College and Research Libraries The Political Economy of the Academic Library Dennis P. Carrigan Because there are economic and political aspects to the operation of the academidibrary and its parent university, it is appropriate to refer to the ''political economy of the academic library, '' and fruitful to apply the political economy paradigm in an effort to understand the library fully. Three significant aspects of the political economy of the academic library are discussed, as is the anarchic nature of the university, and implications for the academic library. D ust as where a person stands exerts a powerful influence on what is seen, so the place a per- son looks for the answer to a question delimits the set of potential choices. The foregoing is obvious. It is equally obvious that every individual, group, or organization exists and functions within an environment with which it must relate and by which it is influenced. Similarly, a question about how an organization works may yield one answer if the analy- sis is limited to the internal workings of the organization and quite another if it is limited to its environment. When setting out to understand an or- ganization fully, one must go beyond its internal workings and seek an under- standing of any parent institution, the re- lationship between the two, and the con- straints that the parent imposes upon the smaller organization. The American uni- versity is an excellent case in point. To un- derstand the American university and its evolution over the past century and a quarter one must have an understanding of the greater society and the profound changes it has endured. In his study of the emergence of the American university, Laurence Veysey writes, "The American University of 1900 was all but unrecognizable in comparison with the college of 1860." Veysey con- tends that the transformation was the result of several forces, of which the three most important were 11Europhilic discon- tent, available national wealth, and imme- diate alarm over declining college influ- ence.'' All were the result of changes that occurred not within the university, but rather within the broader American soci- ety.l The rapid development of research uni- versities that occurred between the late 1800s and 1920s was also vitally related to changes in the broader society. In this re- gard, Roger Geiger cites three issues: the ability to acquire social resources; the con- version of some resources to create a re- search capability; and most importantly, the securing of an 11 extramural supply of resources earmarked for research,'' an un- dertaking in which the large general- purpose foundations had become increas- ingly important, especially following World War I. Geiger makes it clear that the research universities could not have succeeded if society had not produced the wealth and the frame of mind essential for their sup- port. 2 Economic expansion was especially Dennis P. Carrigan is Assistant Dean at the College of Library and Infonnation Science, University of Ken- tucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0039. 325 ----------------------------------------- ~- 326 College & Research Libraries robust from the last years of the nine- teenth century through World War I. Dur- ing that period higher education qualified as a growth industry in two respects: Di- rectly, because of surging enrollment; and indirectly as a "beneficiary of the bur- geoning national economy.'' These fac- tors enabled research universities' in- comes to grow by a factor of five between 1900 and 1920.3 Growth in higher education during the first part of the twentieth century was not limited to research universities, as a result of the formation and development of a "culture of aspiration," to use David Levine's felicitous phrase. 4 Further, the growth of American higher education was stimulated by a remarkable confluence of economic, social, and intellectual developments that had first ap- peared in the Progressive Era and gathered mo- mentum after World War I. . . . Expansion served the needs of the rapidly growing profes- sional and service-oriented sectors for training and legitimacy .... The curriculum became in- extricably tied to the nation's economic struc- ture, particularly its burgeoning white-collar, middle-class sector. 5 Institutions of higher learning were not driving changes in American society. Quite the reverse was true, and it is only by understanding the broader society that we can appreciate the dramatic changes that occurred in higher education. Clark Kerr writes that "[t]he university does not fully control the direction of its own development'' and concludes that "it seldom has. " 6 In his classic study, The Uses of the University, Kerr states that ' 1 the truly major changes have been initiated from the outside" and the university's 11 directions have not been set as much by the university's visions of its destiny as by the external environment .... The indus- trial, democratic, and scientific revolu- tions," Kerr observes, "have gradually moved in on the universities and changed them almost beyond recognition.'' 