The Canadian state and corporate elites in the post-War period

The Canadian state and corporate elites in the post-War period

J O H N F O X and M I C H A E L O R N S T E I N

ment of Sociology, York University

Les thrioriciens de l’instrumentalisme affirment qu’un grand nombre des preneurs de decisions de 1’Ctat sont issus des cadres supkrieurs de grandes entreprises et que ceci explique du moins en partie les politiques gouvernementales favorisant le processus de l’accumulation. D’autre part, les structuralistes soutiennent que ces liens ne sont pas essentiels a une comprehension de 1’Ptat capitaliste dont l’kolution et la composition incarnent la domination du capital. Cette etude examine les liens entre les conseils d’admi- nistration de la grande entreprise et de 1’Ctat entre les annCes 1946 et 1977 en se penchant surtout sur les individus qui ont dCtenu des positions aux deux niveaux, soit des entreprises et de I’Ctat n’importe quel moment pendant cette periode, que ces positions aient CtP detenues concurremment ou non. Quoique des niveaux ClevCs de liens entre les entreprises et l’6tat ont 6tC observCs, ils ne sont pas assez PlevCs pour constater une domination de 1’Ctat par I’entreprise. Les liens les plus Ctroits avec des organismes sont avec les universitks et les hbpitaux, suivis des compagnies de la couronne deCanada et des Com- missions Royales, des compagnies de la couronne des provinces, du SCnat et des cabinets fedCraux et provinciaux. Les niveaux les plus bas de liens se retrouvent parmi les bureauc- raties du fCdCral et des provinces. Le niveau des liens a augment6 quelque peu pendant la pCriode CtudiCe.

Institute for Sociaf Research and Depart-

Instrumentalist theorists have argued that large numbers of state elites have backgrounds in the upper reaches of large corporations and that this accounts, in part, for state policies that foster the accumulation process. On the other hand, structuralists maintain that these links are not fundamental to understanding the capitalist state, whose development and structure embody the domination of capital. The study examines the links between the

‘ This research is based on data collected for the project on Canadian capital in the post-War period, directed by William Carroll and the authors of this paper and gener- ously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We wish to express our appreciation for research assistance to Mahbub Ahmed, Lucille Covelli, Ada Donnelly, Aloma Mendoza, Alejandro Rojas, Alex Roman, Greg Stockton, and Rod Wheeland. Peter Meiksins and two anonymous CRSA reviewers provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We thank Marian Steggerda, Mau- reen Pereira and Anita Citron for typing this paper and Pierre Angers for translating the abstract. This manuscript was received November 1984 and accepted March 1986.

Rev. canad. SOC. & Anth. I Canad. Rev. SOC. & Anth. zj(4) 1986

482 J O H N F O X A N D M I C H A E L ORNSTEIN

boards of the largest Canadian corporations and the Canadian state, between the years 1946 and 1977, focussing on individuals who held both corporate and state positions at any time during the study period, whether or not the positions were held concurrently. Although high levels of interlocking between corporations and the state were observed, the numbers are not nearly large enough to suggest corporate domination of the state. The densest corporate ties were with universities and hospitals, followed by the federal crown corporations and Royal Commissions, the provincial crown corporations, the Senate, and the federal and provincial cabinets. The lowest level of ties was found for the federal and provincial bureaucracies. The level of interlocking increased somewhat during the period of the study.

Central to the theoretical debate about the capitalist state is the nature of the relationship between the state and the capitalist class. Aside from formal and informal communication between capitalists and state officials, this relationship is facilitated by career mobility between corporations and the state and by the involvement of corporate management in state institutions, including commissions, task forces, and the boards of state enterprises, universities, and hospitals. While we recognize the structuralist claim that the character of state institutions embodies the domination of capital and that this domination is not reducible to career mobility and organizational involvements, we believe that empirical analysis of these mechanisms has significant implications for understanding the state.

This paper examines the ties between capital and the state in Canada between 1946 and 1977. On the corporate side, we shall study the largest Canadian corporations, law firms, securities dealers, and the major Canadian business policy organizations. State institutions studied include the federal and provincial cabinets, deputy ministers, the boards of the largest federal and provincial crown corporations, the governor general and lieutenant governors, the Senate, the highest courts, and the boards of major universities and hospitals. In each year of the study, all of the occupants of the designated positions were identified. Since many positions considered were full-time jobs and in certain cases there were legal restrictions on simultaneously holding some pairs of positions, our analysis includes capital to state links involving individuals who occupied corporate and state positions at different times.

In describing the relationship between state institutions and the largest Cana- dian corporations between 1946 and 1977 we address the following questions :

I/ To what extent are state elites recruited directly from top corporations? Although it is difficult to specify precise boundaries among these conditions, we shall expect to find whether capital is largely excluded from the state, whether it is represented, or whether it is present in such large numbers as to dominate the state apparatuses directly.

z/ Is there a historical trend in these links? 3 / How do the provincial and federal states differ in their relations to capital? 4/ To what extent is there a 'reverse flow' from the state to the large corporations,

representing attempts by capital to exert pressure on the state by recruiting experts to the ranks of its executives?

5/ Are there different levels of interlocking between the various sectors of the capitalist class and the various state apparatuses ?

483 T H E C A N A D I A N S T A T E A N D C O R P O R A T E E L I T E S

THEORY A N D RESEARCH O N THE STATE A N D PRIVATE CAPITAL

The most important empirical research on the links between capital and the state was created in the course of the long-running debate between pluralist and radical theorists of contemporary capitalism. While the pluralists characterized modern capitalist societies in terms of competition for power among a variety of social and political groups (from example, see Dahl, 1961; 1967), the radicals argued that, however widespread the appearance of political conflict, some groups were almost always able to get their way (Mills, 1956; Domhoff, 1967; 1970; 1972; 1974; 1979). In most of the radical formulations, big business and the military establishment were seen as the dominant groups. The radicals also argued that the most powerful groups could prevent debate over fundamental issues which would change the balance of power from ever reaching the political arena (Merelman, 1968). Obviously the pluralists had a strong interest in finding relatively weak relationships between capital and the state since the existence of strong relationships would undermine their claims that no one group is politically predomi- nant. Conversely, the radicals needed to show that these relationships were strong.

