Communication Cadres: Leaders, The Control of Communication, and Co-Optation.

Abstract

If a democratic government and a democratic society are mutually reinforcing and reflective, then what conclusions can be drawn from how society practices democracy with how that society practices government? This dissertation, Communication Cadres: Leaders, the Control of Communication, and Co-Optation, offers a mid-range theory between social network theory and the Iron Law of Oligarchy to theorize how oligarchies are created. By coherently combining the study of political participation, democracy, representation, accountability, network theory, access to information, cooperation, and co-optation to analyze highly democratic and participatory organizations, the problems conceptual stretching pose in analysis are identified. By comparing and contrasting how small, democratic, and highly participatory organizations govern themselves, this dissertation explores the implications for how these organizations practiced democracy with how democracy and participation are manifested in the United States. The Communication Cadre Theory (CCT) developed in this dissertation argues that leaders rise to power and stay in power by controlling communication and information flows, which creates an environment conducive for co-optation to occur. Furthermore, the dissertation reduces the conceptual stretching of “cooperation” and “co-optation” and applies the increased rigorous definitions to the case studies used, as well as competing political theories and studies. The results support the Communication Cadre Theory. The dissertation subsequently provides insight into competing political theories and studies to demonstrate how their biases affect their research methods, analysis, and results.