7 The university of today bears little re- semblance to its historical antecedent, but it does bear a strong resemblance to its host culture. Harvard president Derek Bok writes that the contemporary Ameri- can university has grown I' out of deep- July 1988 rooted values in the native culture: a dis- trust of government and an abiding faith in competition. " 8 As Abraham Flexner wrote more than fifty years ago, this is be- cause the university, "like all other hu- man institutions,'' is 11 an expression of an age.'' 9 THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY PARADIGM The academic library, like its parent in- stitution, is embedded within the fabric of something larger. To understand the aca- demic library, one may turn to such stan- dard texts as those by Guy Lyle on college library administration, or Rutherford Rog- ers and David Weber on university library administration. 10 Alternatively, one may focus on the library as an organization, as an economic system, or as a life system. 11 Another fruitful, important approach is the exploration of the academic library's link with and the nature of its parent uni- versity, in short, what I refer to as the po- litical economy of the academic library. The term political economy has a rich his- tory, although it has fallen into disuse. Edwin Seligman pointed out more than fifty years ago that I' the line of demarca- tion between the subject matter of eco- nomics and that of other social scientific disciplines is very shadowy. ''12 Moreover, political science and economics, now sep- arate disciplines, grew out of a common concern for the social distribution of things of value. ''The study of politics is the study of influence and the influential ... those who get the most of what there is to get." Economics today is defined as "the study of the allocation of scarce resources among unlimited and competing uses. " 13 In his classic work suggestively entitled Politics: Who Gets What, When, How?, Harold Lasswell asserts that 1 ' the study of politics is the study of influence and the influen- tial. .. those who get the most of what there is to get. " 14 Few would disagree with the statement that there is a vital economic dimension to the operation of the academic library and its parent university. Moreover, I antici- pate general agreement with the state- ment that the academic library exists and functions within a political context. But it is imperative that political be understood in a value-free sense. Too often the term is used pejoratively to describe ''a milieu hospitable to scheming and manipula- tion," or, to use Emerson's term, "cun- ning. " 15 That is not the sense in which the term is used here. I refer to that which is "predominantly oriented toward the au- thoritative allocation'' of valued things in a society or a group, to include, of course, a university. David Easton defines author- itative allocations as those that ''distribute valued things among persons or groups" by requiring the surrender of, obstructing the attainme_nt of, or providing access to the valued things. An allocation is author- itative "when the persons oriented to it consider that they are bound by it.'' Thus, when we use the expression political sys- tem of groups, we understand it to include the political system that is a vital part of the university and the library. 16 It is the intrusive presence of an eco- nomic dimension and the existence of a political context within which the univer- sity and the library exist and function that make the application of the political econ- omy paradigm useful in our efforts to un- derstand the library fully. The political economy paradigm, according to Peter Jackson, "focuses attention upon re- source allocations and decision making within an organisation, irrespective of the organisation type." For our purposes, the relevant organization is not the library, but rather its parent university. "Focus upon the internal processes of decision making and resource allocation [within the uni- versity] brings together political and eco- nomic dimensions of the same prob- lems," Jackson continues. These problems concern bargaining over com- peting goals, the arrangement of goals in a hierarchy, de jure and de facto bargaining and decision-making systems, and the al- The Political Economy 327 location of scarce resources among com- peting claims. It is this inevitable bringing- together of the economic and the political that renders the term political economy so felicitous. 17 The sociologist Mayer Zald argues that: the political economy approach requires an analysis that focuses on the interaction of val- ues and goals of power and control groups with (1) the external supply of money and other in- centives and the demand for services of clients and funders and (2) the internal allocation of men, money, and facilities to accomplish tasks. Zald makes two especially important points when considering the political economy of the academic library: Economies, whether within nation-states or or- ganizations, require a division of labor related to the state of the practical arts (technology). Organizational economies, however, unlike those of societies, do not proceed by market processes; instead, the mechanisms for allocat- ing men, facilities, and money are carried out either by inter-group bargaining or by hierar- chical assignments.1s Moreover, it is important to understand that the academic library has an '' organi- zational economy," even if it levies no charge for its services.'' An organization's economy," Gary Wamsley and Mayer Zald write, ''is its system for producing the 'output' of the organization, it is the combination of men, money, machines, and facilities to produce 'desired' out- put."19 ''The revolution in information tech- nology has created . . . totally