Recent empirical research within the pluralist paradigm includes work by Dye (1976) and Birnbaum (1978). Dye’s conclusions are representative:

There are multiple recruitment paths to the top of the nation’s institutional structure. The corporate world supplied a majority of the top leaders in the corporate sector itself, and in civic and cultural organizations, foundations, and universities. However, top governmental leaders are recruited primarily from the law, and to a lesser extent from government itself and education. The mass media, the law, education all provide separate recruitment channels. In short, the corporate world, while an important recruitment channel, is not the exclusive roadto the top (1976: 176).

From Dye’s perspective, the finding that relatively small proportions of state elites come from coporate backgrounds is critical.

Among the best known radical critics of pluralism are C. Wright Mills (1956), William Domhoff, and Ralph Miliband, whose work is discussed below since it has more of a Marxist character.’ As Salzman and Domhoff (1979-80: 124) point out in their reexamination of Dye’s data, quantitative analysis based on individual careers tends to minimize the extent of ties between sectors. Usingorganizations as the units of analysis reveals much higher probabilities of ties, since each organization has numerous individual representatives (for example directors of a corporation, members of a cabinet, directors of a voluntary organization). Dye reports that only 260 of 1345 positions in what he describes as ’public interest’ groups’ are interlocked with positions in business and government. At the same time Salzman and Domhoff show that

[all1 of the iz universities have at least one trustee who is a corporate director from one of these 150 corporations, as do all 13 policy and cultural organizations. Ten of the twelve foundations have interlocks with at least one corporation, and twelve of the twenty New York City law firms have ast least one senior partner who sits on a board of directors in the sample. Moreover, 57 percent of the organizations in the civic sector have interlocks with four or more corporations (1979-80:125).

484 J O H N FOX A N D M I C H A E L O R N S T E I N

Another empirical attack on pluralism is mounted by Freitag (1975) and Mintz (1976) who discover an extraordinary degree of business domination over the u. s. cabinet during the entire period from 1897 to 1972.

For the most part these radical critics of pluralism have not put forward a more complete alternative position and, while it is tempting to see the radical arguments as confirmation of a Marxist approach, no such interpretation is warranted. Although capitalist domination may be insured by capitalists’ direct involvement in the state apparatus, Marx (1968) himself does not see bourgeois hegemony as requiring their direct participation.

Precisely how capitalist domination of the state is assured is the key point of dispute in the well-known debate between Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas. In his seminal The State of Capitalist Society (1969), Miliband draws attention to the participation of capitalists in government and to the patterns of social mobility that assure that state elites are drawn from the ‘upper- and middle-class’ (p. 60). This position is commonly labeled ’instrumentalist’ (but, see Carnoy, 1984: 104ff) and is often caricatured as total business domination of the state. It is worth quoting Miliband’s own, more modest claim: ‘Notwithstanding the substantial participation of businessmen in the business of the state, it is however true that they have never constituted, and do not constitute now, more than a relatively small minority of the state elite as a whole’ (1969: 59).

In debating Miliband in the N e w Left Review (Miliband, 1970; 1973; Poulantzas 1969), Nicos Poulantzas sets out his ’structuralist’ position (also see Poulantzas, 1973.). He emphasizes that the very structure of the state embodies the assumption of bourgeois rule and that the character and role of the state is thus not dependent on the class composition of the state elite.

Within Marxism, there is actually a much earlier and even stronger instrumentalist theory of the state. In the various versions of ’state monopoly capitalist’ theory, as formulated by sections of the Third International,

state monopoly capitalism is usually treated as a distinct stage of capitalism characterised by the fusion of monopoly forces with the bourgeois state to form a single mechanism of economic exploitation and political domination (Jessop, 1982: 32).

Of course, this perspective also suggests that we should observe strong connections between capital and the state.

Although Miliband and Poulantzas were central in initiating far more intensive analysis of the capitalist state, important aspects of both their positions have achieved a general acceptance. Contemporary Marxist theorists address a series of questions that transcend the instrumentalist-structuralist dichotomy. In particular, Marxists have sought to specify what it is about the structure of state apparatuses that is inherently capitalist, to understand how the relatively ‘unpolitical’ class of capitalists comes to adopt a coherent position on issues transcending individual capitalists’ interests, to develop an understanding of ideology beyond the idea of its reflecting the self-evident interest of a class, and to demonstrate precisely how policy is made in a capitalist state faced with conflicting class interests (Laclau, 1975; Jessop, 1977; 1982; Block, 1977; Offe, 1984).

Of the theories just discussed, pluralism and structuralist Marxism suggest relatively weak ties between capital and the state, while radical theory, ‘in-

485 THE C A N A D I A N STATE A N D CORPORATE ELITES

strumentalist’ Marxism, and state monopoly capital theory suggest relatively strong ties. Although the results of our data analysis can strengthen the case for some of these theories and weaken it for others, research dealing with just one country in one historical period should not be regarded as decisive. Before discus- sing our results, we will outline the objectives of our analysis, review previous Canadian research on the links between capital and the state, and set out our own expectations.

THE C A N A D I A N STATE

Canadian Marxists have tended to characterize the relationship between the state and capital in instrumentalist terms. Leo Panitch’s argument is typical and de- serves quotation at some length:

We . . . immediately note a particularly striking characteristic of the Canadian state - its very close personal ties to the bourgeoisie. Whatever the merits of Poulantzas’ contention that the most efficient state is that with the least direct ties to the dominant class, it is rather an academic point as applied to Canada . . . John Porter’s demonstration of the degree of co-optation from business to government and‘exit from cabinet to business makes the very concept of an autonomous political elite in Canada a highly tenuous one . . . When we turn to the bureaucracy, we find again particularly strong linkages, with a major tendency, despite the development of a civil service based on the merit principle rather than patronage, for the co-optation of businessmen from the outside . . . Wally Clement has indeed recently shown that there has been ’an increasing interpenetration between the corporate elite and both the state and political systems in the last twenty years,’ and [that] ‘a total of 39.4% of the current economic elite members either were themselves or had close kin in the state system’ (1977: 11-13).

