Works
- The Symbolic Uses of Politics, 1964
- Constructing the Political Spectacle, 1988
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Symbolic reassurance. Much of politics works through symbols, such as rituals, official language, and public gestures, which reassure or arouse the general public while tangible benefits often go to small organized groups. Edelman argued that many programs believed to serve a mass public in fact benefit relatively few.
Constructed problems, leaders, and enemies. Political problems, leaders, and enemies are constructed and interpreted for the public, and those interpretations tend to support established inequalities. The book devotes chapters to the construction and uses of social problems, of political leaders, and of political enemies.
What it explains
Edelman explains why the language and ceremony around a decision can matter more to its acceptance than its substance, and why naming a problem or an enemy is a political act. Inside organizations, whoever controls the official account of what is happening shapes what people accept.
Tactics that draw on Murray Edelman (25)
- Abstract Enemy Narrative
- Advisory Voice Channel
- Amnesia by Merger
- Apology Without Reversal
- Budget Dust
- Cause Launch Pairing
- Compliance Theater
- Consult Then Decide
- Cost-of-Doing-Business Narrative
- Cultural Artifact Strategy
- Culture Carrier Purge
- External Enemy Narrative
- Historical Revisionism
- Innovation Launch Alongside Cuts
- Malicious Compliance
- Moral High Ground Seizure
- Pre-Briefed Go Signal
- Pretext Policy
- Problem Discovery Theater
- Reformer as Underdog
- Renaming for a New Direction
- Scapegoat Architecture
- Selective Delegation
- Staged HQ-Field Conflict
- Straw-Manning the Critics