new capacities for generating, storing, and providing access to scholarly information-capacities which no longer represent or require links to physical objects in stationary collec- tions." Zald' s first observation pertaining to a technology-determined division of labor reminds us that for centuries technology has ordained the academic library model that continues to exist today. Neverthe- 328 College & Research Libraries less, as Patricia Battin writes, ''The revolu- tion in information technology has cre- ated ... totally new capacities for generating, storing, and providing access to scholarly information-capacities which no longer represent or require links to physical objects in stationary collec- tions. " 20 And, it should be obvious, these are capacities that contain the potential for profound change in the political economy of the academic library. Yet as profound as the possibility is, the second of Zald' s ob- servations, that "the mechanisms for allo- cating men, facilities, and money are car- ried out either by inter-group bargaining or by hierarchical assignments, " 21 is of greater interest to us. THE LIBRARY AS AN EXTERNALLY CONSTRAINED ORGANIZATION It is far more likely that one would over- estimate, rather than underestimate, the importance of hierarchical assignments in considering the allocation of university re- sources for the library. Conversely, it is more likely that one would underestimate the importance of intergroup bargaining. Further, we must appreciate fully Zald's point that although the degree varies among organizations and circumstances, nevertheless organizations tend to be de- pendent upon the external environment for the resources they require. Thus, as Pfeffer and Salancik have written, an or- ganization is ''externally constrained,'' and faces an ''environment of competing, frequently conflicting, demands .' ' 22 Moreover, it is because of this competi- tion for resources that ''establishing a co- alition large enough to ensure survival is an organization's most critical activity. " 23 Although their external environments dif- fer, both the library and its parent univer- sity are "externally constrained" organi- zations. However, the degree of external constraint is far greater in the case of the library. Beyond establishing a coalition, how- ever, an organization survives by entering into exchanges with relevant segments of its environment. The organization pro- vides something of value-goods or services-in return for which the recipi- ents provide the support the organization July 1988 requires.lt is this process of exchange that gives rise to the supporting coalition. The majority of exchanges are characterized by their bilateral nature, in which goods or services are provided to a customer who, in turn, provides support in the form of money. Examples abound, from the bar- ber shop to the automobile dealer. The hallmark of such exchanges is the close link between the level of customer satis- faction and the level of support provided. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY: THREE CONSEQUENCES No simple exchange exists between the academic library and its "customers," and the absence of a direct exchange rela- tionship is one of the most significant as- pects of the political economy of the aca- demic library. In the academic library, the exchange is at best trilateral. Patrons who consume library services do not control or provide the resources upon which the li- brary depends. On the other hand, the ad- ministration, which does control the re- sources, is not a major consumer of library services. Patron satisfaction with library services may work to the library's advantage when the administration allocates resources. However, at times of resource inadequacy-the very times the library most needs the help of its supporting coalition-it is likely to have the least sup- port. This is because, under these circum- stances, the library is competing in a zero- sum game: 24 Money for the library means less money for the university's other con- stituencies, and at such times even those members of the university community who are normally members of the library's supporting coalition can be expected to place their own, more narrow, interests first. The zero-sum nature of the competition for resources at times of revenue shortage is aggravated by a third significant aspect of the political economy of the academic li- brary: in the typical university, power is highly dispersed, making it difficult to achieve significant changes in the funding pattern. Power, like political, is a term we may prefer to think of as irrelevant to the academy, yet such a thought is self- deceptive. Power permeates the academy, as it does the relations among all social units and ''the behaviors of one or more units . . . depend in some circumstances on the behavior of other units. " 25 UNIVERSITY AND ANARCHY In his study of the modem "multiver- sity/' Clark Kerr deals extensively with the related issues of governance and power. "What I meant by the word [multiversity L '' Kerr writes in the post- script to the 1982 edition, "was that the modern university was a pluralistic institution-pluralistic in a number of senses: in having several purposes, not one; in having several centers of power, not one; [and] in serving several clien- teles, not one." Kerr suggests that al- though the modern university is ''de- voted to equality of opportunity, it is itself a class society. A