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Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle

Running Head: EXPLORING BURTON CLARKS TRIANGLE

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle of Coordination in the Context of Contemporary Relationships Between States and Higher Education Systems

Zachary Maggio New York University

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle of Coordination in the Context of Contemporary Relationships Between States and Higher Education Systems

In the broadest sense, Burton Clarks triangle of coordination (1983) is a model that attempts to illustrate how order can emerge from complex higher education systems that encompass many different goals, beliefs and forms of authority. Incorporating the state, the market and the academic oligarchy as the primary forces which dominate coordination of higher education systems, the triangle situates these forces within a multi-dimensional space for understanding how academic activities are concerted through the actions of organizations, groups and entities. As a dynamic model that is able to reflect ongoing changes within a system, the triangle offers a flexible framework through which to analyze evolving relationships between the actors in a higher education system. This framework can be applied systematically and comparatively to different systems, offering a degree of utility that has contributed to its strong degree of influence and lasting relevancy within higher education scholarship.

Clarks development of the triangle was spurred by his dissatisfaction with existing means of understanding how authority contributes to order in higher education systems. Such work was generally limited in two primary ways. First, prior to Clarks approach, studies of governance and coordination had primarily focused on academic, political or bureaucratic modes of authority. While authority is undoubtedly an important factor in system dynamics, Clark argued that much of the order visible within systems was generated by unordered market-like interactions and not by the planned solutions of bureaucrats, politicians or academic figures. While much scholarly effort had been expended focusing on goals and outcomes, relatively little

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle attention had been paid to the vast middle ground in which interactions between the principal agents contributed to integration of the system as a whole.

Second, in the late 1970s Clark had undertaken extensive work mapping the different ways in which coordination occurs within academic systems. In developing his taxonomy of pathways for academic coordination (1979), Clark noted that in existing studies the operational concept of coordination itself tended to represent a reductionist oversimplification. Studies almost invariably favored a singular concept of academic coordination that was predicated purely on formal plans and hierarchies. What the term excluded, and what attendant analyses were missing, was an understanding of the plurality of different types of coordination and the ways in which they interacted and reconciled with each other. This oversight contributed to a dearth of genuinely analytical work on the systemic aspects of higher education, as many groups and processes involved in the ordering of academic activities and actions were not typically studied as a part of the model of deliberate academic coordination.

Clarks triangle is derived from his identification of three dominant forms of system: state, market and professional, each of which offers an alternative means of coordination within a larger academic system. Clark refers to each of these three systems as ideal types, presumably to avoid the implication that national systems will typically fall neatly into one classification or another. He situates these systems as the three vertices of the triangle because together they constitute the principal interested groups among which coordination of an academic system will emerge through their interaction and competition. This coordination tends to develop even if each element is entirely autonomous from the other and no goals are shared within the larger

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle system. This is possible because both resultants1 and planned solutions often coordinate to form

new viable structures or solutions. This coordination may take the form of conflict, competition, or struggle between elements of a system, or between the planned and unplanned outcomes of their actions. Within the model, then, it is the interplay between these elements and the planned or inadvertent coordination of their actions that influence the strength of linkages between parts of an academic system.

In arriving at the triangle of coordination, Clark first asks us to imagine a continuum, at one end of which is found a highly formalized structure with unitary goals for the entire system, and at the opposite end a social-choice context in which independent decisions by autonomous entities contribute in the aggregate to the overall movement of a system. Between the two endpoints of the continuum lie mixed systems that incorporate elements of both formal linkages and primarily disparate goals, such as federative or coalitional systems. Such a continuum is useful in that it recognizes the complexity of differences between systems and allows for comparative work that avoids generalizing about whether any particular system is market or state-dominated. It also shows that movement is possible along the continuum in either direction.

A continuum that situates systems with respect to a dichotomous state/market model does not suffice to accommodate the complex reality of most academic systems, however. Clark points out that a system may be coordinated primarily by neither the market nor the state, but instead by what Clark terms an academic oligarchy. By this term, Clark means the ways in which academics can exert powerful collective voices, despite the tendency of the academic
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A term Clark borrows from Banfield (1961) to describe outcomes produced by uncoordinated actions in the aggregate.

