a domain; they simply cannot generate sufficient social capital through their network connections to do so. This is because they have distinct goals, a distinct identity, and operate within the logic of a distinctive discourse, thus they are limited primarily to the resources of the environmental network. They are not sufficiently connected to the industrial network, or other sectoral networks for that matter, to harness the power of multiple networks to their purposes. For Greenpeace, significant gaps exist because the distinctions between networks prevent the sufficient flow of the trust and legitimacy necessary to generate authority. An actor that can bridge this gap, however, can generate sufficient authority to govern. For it is their ability to shape behaviors through meaning-making that then allows them to facilitate the transfer of information, and the flow of power, that grants them the requisite authority to govern. I deem these actors network connectors.
Network Connectors
Network connectors facilitate this flow of information and power across networks by being able to connect competing discourses. In doing so, they not only build trust and confidence across networks but are able to shape discourses, which includes behaviors and practices. This ability to shape ways of being through the creative implementation of language designates certain practices as acceptable, and it is essentially this process that I consider the core component of private authority. The most successful private governors must be network connectors, because outside of their own networks they do not possess sufficient material or social capital to enforce rules. These network connectors are essential to the flow of information between disconnected networks, which when connected facilitate the flow, and then the amplification, of power.
Network connectors take advantage of filling structural gaps between networks to garner the authority required to govern. Since they actively seek out these positions to capture the power generated by the position, to then translate it into authority, it is important to keep in mind that they achieve such subject positions as a result of their entrepreneurial behavior. As social entrepreneurs, they do not simply rest on the influence given them by their position within an established network; rather, they leverage the power that can be generated by shaping the space in between networks to gain authority (as opposed to settling for influence). As their connection is crucial for the two combined networks, now that both have experienced the benefits accorded by maintaining this connection, the network connector can broker between the two to build legitimacy—and by extension social value and later authority.50 They have the option of strengthening the bond of the network, or of weakening it, it is their choice, and this choice is based on what brings strategic value to them and to their mission. An actor arriving at a position in between networks—serving as a connector—arrives there through strategic means—seeking to secure and maintain a productive relationship in order to solidify their position. They do not arrive there because they simply possess any particular ideal-type attribute (such as moral legitimacy, for example) that has been imbued upon them. Therefore, it can be said that attributes are correlated to social positioning rather than vice versa. This point is emphasized in Burt (2009):
Causation lies in the intersection of relations. [Gaps between networks] can have different effects for [actors] with different attributes or for organizations of different kinds, but that is because the attributes and organizational forms are correlated with different positions in social structure. The manner in which a [network gap] is an entrepreneurial opportunity for information and control benefits is the bedrock explanation that carries across player attributes, populations and time.51
Under such premises, understanding network connectors does not require framing actors in terms of what they can provide in practical or moral terms to another actor. Rather, it is about their navigation to a place where they can gain from the benefits provided through connecting networks. Being able to find that middle ground makes the network connector the arbiter of common meaning to be found between competing networks, as well as a conduit for identity transference.
The Undertheorized Role of Identity
In network society, meaning is organized around identity. How actors are portrayed to the public plays a significant role in any given actors’ ability to achieve its objectives. Therefore, being able to shape discourses so that one’s identity is then validated in the eyes of the public is critical to success. As a result, constructing and shaping meanings in discourse are crucial to the process of governing, and important sources of authority as well. Network connectors can transfer identity between networks so that the best of each can be attributed to the other. For example, in the environmental sector, the preservation principles that animate the environmental movement can be transferred across networks to industry by a network