community . . . should have common interests; in the multiver- sity, they are quite varied, even conflict- ing."26 Seeking a way to describe governance in the modern university, Kerr turns to the city for analogy: "It is ... a system of gov- ernment like the city, or a city state. . . . It may be inconsistent, but it must be governed-not as the guild it once was, but as a complex entity with greatly frac- tionalized power. . . . There is a 'kind of lawlessness' in any large university with many separate sources of initiative and power;" Kerr continues, "and the task is to keep this lawlessness within reasonable bounds." Faculty are at the same time both major competitors for that power and the principal assurance that it will remain fractionalized. Kerr goes on to quote Rob- ert M. Hutchins' assertion that "the fac- ulty really 'prefer anarchy to any form of government.''' 27 Anarchy and sharply constrained power emerge as major themes in Michael Cohen and James March's study of the American college and university presi- dent. The American college and univer- sity, they write, belong ''to a class of orga- nizations that can be called organized anarchies." They view "college [and uni- versity] presidents as generally more The Political Economy 329 powerful than others in the college [or university] but as having less power than casual observers or participants fre- quently believe they do, or than they often expect to have on entering office .... Ex- cept for a very few cases," Cohen and March observe, "presidents ,do not ap- pear to dominate directly the decision making in their institutions. They face a poorly understood and rather tightly con- strained managerial world .... Their abil- ity to control decision outcomes is often less than expected by those around them and by themselves. " 28 Yet, if the president has less power than might appear to be the case, where does power reside? The answer seems to be: Everywhere-and therefore nowhere. ''Both formal authority and informal in- fluence are widely diffused in a univer- sity, as compared with other types of for- mal organizations," Frederick Balderston writes. Moreover, "the individuals in a university retain very significant auton- omy. This gives them many vetoes over the official intentions of authority. " 29 From the perspective of fifteen years as president of Harvard, Derek Bok observes that "universities are anarchic by nature and flourish by giving professors free reign.'' 30 Clark Kerr writes that, especially with regard to research universities, "the facul- ties are substantially in control.'' Kerr comments on the major consequence of nearly twenty years of evolution in the governance of the university, during which decision making has become ever more diffused: "It is ironic that participa- tory democracy . . . has meant . . . more veto groups, less action, more commit- ment to the status quo-the status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed.'' 31 POLITICAL ECONOMY, ANARCHY, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE LIBRARY For the library, the most important im- plications of the structure and functioning of the university are obvious. On the one hand, it is difficult to secure increases in the percentage of the university's operat- ing budget that is allocated to the library. 330 College & Research Libraries "During times of financial hardship, the library budget is especially vul- nerable.'' On the other, during times of financial hardship, the library budget is especially vulnerable. ''When [university] budgets are tightened,'' Balderston points out, the library's subsidy budget is likely to come under attack for various reasons. First, the li- brary is a supporting activity, not a direct con- tributor to goal attainment. (It stands in weak complementation to academic goals.) Second, circulation of books is an observable work-load factor, but the penalty to scholarship from a cut- back in numbers of new titles is hard to prove (and is tied to the more exotic research outputs, which are not likely to fin? as much favor with legislative or alumni fundors as does the accom- modation of students). Finally, the yardstick of collection quality in each field is a moving tar- get, consisting ideally of the inclusion of every- thing old and everything new. Because no li- brary can meet this ideal, the issue is how far to compromise. When put in these terms, the sub- sidy investment in the library collection is very difficult to objectify. 32 Balderston's conclusion-that the li- brary's budget is vulnerable-is correct, but I wonder if his reasons are. They strike me as too antiseptic, too dispassionate, too far removed from the way the world, including the university, works. He is substantially closer to the mark, it seems to me, when, concerning the reality within which a budget reduction must be implemented, he writes: "There is ... an internal distribution of power and influ- ence in the academic leadership, [and e]ven during the early stages of [a budget reduction], some units may demand par- July 1988 tial or full exemption from the cuts.''33 Before members of the "academic lead- ership'' would ''demand partial or full ex- emption" from budget cuts, they would have to be quite certain of their power and influence within the university. Is it likely that a library director would be in a posi- tion to make such a demand? Almost cer- tainly, there have been directors who en- joyed such a position. There may be some today, but there will never be many. The position they occupy simply does not carry with it such power and influence. In this regard, Patricia Battin makes an ob- servation that is no less accurate for being painful: The most striking feature of traditional aca- demic organizations, and the one I believe is most misunderstood and ignored by our aca- demic colleagues, is the virtual isolation of the library in the organization. Despite the rhetoric about it being the heart of the university, the li- brary and librarians have been for years isolated from the policy councils of most institutions. 