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle profession to decentralize power to local fiefdoms and small monopolies. Despite being rooted in the lowest level of the power structure, Clark argues that key academics are often able to transfer local power to regional and national levels. This is possible through their holding

privileged positions, both in access to central offices and in terms of being a key constituency of concern to select political and bureaucratic officials.

Clark posits that some form of coordination by academic oligarchy exists within all systems, and that certain systems further down the continuum from state-organized may depend quite heavily on the stability of linkages that the oligarchy can provide. The oligarchy can be represented by a national education ministry, but in many countries it appears in the form of intermediate bodies that operate in a space between the state and academic institutions. These intermediate bodies often take the form of coordinating boards, governing boards or other managerial entities.

With the addition of the academic oligarchy to the state and the market, Clark has the three vertices necessary to construct his famous triangle of coordination (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Clarks Triangle of Coordination (1983)

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle Clearly, the triangle itself posits no particular normative position as to where a system will be situated with respect to the three primary coordinating forces. It does, however, produce the effect that movement away from one force necessarily places a system closer to at least one other mode of integration. Thus, as an example, a system moving away from a state-dominated mode of coordination necessarily falls under greater influence from either the market or the academic oligarchy. The identified forces each exert some amount of influence to arrive at a final integrated mode of coordination that reflects the input of all three. The triangle does not allow for combinations in which a system might be oriented strongly towards two forces simultaneously, such as the academic oligarchy and the market. The model assumes each of these modes of coordination to be at least partially mutually exclusive from one another. We might call this the zero-sum effect of the model.

The triangle is also unable to track movement from one position to another, instead situating a system in one place within the triangle at any given time. A corollary effect is that the model cannot account for situations in which one force might be particularly prominent at one point in time, while periodically (or even regularly) allowing space for another force to play a primary role. Taking these two points together, we see that the triangle is a fixed model which allows for comparison between systems at any given point, but does not not mean to capture evolution, oscillation or change. We might refer to this as the simultaneity effect of the model.

Clarks triangle has proved a resilient analytical tool and is widely considered one of the most influential models for analysis of governance and authority relations in postsecondary education. However, thirty years after Clark produced his famous model we now revisit it under

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle very different circumstances than those in which it was conceived. A confluence of social,

economic and political factors over the past few decades has altered the roles and relationships of states, markets and academic oligarchies. These changes have important implications for how academic systems are ordered as well as for researches attempting to uncover the internal linkages that contribute to that order. Has the landscape of higher education evolved in such a way as to require a rethinking or wholesale reconsideration of Clarks triangle, particularly with respect to the United States?

Contemporary Literature on the Roles of the State and Postsecondary Sector

The role of the state with regard to higher education in the United States is difficult conceptual territory to navigate. This is at least partially due to a persistent tendency on the part of scholars, policymakers and institutional leadership to regard the US as a national academic system driven by the aggregated actions of each of 50 states (Parsons, 1997). The multi-leveled array of power, authority and provision in the United States federative system has caused disagreement in the literature about whether or not the national postsecondary sector present in the United States constitutes a coherent system in any meaningful way (Clark, 1983). Pusser (2008) suggests that the most useful approach is to conceptualize the behavior of U.S. institutions as influenced by a diverse range of forms of state control, taking shape formally and informally at both local and federal levels.

Adding to this complexity are the historically and politically entangled relationships between U.S. states and higher education systems. These shared histories complicate any

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle understanding of how the state has shaped the system (or vice versa) or how the complex dynamic of power has evolved between them. For example, in the United States, many institutions predate the formation of the modern states that now exercise jurisdiction over the postsecondary sector in which they operate. It is often the case that such institutions have been key contributors to the political, economic and social development of the state, leading some

scholars to conceptualize them as state-building universities (Ordorika and Pusser, 2007). This suggests that what exists in state/higher education relationships is a dynamic interchange of power and influence rather than a unilateral application of power from the state to the academic system.

