Willer, David

Willer, David (b. 1937) is a theorist and researcher whose work exemplifies the use of formal methods for theory construction and experimental methods for testing derived predictions. His first book, Scientific Sociology: Theory and Method (1967), emphasized building models of social phenomena using systems of mathematical equations, and meticulous investigation aimed at developing and applying scientific laws to society. The work contended that such laws are not found by generalizing from empirical findings, a theme developed further in Systematic Empiricism: Critique of a PseudoScience (Willer and Willer 1973). This book developed a historically grounded analysis of empiricism and science. Its fundamental assertion was that sociology is a pseudoscience because of its reliance on empirical generalizations in lieu of abstract, general theories.

Believing that sociology could be scientific only by developing explicit, testable theories, Willer began work on a program of research driven by his new “elementary theory.” The theory first appeared in Networks, Exchange and Coercion (1981), coedited by Willer and Bo Anderson. The theory builds on a foundation of simple defined concepts, combining them into more sophisticated concepts, and then into a small set of logically connected principles and laws used to predict social phenomena. Networks, Exchange and Coercion developed theoretical models for normatively controlled social exchange systems at the micro level and for structures of economic exchange and coercion at the macro level. Applied research reported in the book employed a variety of methods, including experiments, comparative-historical analysis, institutional analysis, and ethnographic case studies.

One of the basic principles in the theory, inspired by the work of Max Weber, is that actors are strategically rational. That is, actors' decisions take into account behaviors expected to be enacted by others. Karl Marx's thinking also has influenced Elementary Theory through the assumption that actors' values reflect the social structures and relations in which they are embedded. This contrasts with egocentric rationality assumptions in economics and allows Elementary Theory to account for a broad array of phenomena affected by social structures and contexts. Willer's next book, Theory and the Experimental Investigation of Social Structures (1987), reported a series of laboratory experiments investigating structural conditions for exchange and coercion. Elementary Theory identified commonalities between the structural conditions that produce power differences in social exchange networks and conditions in coercive structures. In other applications, Willer found that strong power differences are produced by mobility in hierarchies and by exclusion processes in exchange structures.

Soon after the 1987 book, Willer's collaborative work on the Network Exchange Theory (NET) branch of the Elementary Theory also came to fruition. The seminal article “Power Relations in Exchange Networks” (Markovsky, Willer, and Patton 1988) was the first to offer the Graph Theoretic Power Index. This mathematical model uses patterns of network connections to predict relative power for all positions in a network based on broader patterns of connections with other positions. It also predicts when and how larger networks will decompose into smaller networks, and when structural changes in one part of a network will or will not affect exchanges in other parts of the network.

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