34 Whether library directors' academic col- leagues misunderstand and ignore ''the virtual isolation of the library'' in the uni- versity, or whether, in fact, they under- stand fully the relative postition of the li- brary and find that position to be both appropriate and nonthreatening, is a mat- ter worthy of debate. What is beyond de- bate, however, is Balderston's observa- tion that "librarians administer large, hierarchical organizations and large, insti- tutionally subsidized budgets. Because of the competing and often contradictory de- mands for relations with insistent outside users, librarians are often experts in politi- cal accommodation. " 35 Or, if they are not experts, they need to be; for such is there- ality of the political economy of the aca- demic library. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1965), p.2. 2. Roger L. Geiger, To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900-1940 (New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1986), p.vi-vii. 3. Ibid., p.39-40. 4. David 0. Levine, The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915-1940 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Pr., 1986), p.14. The Political Economy 331 5. Ibid., p.18-19. 6. Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1964), p.107. 7. Ibid., p.105; p.122; p.98. 8. Derek Bok, Higher Learning (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1986), p.10. 9. Abraham Flexner, Universities: American, English, German 2d ed. (New York: Teachers College Pr ., 1967), p.19. 10. Guy R. Lyle, The Administration of the College Library, 4th ed. (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1974); Rutherford D. Rogers and David C. Weber, University Library Administration (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1971). 11. David W. Lewis, "An Organizational Paradigm for Effective Academic Libraries," College & Re- search Libraries 47:337-53 (July 1986); W. Boyd Rayward, "Libraries as Organizations," College & Research Libraries 30:312-26 (July 1969); Maurice P. Marchant, "University Libraries as Economic Systems," College & Research Libraries 36:449-57 (Nov. 1975); Timothy C. Weiskel, "Libraries as Life-Systems: Information, Entropy, and Coevolution on Campus," College & Research Libraries 47:545-63 (Nov. 1986). 12. Edwin R. A. Seligman, "Economics," in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Edwin R. A. Se- ligman and Alvin Johnson (New York: Macmillan, 1931), p.344. 13. Albert Rees, ''Economics,'' in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed . David L. Sills (New York: Macmillan and the Free Pr., 1968), p.472: 14. Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936), p.3. 15. Lindsay Rogers, "Politics," in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, p.225; Ralph Waldo Emerson "Politics," in Essays & Lectures, ed. Joel Porte (New York: Library of America, 1983), p.563. 16. David Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J .: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p.50 . 17. P.M. Jackson, The Political Economy of Bureaucracy (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1983), p.73-74. 18. Mayer N. Zald, Organizational Change: The Political Economy of the YMCA (Chicago: Univ. of Chi- cago Pr., 1970), p.18-19. 19. Gary L. Wamsley and Mayer N. Zald, The Political Economy of Public Organizations (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1973), p.19. 20. Patricia Battin, "The Library: Center of the Restructured University," in Colleges Enter the Informa- tion Society, ed . Russell Edgerton (Washington: American Association for Higher Education, 1983). p.26. 21. Zald, Organizational Change, p.19. 22 . Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik, The External Control of Organizations (New York: Harper, 1978), p.xi-xii. 23. Ibid., p.24-25. 24. For a brief discussion of the zero-sum game, see Edwin Mansfield, Microeconomics: Theory and Ap- plications (New York: Norton, 1970), p.313-14; Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1976), p.52. 25. Robert A. Dahl, "Power," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, p.407. 26 . Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 3d. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1982), p .136; 19. 27. Ibid., p.20; 35; 31. 28. Michael D. Cohen and James G. March, Leadership and Ambiguity: The American College President, 2d ed. (Boston: Harvard Business Sch. Pr., 1986), p.2; xiv; 123. 29. Frederick E. Balderston, Managing Today's University (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1974), p.43; 46 . 30. Derek Bok, "Academe Must Be Wary of Hazards without and Within," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 17, 1986, p.88. 31. Kerr, Uses, 3d ed. p.156; 177. 32. Balderston, Managing, p.66. 33. Ibid., p.222-23. 34. Battin, "The Library," p.27. 35. Balderston, Managing, p.64.