Recent research on postsecondary education and the state has evolved simultaneously towards both consensus and conflict around key questions. On one hand, there is considerable divergence of views in the literature as to the role of postsecondary organizations within the context of the contemporary state. For example, Larabee (1997) identifies three goals that inform the American postsecondary system: democratic quality, social efficiency and social mobility. These goals, in turn, are meant to capture the interests of the citizen, the taxpayer, and the consumer, respectively. Pusser and Marginson (2009) take Larabees taxonomy to suggest that the state shapes educational institutions through its demands for particular outcomes. Pussers own earlier work on the role of state-building universities, however, suggests a more complicated mutual pathway of authority. Similarly, there is ongoing (and longstanding) disagreement about the role of higher education in reproducing social inequalities (Haveman and Sneeding, 2006; Percell and Cookson, Jr., 1990) or in working to ameliorate them, if not entirely successfully (Bowen, 1977; Bowen, et al. 2005).

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle

On the other hand, researchers have largely coalesced their inquiries around a few key ways in which states exercise their authority over higher education: the provision of subsidies to public higher education for teaching, research and service; the regulation of institutional activities towards broad state priorities and projects; and the promotion of access and opportunity for underserved populations to ameliorate inequalities generated through uneven state support for economic development (Pusser, 2008). Far from being exclusive modes of operation, it is suggested that these three areas of state intervention are closely interrelated and are now undergoing substantial changes due to external and internal pressures.

Such developments have spurred the emergence of a robust recent literature on postsecondary transformation2. The literature on transformation encompasses significant changes in the role of the state and is analyzed through the lenses of contemporary phenomena such as privatization (Johnstone, 1999; Williams, 1996), globalization (Marginson and van der Wende, 2007), marketization (Bok, 2003; Kirp, 2003), and ongoing debates over access and quality (Douglass, 2007). In particular, there has been a great deal of increased attention directed toward the role of markets in higher education, as states demonstrate a tendency to rely on more market-like mechanisms for the coordination of higher education systems (Williams, 1995; Dill, 2003). The attendant literature develops around themes of globalization, the removal or erosion of the state as a key supply of resources, the recasting of students as consumers of a higher education product, and the emergence and success of the for-profit sector. While true markets for higher education usually do not exist (due to government policies and regulatory

Transformation tends not to be used as a technical or scholarly term referring to any particular set of changes, but instead a shorthand way of referring broadly to the changing roles of the state and the postsecondary sector.

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle actions), market-type steering mechanisms have taken on greater importance as governments attempt to assess the appropriate degree and type of governmental intervention (Jongbloed, 2003).

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These phenomena have been subject to extensive documentary and descriptive analysis in recent years. Despite the visibility and importance of these issues, very little scholarship has been undertaken which directly links changes in the role of the state to the evolving relationship between the state and the postsecondary sector. Little effort has been invested in reevaluating the prevalent models of postsecondary authority and governance. And after Clark, few researchers have shown interest in framing these questions in terms of achieving an appropriate balance between state, market and institutional forces.

Contemporary Scholarship Building on Clarks Model

For all its prominence in the collective consciousness of higher education researchers, one finds surprisingly few instances in the literature of direct responses to Clarks model. When the triangle is invoked, it is often used to illustrate relatively straightforward, unidimensional developments in national steering systems, such as the shifting from state control to state supervision (van Vught, 1989). Only a few scholars have brought up the triangle in the context of the complicated ways in which states and systems are responding to contemporary pressures. To understand the relevancy of Clarks model today, it is useful to briefly revisit a few of those instances here.

