The Civic Involvement of Bankers: An Analysis of the Influence of Economic Power and Social Prominence in the Command of Civic Policy Positions

This paper examines the distribution of positions of authority in important civic policy organizations among a broad range of business leaders who are directors of commercial banks in a major metropolitan area. The civic organizations studied work in three different substantive areas: social welfare and social service; culture and education; and the formulation and communication of business policy. The bankers are distinguished in terms of two dimensions of centrality within the capitalist class: their closeness to dominant centers of economic power, as defined by corporate and bank interlocking directorates, and their upper class social prominence, as defined by membership in the most exclusive local clubs and related social organizations. The research reveals a pattern of concentration in the command of civic policy positions at the metropolitan level and indicates that the "inner group" of leading capitalists is best defined in terms of networks of both economic power and upper class prominence. This concentration of power within a core group of capitalists is discussed in relation to the struggle for social hegemony in a declining industrial metropolis. The most enduring questions in studies of social power in American society have concerned the roles played by groups in the private business sector. Though various terminologies and conceptual frameworks have been used to categorize these groups, including references to "business elites," "business interests," the "capitalist class," and the "dominant" or "ruling class," the primary focus in these studies has been on whether capitalist groups are able to dominate nonbusiness social institutions and the processes of social power in the society in general to the relative exclusion of other class groups. The most extensive consideration of these issues has emerged in the literature on "community power structures" (cf. Aiken and Mott, 1970; French, 1969; and Clark, 1975). The present study explores the nature of capitalist social power from a notably different, and often neglected, perspective. Rather than comparing the influence of capitalist interests to that of other interests, we examine the internal structure of the capitalist class in order to determine which capitalists are in command of positions of social power. This research, based on the study of a broad range of business leaders who hold positions as directors of commercial banks within a major metropolitan area, concerns the distribution of power within the capitalist class. The key question in this research is whether the broader social power exercised by capitalists is concentrated in a core group within the class or whether that power is dispersed in a more fragmented pattern. We shall examine the extent to which those capitalists whose activities have "spread into various commanding circles of the institutions of power" are drawn disproportionately from those most central to networks of power and prominence within their class, that is from "the inner circles of the upper classes" (Mills, 1956:69). In studying the distribution of power within the capitalist class, our specific concern is with the command of the leading nongovernmental civic organizations operating at the metropolitan level