We believe that the evidence used to support an instrumentalist approach is misleading. First, two examples often cited to support state connections to capital are not necessarily relevant to analysis of the contemporary Canadian state. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century railway promoters’ successes in gaining state financing and land grants3 do not offer a model for current relationships between capital and the state. Similarly, the recruitment of prominent capitalists to the wartime federal bureaucracy is not an appropriate model for the present-day civil service.4

A second major problem in much of the work on business-state relations is the failure to distinguish recruitment of businessmen into state positions from movement in the opposite direction, which confuses processes with two very different implications. High levels of business recruitment of former politicians and bureaucrats by no means signify corporate domination of the state. Clement’s (1975: 46) argument for increasing interpenetration is based only on movement from state elites into corporate positions. Olsen (1980: 129) shows that there is no change in the proportion of state elites from elite backgrounds (comparing his data from 1961-73 to Porter’s data for 1940-60); he finds that 15.1 per cent of state elites had a ’previous elite in family’ and an additional 22.4 per cent came from families including the ’owners of substantial businesses, judges and prominent members of the bar, [and] directors of large but not dominant corporations.’ Porter’s corresponding figures were 16.4 and 24.0 per cent.

486 J O H N FOX A N D MICHAEL O R N S T E I N

Also missing from the literature on the Canadian state are comparisons with other nations. The Canadian state is certainly not more instrumentalist than the American state. It would be more appropriate to compare Canada to nations, such as Australia, with relatively similar positions in the world system; but to our knowledge no such evidence exists.

By advancing these criticisms we do not intend to take the structuralist position in the debate with instrumentalism, nor to argue that capital has no influence on the Canadian state. We simply want to argue that the policies of the Canadian state reflect its role as a capitalist state, not a peculiarly Canadian instrumentalism. The mechanisms producing state policies friendly to capital reflect the structure of the state and the implicit threat of an ’investment strike by capital. ’ Still there is a great deal more conflict and instability in the system than is easily explained by instrumentalism. How, for example, are we to account for the former Liberal government’s National Energy Policy which, even after some modification under pressure from the oil and gas industry, clearly represented the preference of no significant fraction of Canadian capital (Wathns, 1983)?

Our own expectation in approaching these data falls somewhere in the middle of the theoretical positions already discussed. The complete or even majority domination of state institutions by corporate elites entails serious drawbacks to effective government. The transparency of its domination by capital would make such a state an easy target of political attack and would hinder attempts at legitimation. Business-dominated institutions would face difficulties in formulating public policies with the necessary minimum of co-optation to avoid the buildup of massive opposition from workers and their organizations. A cabinet made up entirely or most1 of businessmen would have difficulty in reconciling conflicts within a

competition, the need for external markets, and rates of pay. More independent state managers can better reach effective compromises among conflicting capitalist groups and formulate policies that successfully accommodate the demands of workers and independent commodity producers.5

We do not claim that the personnel of the capitalist state are recruited entirely from outside the ranks of big capital or that complete independence of the state would be optimal for capital. A limited but direct representation of bourgeois interests in the state gives capital an effective voice and provides for liaison between capital and the state. So long as business interests are a minority within the highest councils of the state, the business presence can be defended against political attack.

In principle, a state without ties to its capitalist class could serve the interests of that class, just as corporations could function without a network of directorate interlocks linking boards and executives. Nevertheless, the presence of the interlocks and the representation of capital within the state both serve the interests of capital. That is precisely why ties between capital and the state exist in practice, even if they are not necessary in theory.

capita Y ist class disunited by sectoral differences in their vulnerability to import

DATA A N D M E T H O D S

Our data collection was based upon samples of organizations in the different institutional sectors. Names and periods of service of the executives and directors


of the selected organizations, as appropriate to the particular type of organization, were recorded. In some cases the way to proceed was obvious (for example, listing the members of the federal cabinet is not problematic), but in other cases we had to make judgments about which organizations to select under the constraint of limited finanical resources. For the corporations, universities, and hospitals it was necessary to decide where, along a continuum of influence and size, to divide organizations included from those not included in the sample. That problem is further complicated by the longitudinal character of the study, since some of the organizations selected at one time might not have been included in the sample selected at another time.

Due to changes in the sizes of corporations over time, numerous mergers, lack of consistent and easily accessible financial data for the early years of the study, and the need to compare corporations for which the appropriate measures of size were not the same, selecting the sample of corporations posed the most difficult problem. For the industrial corporations (including manufacturing, transportation and utilities, and resource extraction) rankings by assets were assembled at five-year intervals beginning in 1946. Any corporation ever among the largest seventy was included in the sample. Similarly, any corporation ever ranlung among the largest twenty in the financial sector or among the largest ten in the commercial sector was included in the sample. Because there was no property development corporation of significant size at the beginning of the post-War period, corporations from this sector were only added in the last years of the study, using a cutoff point of assets equal to the smallest industrial firm in the sample. Because their assets are relatively small compared to their overall influence (exercised by means of major, often controlling, blocks of stock in other firms), selected holding companies were added to the sample.’ Twenty-six law firms, which were selected on the basis of two or more partners in the ’economic elites’ defined by Porter (1965: 277ff) or Clement (1975: 187ff), were also added to the sample as were nine securities dealers, which were selected on the basis of their being mentioned by Neufeld (1964) and Park and Park (1962).

For the corporate sector, the sample of individuals included board members of the selected corporation and all partners of the selected law and securities firms between 1946 and 1977. In our discussion below, ‘executives‘ were board members who held an executive position in the same corporation at some time in the period covered by the study; these executives are often termed ‘inside directors.’ Execu- tives who were not board members were excluded from the study. Because the securities dealers and law firms operated as partnerships, the distinction between executives and directors did not apply to them.

The state organizations in this study inclilded several federal and provincial government institutions, and major universities and hospitals. At the federal level, the cabinet, all deputy ministers, major crown corporations, Royal Commissions in the period of study, the Senate, the senior courts, and the governor general were included in the study. At the provincial level, the cabinets, deputy ministers, major crown corporations, and lieutenant governors of all the provinces were included. The universities were ranked by size, and board members of the twenty largest were included in the study; similarly, the fifteen largest hospitals were included. Although a number of the universities and hospitals were ’private’ rather than

488 J O H N F O X A N D M I C H A E L O R N S T E I N

governmental institutions, they were included in the state sector because of their dependency on state financing and regulation.