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle Jongbloed (2003) utilizes the triangle to explore the way marketization policy is being pursued in Dutch higher education. In that example, while the triangle suffices to illustrate a situation in which the state retreats to allow market forces to coordinate demand and supply, it

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does not adequately capture the dual role of the Dutch government as both initiator and ongoing facilitator of a new knowledge-based market economy. The limitation of the model in this context is what was referred to earlier as the zero-sum effect: an imposed quasi-exclusivity between coordinating forces. In the model, the influence of the state necessarily diminishes as a system reorients towards market-based mechanisms. This dynamic is insufficient when applied to the Dutch context, because in this case the state is not simply stepping back, but is instead stepping back, stepping in again, and cooperating all at the same time (p. 134) Jongbloed is forced to modify Clarks triangle to allow for a new dynamic in which the state simultaneously controls and facilitates competitiveness and knowledge creation, exerting regulatory control while working closely with academe at the same time.

Christine Musselin (2004) brings up the triangle in her analysis of recent developments within the French higher education system. Clark himself situated France as halfway between state authority and academic oligarchy, and as far from the market as possible. Musselin protests his characterization of Frances system and criticizes the model for being both overly hierarchical and too narrow. Musselin disputes the idea that each of Clarks identified modes of coordination is capable of simultaneously structuring the organizational, institutional and base levels of a system. Instead, Musselin suggests that different levels of an academic system - such as an intermediate level (universities) and a base level (academics) - might be integrated along different principles by different entities at the same time. In that case, we might consider the

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle possibility of drawing multiple triangles - one for each level - but it would then become extremely difficult to understand how to synthesize them. Thus, while the triangle is useful to the extent that it allows for consideration of linkages between coordination modalities, it is not

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sufficiently developed to allow us to consider the empirical realities of how those linkages affect the different parts of an academic system differently.

The most recent scholarship to substantively address Clarks model is Brian Pussers examination of the restructuring of Virginias higher education system (2008). In that study, Pusser attempts to apply Clarks model to the Virginia case in order to understand if the state, the market and the institutional estate are indeed key players in contemporary authority relations. Pussers first criticism of the triangle in this context is directed at Clarks conception of an academic oligarchy. The United States, Pusser argues, has never developed a classic academic oligarchy of the sort Clark imagines in his triangle of coordination. Instead, Clark suggests that an improvement to the model (in the United States context) would substitute academic estate for academic oligarchy. The idea of an academic estate builds on Clarks earlier work, in which he explored how power is invested in institutional leaders, faculty governance structures and internal governing boards (Pusser, 2004).

Pusser goes further in redrawing Clarks academic oligarchy. Drawing from recent research on higher education governance, Pusser suggests that an institutional estate representing institutional authority apart from faculty governance - is an even more powerful actor in contemporary governance and a significant representative of the university in authority contests. The concept of the institutional estate reflects substantial evidence suggesting that

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle faculty influence over institutional governance has declined, especially as institutions hire

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increasing numbers of part-time and non-tenured faculty. In that power vacuum, governance has moved beyond the faculty and beyond the administration to include governing boards, trustees and external stakeholders such as governors and legislators (Hines, 2000). These multiple claimants to authority complicate our understanding of Clarks simple formulation of postsecondary governance.

In Pussers discussion of the triangle in the context of the Virginia case, he concludes that rather than existing as discrete and mutually exclusive modes of coordination, the market and the institutional estate are better conceptualized as being nested within the state. In this formulation, the state is simultaneously an actor as well as an instrument of contest, acknowledging the legitimacy of market and institutional interests as it pursues its own goals. Clarks model does not fully capture the dynamic tension between the three forces, or the way in which they are located together in a constant state of contest and negotiation.

Jongbloed, Musselin and Pusser offer differing accounts of the relevancy of Clarks triangle to higher education today. Yet all three present a contemporary perspective on the model and in that sense it is useful to draw out commonalities among their criticisms. All three scholars incorporate an element of political contest into their analyses, drawing from a relatively recent strain of literature that positions states and higher education systems as sites of conflict and contest over what role education should play in achieving state priorities (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). When considered in light of what Slaughter and her colleagues refer to as

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle contest and Pusser as dynamic tension, Clarks triangle begins to appear problematically static.

