Institutions: Reflections of – Not Solutions to - Societal Power Structures

 

From our class discussion of the U.N. as a political institution and from the feminist-psychology perspective of marriage as a social institution, I came to see that institutions inevitably act to produce individual power rather than to produce mutual cooperation.  This is due to the power gradient that exists between the actors who participate in the institution.  Institutions are meant to level the playing field, in the sense that they are meant to bring everyone together under one collection of rules, but in practice, the dominant members of institutions end up writing the rules and thus exerting their power over the weaker members. 

            In class, we discussed the U.N. at some length.  This institution is a prime example of my point; it contains 193 member states but five of these members hold the majority of the power as permanent members of the Security Council (UN.org).  That each of these states has veto power over security issues means that they are each capable of singlehandedly determining the course of action for the Council –even one veto limits the Council’s options.  Thus, the desires of all the other states are subjugated to the desires of at least one of the “Big Five” states.  In this way, the institution intended to be a platform for solving dozens of countries’ problems turned into an institution that serves the interests of a few. My point is that this skewed power is inevitable because no institutional structure can remove from itself a power hierarchy that exists outside the structure; the hierarchy will carry over into the institution.  The Big Five – the U.S., England, France, China, and Russia – all came into the U.N. on the first day with the most economic, political, military, and/or reputational power of all the countries. With this greater power, they were able to be influential in the creation of the institution’s structure; given that it was created by them, from their perspective, it only logically follows that the design of the structure makes room for them and keeps them in power. 

Another example that comes to mind is marriage; I thought of this parallel in class when Professor Shirk mentioned marriage as an example of institutions that are not fully codified but are still fully binding. In my Psychology of Women and Gender class, we discussed how our society is patriarchal and androcentric, meaning that it has been historically focused on men and that its structure has lent the most power to men.  Marriage is nominally an institution of partnership between equals but when it is practiced within the preexisting patriarchal power structure, it (that is, marriage) takes on the same patriarchal power structure.  As a result, marriages often favor the husband in some way.  The evidence for this can be observed in the fact that men are often not required to pay spousal support and if they are, that requirement is not enforced; my psychology textbook reports that “only 15% of all divorced women in the United States are awarded spousal support. Most awards are for a period of about 2 years; and in the past, less than half of the men ordered to provide such support have actually complied” (Crawford 255).  Also, that the man is often put first in marriage is evident in the practice of sex therapists prescribing testosterone to wives who have less sex drive than their husbands; this is done so that his sexual needs can be met (Crawford 230). 

            It is readily observable, then, that institutions – whether marriage or the U.N. or any other – reflect and internalize the power structures that exist outside the institutions.  Therefore, the idea that institutions will bring about mutual cooperation must be tempered with the acknowledgement that the mutuality of such cooperation will be uneven, weighed in the favor of the most powerful member of the institution.

 

Works Cited

Crawford, Mary.  Transformations: Women, Gender, and Psychology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2012.