In order to measure the impact of business interest groups, we included two categories of organizations. One contained only the Canadian Chamber of Com- merce and the Canadian Manufacturers Association, the two most important traditional business interest groups. The other category included seven more recently prominent policy-planning organizations: the Conference Board in Ca- nada, the C. D. Howe Research Institute, the Canadian-American Committee, the Canadian Economic Policy Committee, The Institute for Research on Public Policy, the Business Council on National Issues, the Ontario Research Foundation, and the Fraser Institute.

The data base includes a total of about 23 ooo mentions, though of course the number of different individuals is smaller because of overlapping memberships. To our knowledge this is the most comprehensive data base of its type ever assembled; only the large studies of corporate interlocks, such as the American research based on the data assembled by Michael Schwartz on the largest 797 U.S. corporations in 1969 (which includes 11 290 mentions) are of comparable magnitude. Our dataset is also unique in its inclusion of state institutions and in the longitudinal character of the records.

The results of this study reflect our choices on what to include in the database and, while considerable effort went into deciding what should be there, we cannot claim that other decisions would be less reasonable than those made. Certainly our choices as to number of firms, universities, and hospitals are based on common sense, although we could conceive of further data gathering that might produce a superior sampling frame. The chief risk is that our sample excludes elements of capital and state institutions that provide links between the two. For example, members of Parliament who were not in the cabinet (and so were excluded from the sample) might have come from jobs in the top echelons of the corporate sector; industrial firms which were too small to rank among the largest seventy in Canada could have board members who formerly served in the state organizations. Unfor- tunately, any serious effort to remedy these uncertainties would have added substantially to the size and cost of the data base. Because interlocking and career-switching are disproportionately concentrated at the highest levels of the corporate and state sectors, the addition of new, less important institutions is not likely to have much of a payoff in terms of findings. It is implausible, for example, that by adding many smaller universities to the twenty in this study far more interlocks with the corporate sectors will be revealed.

Our decisions on state institutions included in the study imply a definition of the boundaries of the state. The identification of these boundaries is controversial. In particular, Gramsci (1971: zoff; see also Merrington [1968: 1531) and Poulantzas (1973) establish definitions of the state that include some institutions, such as the mass media, religious organizations, and even the family, that are ordinarily considered part of civil society. Less drastic extensions of this study could involve adding members of Parliament outside the cabinet, federal regulatory officials, and elected officials and top civil servants of the large cities.

We can obviously represent this study as showing the extent of interlocking between the most important corporations and state organizations. The limitations


of our sample mean that our estimates could err only on the side of underestimat- ing the number of capitalist links with the state (but not their density, which would almost certainly decline as less important firms and government bodies are added).

Our analysis proceeds in two stages. First, we examine interlocking between the corporate and state organizations to discover the existence of links between pairs of organizations, whether the result of simultaneous position holding or mobility between them. This analysis fits into an emerging tradition of research on social networks, which is most developed in the area of interlocking between corporate boards. Of course two organizations are said to be linked even if only one person provides a link between two boards each including thirty or more individuals. We focus on whether there is any connection. rather than on the strength of the connections between the pairs of organizations. These results are in Tables I to IV. The second stage of the analysis deals with individual careers. Table v gives the proportions of state position holders who serve on corporate boards. This analysis includes the wartime federal bureaucracy, whose links with big business are frequently cited to support an instrumentalist interpretation of the Canadian state.

O V E R L A P P I N G M E M B E R S H I P S B E T W E E N P U B L I C A N D P R I V A T E O R G A N I Z A T I O N S

This section examines the links between public and private organizations as manifest in overlapping directorships. As defined here, ‘overlapping’ memberships include ties created by individuals who moved from one organization to another in the course of their careers, as well as contemporaneous ties created by concurrent membership in more than one organization. Initially we examine the general pattern of ties between the private and public institutional sectors. Then we consider how this pattern has evolved during the first three decades of the post- War period. Finally, we examine the nature of the intersectoral ties themselves, separating contemporaneous ties from those created over time and, among the latter, distinguishing temporal direction.

Table I presents the frequencies and densities of intersectoral ties for several categories of state and private institutions. The ties recorded in this table pertain to unique pairs of organizations, and any such pair can contribute at most one tie to the recorded count. For example, a federal crown corporation and a bank that shared more than one director contribute only one to the count of ties between the federal-crown-corporation and financial sectors in the table. Along with contemporaneous ties, Table I includes ties established over time. The reader should understand that by virtue of holding positions in three or more organizations at one time or moving among several organizations in the course of his or her career, a single individual can be responsible for creating many tied pairs.

The density figures in Table I were calculated by dividing the number of tied organizations by the potential number of such ties for each pair of institutional sectors. Thus, for instance, the 19 federal crown corporations and 34 financial firms could give rise to at most 19 times 34 or 646 tied pairs of organizations; of these, 166 tied pairs were in fact observed, yielding a density of ties of 166/646 or 257 per 1000, as recorded in the table.

Overall, more than 3300 ties connect the 148 state organizations and 302 private


TABLE I NUMBER AND DENSITY (PER THOUSAND) OF TIED PAIRS OF ORGANIZATIONS BETWEEN TYPES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS, 1946-1976

Corporate Organizations

State Organizations Mining Manufacturing Utility Finance Investment

Federal Cabinet

Federal Bureaucracy

Federal Crown Corporation

Royal Commission

Senate

Courts

Governer-General

Provincial Cabinet

Provincial Bureaucracy

Provincial Crown Corporation Lieutenant Governor University

Hospital

Total

Number of Organizations

16 (471)

11 (324) 166

(257) 74

(53) 23

(676) 5

(74) 2

(59) 25

(74) 2

(6) 43

(74) 20

(59) 245

(360) 117

(229) 749

(149) 34

~~ ~~

NOTE: first number listed indicates frequency; number in parentheses indicates density.

organizations entered in Table I, representing a general density of ties between the state and capitalist sectors of 7.5 per cent. All of the catgories of private organizations are tied to substantial numbers of state organizations; the ties maintained by capitalist firms are particularly noteworthy, especially those for the manufacturing and financial sectors. Particularly large densities are observed for the financial firms. These findings fit in well with the evidence showing that financial institu-

491 T H E C A N A D I A N STATE A N D C O R P O R A T E E L I T E S

CMA & Number of Commerce Property Securities Law CCC Policy Total Organizations

1

1

19

41

1

2

1

10

10

17

10

20

15

148

tions have very large boards and numerous interlocks with other corporations (see Carroll, 1982; Carroll, Fox, and Ornstein, 1981; and Ornstein, 1976) and are generally conceived as occupying a central position in capital. The major business interest groups - the CMA and ccc, and the policy-planning organizations - are also densely linked to the state, which seems appropriate to their mission of assuring state policies that support the accumulation process.