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It seems clear that Clarks model may not adequately capture the evolving dynamics contributing to contemporary authority relations, considering the ways in which forces now commingle and jostle against one another, sometimes cooperating and sometimes not. While the model is universally admired as a foundational work that has given crucial insight into how an academic system can be ordered, it relies perhaps too heavily on a comparative function that does not offer much analytical insight. When Clark developed his model, comparative work on national systems was widely considered an academic priority. Today, in an increasingly globalized world (in which some detect the emergence of a global market for higher education), comparative work is perhaps not as valued for its ability to descriptively evaluate different systems along some prescribed set of dimensions. Rather, it seems possible that comparative analysis can offer greater insights when focused on how forces of globalization apply uniform pressures across all postsecondary sectors, and the way in which systemic behaviors increasingly converge towards common responses.

Moving Beyond Clarks Triangle: Some Other Modes of Thinking about Coordination

Thirty years after it first appeared, and despite its apparent limitations, Clarks triangle is still widely understood as the foundational reference for those seeking to understand the systemic aspects of higher education. As we have already seen, some contemporary scholars find the model too simplistic to account for the complexity of interests within contemporary authority

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle

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relations in higher education. Despite this, only a few alternative typologies have been suggested in the literature.

Becher and Kogan (1992), in their analysis of changes in the processes and structures of higher education, attempt to describe the organization of academic systems through the identification of four basic structures within universities: the individual, the basic unit (the department), the institution, and the central authority (the state). They analyze the effects of normative pressures to explain changes in belief or practice at all levels, leading to their thesis that change in higher education provision comes when normative values and operational values are incongruent. Their work is generally seen as building directly on Clarks work, in that both models see higher education as an open social system in close contact with and responding to pressures from an external environment

Van Vught (1993), responding directly to perceived limitations of Clarks model, reduces Clarks three-dimensional model of governance to a two-dimensional space and suggests differentiating between a state control model and a state supervising model. The state control model can be characterized by a strong authority of state bureaucracy and a relatively strong position of the academic oligarchy within universities. Within a state supervising model, the authority is divided between a strong academic community and the internal administration of universities. Van Vught positions the state control and state supervision as core policy models which, in some variation, inform any other governance model that might be constructed (Moja, et al., 1996).

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle Finally, it is important to note the work of Sheila Slaughter and her colleagues, whose

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theory of academic capitalism (1997) provides a fundamentally new framework through which to understand the interrelationships between states, markets and institutions. In that theory, universities and faculty employ market-like behaviors in order to compete for resources from external resource providers. This market behavior can be seen as governing a wholesale restructuring of higher education, including substantive organizational change; changes in internal resource allocations; changes in the division of academic labor with regard to research and teaching; the establishment of new organizational forms; and the organization of new administrative structures or the reconfiguration of old structures (Slaughter, 2001).

Conclusion

Burton Clarks triangle of coordination represented a major advance in thinking about higher education governance and authority. Clarks model successfully moved analysis of higher education coordination beyond the basic machinery of the bureaucratic and political processes to account for the ways in which social, economic and cultural processes interact to produce order in a system. In its breadth and scope, it also represented one of the earliest attempts to merge sociological and political-theoretical approaches to thinking about higher education authority relations (Pusser, 2003).

Clarks model remains an elegant and appealing framework for comparing national systems, and its relative simplicity lends it a resilient utility that has ensured its relevance for thirty years. Nonetheless, contemporary pressures on postsecondary systems have produced a

Exploring Burton Clarks Triangle range of complex behaviors and responses on the part of institutions, organizations and individuals that cannot be adequately captured by the model. The complexity of contemporary

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authority relations, which situate higher education as a site of dynamic contest and conflict, call for newly designed models of postsecondary governance and authority. Such future models will need to be adaptive to account for the fluid dynamics of ongoing contest and negotiation. Far from being mutually exclusive modes of coordination, the state, market and academic estate increasingly operate as interdependent instruments and actors of governance.

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