Cooptation

Cooptation is a process whereby organizations incorporate dissenting elements into their leadership or policy-making structures in order to reduce environmental uncertainty or to mitigate threats to the survival or success of the organization. The internalizing of adversaries or adversarial elements can be either symbolic, having no significant effect on outcomes or processes, or can result in goal displacement, which occurs when group resources are deployed for purposes other than those for which they were originally [Page 157]intended. Cooptation has been examined from two perspectives: from the perspective of state or policy-making bodies, as well as from the viewpoint of challengers to the state, in particular, social movement organizations.

From the perspective of the state, cooptation is typically seen as a rational and adaptive process that helps ensure the power of the dominant leadership. For instance, the Russian government designed its privatization process in a manner that passed most of the country's wealth to a power elite in order to create incentives for elites to support the transition from central planning to a market economy. Cooptation was also used to introduce the welfare state into Otto von Bismarck's Prussia. In contrast, much of the literature on social movements has focused on how social movements are able to gain access to the state or coopt it. This literature also examines how interactions with the state can both bolster movements' chances of success, as well as lead to internal dissention, goal displacement, or ideological shifts.

An organization's ability to engage in cooptation or to become coopted is largely a function of the network of relationships in which it is embedded, as well as the internal structure of the organization. Governments or agencies that have dense and overlapping ties to the organization that they are attempting to coopt are more likely to be successful at cooptation. In contrast, if the adversarial group has a high level of solidarity or internal processes, rules, or procedures that prohibit collaboration with nonaligned organizations, cooptation is less likely to occur. Hence, both the internal structure of an organization, as well as the network of organizations in which it is embedded, influence the probability of cooptation.

The concept of cooptation has been successfully deployed in order to understand governance in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states. By gaining a better understanding of the conditions that enable and constrain cooptation, insight into patterns of governance in conditions of uncertainty can be ascertained.