TABL

E U

NU

MB

ER

AN

D

DE

NSI

TY

OF

TIE

D

PAIR

S O

F O

RG

AN

IZA

TIO

NS

AM

ON

G T

YPE

S O

F PR

IVA

TE

OR

GA

NIZ

AT

ION

S, 1

946-

76

~~~~

~~

Man

ufac

tur-

C

MA

&

Min

ing

ing

Uti

lity

Fina

nce

Inve

stm

ent

Com

mer

ce

Prop

erty

Se

curi

ties

La

w

CC

C

Polic

y To

tal

Min

ing

Man

ufac

turi

ng

Util

ity

Fina

nce

Inve

stm

ent

Com

mer

ce

Prop

erty

Secu

ritie

s

Law

CM

A &

CCC

Polic

y

Tota

l

Num

ber o

f O

rgan

izat

ions

264

(471

) 19

8 20

(3

64)

(167

) 16

8 38

(2

15)

(103

) 66

17

49

18

113

22

53

9 (7

79)

(281

) 13

7 47

(5

76)

(420

) 28

90

850

(299

) (1

81)

34

16

(176

) (9

7)

(120

) (9

4)

(128

) (5

3)

32

(98)

(96)

(1cw

5 1

18

12

17

(99)

(8

57)

(810

) 48

6 25

6 77

4 75

93

(65)

(4

26)

(371

) (1

67)

26

2 '

7 30

2

493 T H E C A N A D I A N STATE A N D C O R P O R A T E ELITES

The extent to which specific state sectors are tied to private organizations is much more uneven, both as regards the frequencies of ties and their densities. The universities and hospitals maintain many and dense ties with capitalist institutions. In general the federal government is much more strongly linked to big capital than are the provincial governments. Ties between crown corporations and the private sector are especially numerous, while the ties linking the federal cabinet and the Senate to the private sector are articularly dense: the Senate and cabinet

study.' Note also that the federal and provincial cabinets are much more strongly linked

to capital than are the corresponding bureaucracies: the densities are one and half to two times greater for the politicians. The implication is that pressure from business is more likely to flow from the cabinet to the bureaucracy, rather than the reverse. This finding lends support, as well, to the idea that liberal policies (such as economic nationalism) have bases of support in the bureaucracy and that business pressure on the cabinet accounts for the erratic history of actual legisla- tion.

Table 11, which gives the frequency and density of ties among the private organizations themselves, provides a point of comparison for the data of Table I . In general, ties within the private sector are considerably more prevalent than those between the private and public sectors. In total there are nearly 7600 tied pairs among the 302 private organizations, which represents a density of 16.7 per cent, more than double the density of state-to-capital ties (7.5 per cent). Particularly large numbers of ties are maintained by the industrial and financial firms, and the density of ties for the latter is nearly double the overall figure. The business interest groups also maintain notably dense ties with the other private organizations. The general conclusion that emerges from a comparison of Tables I and 11 is that, while the level of integration between the public and private sectors is lower than that within the private sector itself, inter-sectoral ties are far from negligible.

Table 111 shows how the pattern of ties between categories of public and private organizations changed during the years from 1946 to 1976. This table records frequencies of tied pairs occurring in each of three slightly overlapping eleven-year periods: 1946-56, 1956-66, and 1966-76. To avoid awkwardness, we at times refer to these periods as 'decades.' As in Table I, ties created over time, here within a decade, are combined with contemporaneous ties existing during the same period.

It is apparent from Table 111 that the number of ties between public and private organizations increases dramatically from decade to. decade: the totals for the decades are 871,1617, and 1808 ties. This increase is only partly due to the rise in the number of organizations over the time period under study, for the corresponding densities for the three decades (3.2 per cent, 4.6 per cent, and 6.0 per cent, as calculated from Table 111) show a similar pattern of change.

Among private organizations, increasing numbers of ties are especially evident for the property-development and policy-planning organizations, whose representation in our study grows over time. Less striking but still noteworthy gains are posted by the mining, investment, and securities categories.

Between 1956-66 and 1966-76 there is a general growth in the numbers of ties linking private organizations to the provincial public sector and to the federal

are each tied to more than 30 per cent o P the private organizations included in our


TABLE I11 NUMBER OF TIED PAIRS OF ORGANIZATIONS BETWEEN TYPES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS, BY PERIOD, 1946-76

Private Organizations Public Organization Period Mining Manufacturing Utility Finance Znuestment

Federal Cabinet

Federal Bureaucracy


Royal Commission

Senate

Court

Governor- General

Provincial Cabinet


Provincial Crown Corporation Lieutenant Governor

University

H o s p i t a I

Total

Number of Organizations

46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 56-66 66-76 46-56 55-66 66-76

0 5 2 0 0 0 7

14 33 3 7 4 2 5 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 1 2 2 0 5 0 0 0

18 49 56 16 23 26 48

104 136

28 34 30

2 0 23 4 8 3 2 0 0 1 6 2

48 31 72 33

120 39 6 7

24 11 11 1 19 7 24 8 22 6 0 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 4 4 2 2

17 5 1 2 1 2 7 0 4 6 9 7

52 16 5 3 2 1 2 0

113 34 236 83 236 80 82 33

127 50 110 33 287 127 520 203 593 185

82 32 93 33 91 27

4 14 2 1 2 1

43 80 79 15 41 11 15 20 14 0 3 1 1 2 0 5 6

13 0 0 2 5

11 28 7

10 3

85 167 165 64 75 70

245 43 1 389 32 32 28

1 7 3 1 0 0 9 14 25 3 9 1 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 1 2 1 6 1 0 1

11 42 36 6

16 19 35 94 96 10 16 14


Number of Commerce Property Securities Law CMA & CCC Policy Total Organizations

0 0 1 0 0 1

11 10 18 1 3 1 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 3 5 0 0 0

14 23 28 9

16 18 38 57 75 17 22 20

0 0 1 0 0 0 2 0

13 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 6 0 0 0 2 7

12 1 4 7 5

11 46 2 6

11

0 0 1 0 0 1 3 3 5 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 3 0 0 0 2 9

16 8

12 9

15 26 41 1 2 12 12

2 3 1 0 2 2 3 6

20 3 2 0 4 3 5 1 2 1 0 0 0 2 1 3 1 1 1 3 2 3 0 1 1

12 14 21 6 2 7

37 39 65 26 26 26

0 0 0 0 0 0 4 3 5 1 3 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 3 5 0 0 2

11 16 13 6 7 5

25 35 30

2 2 2

0 3 4 0 1 2 4

18 35 0

18 6 0 3 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 4 0 0 2 0 3

14 0 0 2 3

37 56 2

12 23 9

97 152

1 4 7

9 59 26 4 6

15 165 253 392 41

120 37 51 71 62 1 6 4 2 2 1

15 15 51 5 5

20 24 39

143 16 14 11

305 683 719 233 344 327 871

1617 1808 244 280 268

1 1 1 1 1 1

17 17 19 20 24 5 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1

10 10 10 10 10 10 10 14 17 10 10 10 14 20 20 14 14 15

111 125 112

496 J O H N FOX A N D M I C H A E L O R N S T E I N

cabinet and bureaucracy. For the cabinet only, this growth between the first and second decades of the study is followed by a dramatic decline in the third decade.

In contrast to Tables I, 11, and 111, which present information on tied pairs of organizations, Table IV focusses upon the individual ties themselves. Multiple ties between a pair of organizations, which involve two or more individuals, appear separately in Table IV. Each such tie is classified into one of three categories according to whether: I/ the positions in the state and capitalist organizations are held concurrently; z/ membership in the state organization precedes (and terminates before) the position in the corporate organization; or 3/ membership in the corporate organization precedes (and terminates before) the state position. Because our data are annual, and since an individual can leave one organization and join another in the course of a year, there is a small probability that a tie identified here as concurrent properly belongs in one of the two other categories.

Table IV gives the percentage distribution of ties across the three temporal categories, along with the total number of ties for each pair of organizational categories. Overall, between 1946 and 1977 more than 5000 ties are created between the state and private organizations in our study, which contrasts with the 3300 tied pairs of organizations reported in Table I. Two-thirds of the ties in Table IV are concurrent; of the remaining one-third, there are approximately twice as many cases where the state position is held first as where the capitalist position is held first.

This general distributional pattern holds roughly for the several categories of corporate organizations, all of which, save one (the CMA and ccc), had a majority of ties in the concurrent category. The securities and law organizations, however, together with the CMA and ccc, have an unusually large percentage of ties for which holding a state position follows business experience.

Variation in distribution is more pronounced among the state-sector organizations. The cabinets and bureaucracies maintain relatively small proportions of concurrent ties and large proportions of ties where capitalist organization membership follows experience in the state. In contrast, nearly three-quarters of the courts' eighteen ties involve previous positions in law firms or corporations. Universities, hospitals, and the Senate form an unusually large proportion of concurrent ties. Of course, membership on hospital and university boards is not a full-time occupation.

T H E C A R E E R S O F S T A T E O F F I C E H O L D E R S

As Salzman and Domhoff (1979-80) argue, career data reveal far lower levels of interlocking than 'institutionally based' analysis. Table v gives the proportions of state position-holders who ever held a corporate directorship, corporate executive position, and partnership in a securities or law firm. These various involvements in capitalist organizations are not mutually exclusive. Each state-to-corporate tie is classified as concurrent if there is any overlap in the time of position holding. An individual who holds positions in two or more corporate organizations may hold any combination of types of ties.

Table v shows that 17.9 per cent of federal cabinet members had some capitalist organization position: 4.5 per cent occupied a corporate position first; 1.9 per cent


occupied the positions concurrently; and 14.7 per cent occupied the state position first. Thus more than two-thirds of the critical links between the top level of government and the corporations involved corporate sector recruitment of former politicians - presumably with the expectation of gaining influence and strategic advice. Less than one-third of the time is the direction of recruitment from the corporations to high state office. Note that because an individual may hold two or more different state positions, the percentage of corporation executives and directors with any state involvement is less than or equal to the sum of percentages that take the temporal order into account.

Especially considering that these data relate to individuals rather than organizations, the proportion of state elites with any corporate position seems very high. About 20 per cent of the federal cabinet, members of the Senate, judges in the two senior courts, and university and hospital board members have at least one corporate position. For the other categories the proportions are considerably lower: 7.3 per cent for federal bureaucrats, and 4.7 and 3.1 per cent for provincial cabinet members and bureaucrats, respectively.

Politicians were more likely than bureaucrats to hold corporate positions, and there were far more business contacts at the federal than at the provincial level. Of course, the corporations were selected on a national basis, so the data are not appropriate for examining contacts between provincial state elites and businesses that are important at the provincial but not the national level.

The greater corporate involvement by politicians probably reflects the fact that top civil servants are more likely to remain in government employment for most of their careers, whereas politicians are elected late in their careers and are likely to leave government before retirement age. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the time, civil servants’ involvement in corporate office occurred after they left government employment. This finding somewhat modifies our initial observation of the very strong state-corporation ties, especially for the federal politicians. Although recruitment from corporations is not unusual - about 5 per cent of the federal cabinet had business backgrounds - there is a much greater tendency for retired politicians to join corporate boards. This finding discourages a strongly instrumentalist interpretation of these results, for that would require very high levels of recruitment from the corporations into state positions.

Crown corporations occupy positions midway between the state and the corporate sector, and they do have strong ties with the corporate sector. At the federal level, just over one-quarter of the crown corporation directors are from private business, as are about one in eight crown corporation executives. The corresponding figures for provincial crown corporations are 18. I and 13.5 per cent - so there is less of a federal-provincial difference in the extent of corporate involvement in crown corporations than between federal and provincial cabinets and bureaucracies. This may reflect our decision to include only the very largest provincial crown corporations in the sample. The provincial power utilities and telephone systems easily rank with the largest private corporations in Canada. The directors of the crown corporations are more likely than the executives to hold their corporate positions first or concurrently with their state positions, and when their positions are held concurrently, the corporate position almost always begins first. The suggestion is that there is a high level of internal recruitment to the executive ranks

TABLE IV PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTIONS A N D FREQUENCIES OF TYPES OF TIES BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS 1946-77

Private Organizations Public Position Organizations Held First Mining Manufacturing Utility Finance

Federal Cabinet

Federal Bureaucracy


Royal Commission

Senate

Court

Governor- General

Provincial Cabinet


Provincial Crown Corporation

Lieutenant Governor

University

Hospital

Total

Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency Concurrent State Capitalist Frequency

0 67 33 9 0

67 33 3

60 26 14 77 50 45

5 20 86 0

14 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

100 0 7

25 75 0 4

60 10 30 10 0 0 0 0

78 13 9

131 84 8 8

77 68 21 11

14 65 20 49 14 69 17 29 53 36 11

264 44 42 15 62 79

2 19 58 0 0

100 2 0

100 0 1

22 70 9

23 38 62 0

13 53 12 34 73 45

9 45 11 83 8 9

584 82 7

10 307 69 19 12

345 1476

40 40 20 10 14 86 0 7

57 29 13

112 41 44 15 27 88 0

13 16 0 0

100 3 0 0 0 0

23 69 8

13 20 20 60 5

51 15 34 67 75 0

25 4

82 10 9

233 79 10 10

135 68 18

25 64 11 36 7

87 7

15 57 37 7

226 44 37 19 75 94 2 4

52 17 50 33 6

50 0

50 2

11 82 7

28 100

0 0 2

70 I1 20 46 67 29 4

24 87 6 7

605 81 14 5

279 73 19

8 ~~

14. 632 1396

Investment Commerce Property Securities Law C M A b CCC Policy Total

31 38 31 13 40 40 20 5

40 43 17 53 38 50 13 16 83 0

17 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

33 67 0 3 0 0

100 1

62 31 8

13 100

0 0 2

77 13 10 82 79 19 2

42 61 27 12

236

0 50 50 2 0

75 25 4

53 40

7 43 29 57 14 7

100 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

100 1

33 67 0 3

71 0

29 7 0 0 0 0

76 13 10 68 90 10 0

49 70 22 8

189

0 100

0 1 0 0 0 0

67 33 0

15 100

0 0 1

100 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

100 0 1 0

100 0 3

50 50 0 6 0 0 0 0

50 23 27 22 64 29

7 14 55 34 11 65

0 0

100 1

100 0 0 1

67 27

7 15 43 43 14 7 0 0

100 1 0 0 0 0 0

100 0 1 0

100 0 1 0

33 67 3 0 0

100 4 0 0 0 0

54 27 19 26 87 4 9

23 58 22 20 83

14 57 29 7

17 83 0 6

61 21 18 33 0

50 50 6

86 0

14 7 0

14 86 7 0 0 0 0

75 13 13 8

67 33

0 3

75 13 13 8

100 0 0 1

71 7

22 41 67 0

33 15 58 18 24

142

0 100

0 1 0 0

100 1

33 41 26 27 0

20 80 5

60 40 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

100 1 0 0 0 0

43 21 36 14 0 0

100 3

62 3

34 61 52 21 28 29 48 18 34

147

24 52 24 25 11 83 6

18 53 45 2

105 43 49

8 37 58

0 42 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

14 86

0 7

67 33 0 3

85 11 4

27 100

0 0 3

80 17 3

173 74 20 6

69 64 30 6

479

20 58 21

154 13 74 12 89 54 36 10

970 41 43 16

263 84 2

14 171

6 22 72 18 25 50 25 4

20 71 9

93 35 50 15 40 59 14 27

275 63 17 21 48 81 10 9

2026 80 12 8

1039 68 21 11

5190

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of crown corporations, combined with heavy involvement, but not majority representation, by the top corporate establishment on their boards.

Forty-four per cent of the wartime federal bureaucracy held corporate positions at some time later in their careers. The figure is approximately two and one-half times the corresponding percentage for federal bureaucrats in the post-War period, which demonstrates the inappropriateness of citing the wartime experience to support the general claim of overwhelming corporate influence on the Canadian state. A useful reference point is provided by the Canadian Manufacturers Associa- tion and the Chamber of Commerce, 43.3 per cent of whose board members hold positions on the boards of the largest corporations, and the business policy organizations, for which the figure is 49.8 per cent. The domination of these business policy organizations by the very top level of the corporate establishment is evident in these figures. That the extent of involvement in business by wartime federal bureaucrats is as great as for these business organizations further demonstrates the uniqueness of the wartime experience.

About one-quarter of the members of Royal Commissions held a corporate position, reflecting the government policy of appointing prominent business executives to those commissions. The commissioners were more likely than the politicians and bureaucrats to have held their corporate positions before or during their involvement with the state, which reflects the fact that commissioners are not expected to give up their corporate positions on appointment and may serve on a part-time basis.

The percentages of the state elites who serve as executives and not just directors of the large corporations at some time during the period of our study are much lower than for board membership. Just 5 per cent of the federal cabinet members held executive positions, compared to the 18 per cent with a directorship (these figures are not in a table). For the other categories, the differentials are similar. The likelihood of a state elite having an executive position was generally between one-quarter and one-third as great as the frequency of possessing a directorship. One exception, which further emphasizes its uniqueness, is the wartime federal bureaucracy: fully 26.4 per cent of its members later held executive positions, compared to 44 per cent with a board membership. Also exceptional are the Canadian Manufacturers Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the policy-planning groups. For those groups, about one-half the ties with corporate boards involved executives.

D I S C U S S I O N A N D C O N C L U S I O N S

There are very substantial links between the state and corporations in Canada. The data on densities of ties demonstrate the pervasiveness of movement from the state to the corporate sector, from corporations to the state, and concurrent membership. Furthermore, there is evidence that the frequency of these interlocks is increasing. The state organizations may be arranged along a continuum of interlocking beginning with the densest ties to universities and hospitals, followed by the federal crown corporations and Royal Commissions, then the provincial crown corporations, the Senate, federal and provincial cabinets; the lowest levels of ties are found for the federal and provincial bureaucracies, the courts, and the governor

502 JOHN FOX A N D M I C H A E L O R N S T E I N

general and lieutenant governors. Notwithstanding the example of the wartime federal bureaucracy, these data suggest that corporate input into governmental decision making is much more likely to occur at the political than the bureaucratic level.

The data demonstrate nothing like a fusion of capital and the state. A comparison of ties between capital and the state with the inter-firm links provided by interlocking directorships shows the latter to be more dense by a factor of about two, and exclusion of the hospitals and universities raises the ratio to more than three to one. Furthermore, relatively small proportions of the cabinet ministers and top federal bureaucrats were recruited from the top ranks of the largest Canadian corporations, although substanially more ended up with directorships.

There are some obstacles to interpreting our results. Although the radical, instrumentalist Marxist, and state monopoly capital theories lead to predictions of higher levels of mobility and interlocking between capital and the state than the pluralist and structuralist Marxist theories do, no precise boundary between the two groups of theories can be established. Furthermore, while structuralist Marx- ism directs our attention to factors other than these mechanisms in explaining the character of the state, the existence of moderately high levels of mobility and interlocking is quite compatible with this theoretical approach. And, similarly, only a caricature of the radical, instrumentalist, and state monopoly capital theories would see them as requiring the total domination of state institutions by business.

Whatever its inherent properties as a capitalist state, there is strong evidence of a corporate presence in the state to provide for effective liaison with, though not control by, capital. Even accounting for the Senate as a virtual repository of corporate directors, the links between corporations and the state are not strong enough to permit control by capital. The levels of interlocking within the business community (some of which reflects intercorporate control) are very much greater than the levels of capital-state links. Furthermore, the predominance of mobility from state organizations to capital suggests corporate efforts to understand and influence a state not under corporate domination. The level of interlocking shown here combines effective communication with sufficient state independence to maintain policy-making processes in touch with what the public will tolerate in the way of direct corporate influence.

Our results do not appear compatible with Panitch’s contention that ’the very concept of an autonomous [state] elite in Canada is a very tenuous one.‘ In arguing against the strong instrumentalist theme coupled with a peculiarist view of Canada in the work of Clement and Panitch (and also the proponents of ‘state monopoly capital’ theory) we do not intend to suggest that the state is autonomous. The systematic and pervasive connections between the state and corporations are strong evidence against pluralist notions of the state acting as arbiter among contending interest groups. The results support our argument that the Canadian state should be viewed as having a combination of the characteristics ascribed to it by instrumentalism and structuralist theory. Miliband’s (1983 : 65) most recent formulation seems appropriate:

In short, an accurate and realistic ’model’ of the relationship between the dominant class in advanced capitalist societies and the state is one of partnership between t w o different,


separate forces, linked to each other by many threads, yet each having its own separate sphere of concerns (emphasis in original).

NOTES

1 Dedicated to his former colleague C. Wright Mills, Miliband‘s The State in Capitalist Society is in many ways a transitional work. Miliband sets out the purpose of his work as follows: ’One of the main purposes of the present work is in fact to show in detail that the pluralist-democratic view of society, of politics and of the state in regard to the countries of advanced capitalism, is in all essentials wrong’ (1969: 4). Since the time of Lenin ’the only major Marxist contribution to the theory of the state has been that of Antonio Gramsci . . . Otherwise, Marxists have made little attempt to confront the question of the state in the light of the concrete socio-economic and political and cultural reality of actual capitalist societies . . . The purpose of the present work is to make a contribution to remedying that deficiency’ (1969: 6-7). In our view, Laclau (1975) is correct in drawing attention to some problems in Miliband’s conceptualiza- tion. Nevertheless, it is essential to acknowledge the important advances made by Miliband, and the critical role his early work plays in turning Marxist attention to previously neglected problems of the state. Current works in the Marxist tradition have moved beyond the debate with pluralism, but they build on Miliband’s arguments.

2 The public interest sector is defined to include ’those individuals who occupy formal positions of authority in prestigious private universities, major philanthropic foundations, prestigious law firms, and recognized national civic and cultural organizations’ (Dye and Pickering, 1974: 903). The positions in the sector include: I/ the presidents and trustees of the twelve most richly endowed funds in higher education; z/ the directors of the twelve largest charitable foundations; 3/ the senior partners of the twenty top New York law firms; and, 4/ the directors of twelve leading cultural organizations. The inclusion of the law firms in the ’public interest’ sector is, to say the least, eccentric, as is the restriction of law firms to New York City. In this study, we count lawyers as a distinct sector of the capitalist class.

3 See Naylor (1972: 27), Clement (1975: 61), Myers (1914: 150-300). Important cri- tiques of this position are by Macdonald (1975) and McNally (1981).

4 In making this argument, Panitch (1977: 12) draws on Porter (1965). The standard historical account is Granatstein (1982).

5 In Poulantzas’s words (1973): ’In fact, that hegemonic class or fraction which finally holds the political power of a capitalist formation autonomous from the economic and political struggles, can dominate effectively only if it sets up its economic interests as political interests. In holding state power it can perpetuate existing social relations only through a whole series of compromises which maintain the unstable equilibrium of the classes present, and through a whole range of political organization and particular ideological functioning, by which it manages to present itself as the representative of the general interest of the people and the embodiment of the unit of the nation’ (P. 283).

comparable to the largest commercial firms (e.g., Eaton’s and The Hudson Bay Com- pany).

6 Except that in the first year’s ranking fewer than ten firms existed in magnitude

7 For a fuller description of the sample of firms see Carroll (1981: Ch.5).

504 J O H N FOX A N D MICHAEL ORNSTEIN

8 An alternative approach is to treat each cabinet portfolio as a separate organization. When this approach is adopted, the number of ties between the cabinet, which consists of thirty-eight portfolios, and private organizations roughly triples (as a consequence of cabinet shuffles), but of course the density of ties drops dramatically. Treating each of the thirty-five departments of the federal bureaucracy as a separate organization increases the number of ties to capital only by about one-third.

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