Sciulli 2010

C OMPARATIVE
SOCIOLOGY
Comparative Sociology 9 (2010) 744–803 brill.nl/coso
Why Professions Matter: Structural Invariance,

Institutional Consequences, Bias
David Sciulli
Sociology, Texas A&M University,
College Station TX, 77843
pyncho@suddenlink.net
Appendix
Received wisdom in the sociology of professions employs two approaches, a nar-
row socio-economic approach (largely in the Anglo-American world) and a much
broader cultural and social-psychological approach (largely on the Continent).
Both approaches agree on two points. First, professions cannot be distinguished
at a conceptual level from other occupations. Second, whatever consequences
either successful or failed professionalism introduces into civil society or state
administration are confined to the occupational order and stratification system.
They do not and cannot affect the direction of social change. The alternative
approach outlined and discussed here is structural and institutional. With this
approach we distinguish professions proper analytically from other occupations
and we identify consequences of professionalism proper that uniquely reflect or
anticipate notable shifts in the direction of social change.
Keywords
profession, occupation, intermediary association, Academy, guild, professional
integrity, scholarly bias
One consensus in the sociology of professions today is that professions are

simply a type of status category in the occupational order and stratification
system. They are no more significant than thousands of other occupations,
which also confer statuses. Professions are not more distinctive socio-eco-
nomically, nor culturally and social-psychologically – to say nothing of
structurally and institutionally. Certainly, they are hardly capable of con-
tributing (somehow) to “social order,” let alone of doing so uniquely among
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/156913310X522598

D. Sciulli / Comparative Sociology 9 (2010) 744–803 745
all other occupations. This consensus was firmly established in 1988 by

Andrew Abbott, but it had been adumbrated a decade earlier by Magali
Sarfatti Larson (1977) and today it is perpetuated casually across the lit-
erature, including by textbook writers (such as Keith Macdonald, 1995).
One result of this received wisdom is that sociologists today assume or
presuppose that all consequences or externalities of the presence or
absence of professions (expert occupations, middle-class occupations),
whether in civil society or in state administration, are confined narrowly
to the occupational order and stratification system. Another result is that
sociologists are literally committed, at a conceptual level, to seeing or
imputing dirty hands or conspiracies to every historical or contemporary
professionalism project which is successful, that is, which is ongoing.
After all, given the assumptions or presuppositions just noted, any puta-
tive monopolies professions introduce into the occupational order are
ultimately unwarranted by definition. They are never necessary structur-
ally, or on any other identifiable grounds; they are never warranted on
the merits.
This leaves sociologists with scant options in accounting for the rela-
tively well-patrolled jurisdictional boundaries of professions proper. Being
unwarranted, given that there cannot be any reasoned basis for existing
(or past) professional jurisdictions, the latter can only have been estab-
lished and then defended by sheer power plays or ideological shrouds, by
concerted practices of intimidation, manipulation and distorted commu-
nication. Thus, whenever examined closely or challenged, professional
patrolling invariably turns out to be indefensible; it is craven and sinister
or, at best, maladroit.
This also explains why sociologists have been disinclined, again at a
conceptual level, even to consider the possibility that there might be more
benign – and more empirically evident, replicable – structural explana-
tions for why profession leaders and rank-and-file members succeed or
fail in establishing well-patrolled jurisdictional boundaries. In addition, it
also explains why sociologists refuse to consider that some consequences
of professionalism might be institutional, and thus not confined to the
occupational order and stratification system.
All of this means that at the moment we identify any longer-term,
institutional consequences of professions’ presence or absence in civil
society or state administration, we expose two crippling deficiencies in
746 D. Sciulli / Comparative Sociology 9 (2010) 744–803
today’s received wisdom. First, we expose deficiencies at its core, at a con-

ceptual level. Second, we also expose why sociologists too often resort –
whether naïvely, disingenuously or insidiously – to negative attributions
or conspiracies when accounting for cross-national and historical cases of
professionalism.
I. From Parsons to Today’s Received Wisdom

During the 1930s and 1940s the British and American sociologists who
founded the sociology of professions thought it self-evident that profes-
sions differ significantly from all other occupations. More tentatively, they
also thought it likely that the presence or absence of professions bears –
somehow – on “social order.” These two points of departure persisted in
English-speaking sociology for three postwar decades. Thus, through the
early 1970s Anglo-American sociologists endeavored assiduously to iden-
tify and list “traits” or “qualities” putatively distinctive to professions.
Their intention, stated or implied, was to formulate an ideal type which
could stand alongside Max Weber’s definition of bureaucracy and Emile
Durkheim’s juxtaposition of religion to magic.
Literally a thought experiment, Weber’s ideal-typical bureaucracy is
comprised of six interrelated, empirical characteristics (1914–1920:956–
958): An official jurisdiction ordered by rules, laws, or regulations. An
office hierarchy containing channels of appeal clearly establishing levels
of super- and sub-ordination. Management of the bureaucratic office
revolves around written documents (files). To be in management typically
presupposes training in some field of specialization. Individuals’ official
activity is a full-time job, not an avocation or secondary activity. Manage-
rial behavior in the bureaucratic office comports with general rules, which
become part of individuals’ technical expertise.
In turn, Durkheim proposed in 1912 that religion is a “unified system
of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things” such that it revolves
around three empirical components: a theology, rituals, and a distinction
between sacred and profane. He then juxtaposed religion to magic by the
standard of how each directs rituals: religion directs rituals exclusively to
transcendental or metaphysical ends, such as God’s attention or everlast-
ing happiness; by contrast, magic directs rituals to controlling natural or
worldly events (1912:34). For instance, when peaceful Vietnam War pro-
testors encircled the Pentagon Building and uttered incantations with the
intention of levitating it, and thus ending the War, this was magic.
Like these two venerable ideal types, Anglo-American sociologists
sought an equally invariant, empirical-based definition of profession,
equally capable of being generalized, of being applied with consistency (in
replicable ways) across all salient instances of occupational upgrading,
whether cross-nationally today or historically. However, they soon
encountered a set of major, related difficulties. First and foremost, as they
proposed and compiled their various listings of putative profession quali-
ties, they found that an ideal type eluded them. More than anyone else,
Talcott Parsons appreciated why this was happening at a conceptual level.
1. Why Profession is a Problematic Concept

Quite correctly, Parsons pointed out that professions differ from both
bureaucracies and religious congregations even as they share salient quali-
ties with them. Like bureaucracies, for instance, professions are formally
organized; but unlike them, they also revolve around dispersed partici-
pants exhibiting ongoing behavioral fidelity to extra-rational norms. Such
norms span both ends (including client or patron wellbeing) and means
(including bearing fiducial responsibilities and prizing disinterestedness in
diagnosis, inference, treatment and academic work).
In turn, because professions are norm-based, not strictly formally ratio-
nal or instrumental, they are here like religious congregations. But unlike
them, the normative ends and means at issue in professional activities are
worldly, not transcendental or metaphysical. The key to the entire sociol-
ogy of professions as Parsons saw it, in short, lay in identifying these
worldly norms and then documenting whether, when and why dispersed
occupational practitioners and researchers actually exhibit behavioral
fidelity to them, and thus qualify as professionals.
A young Parsons (in 1935 and 1937) labeled norms of this sort volun-
taristic. He did so in order to emphasize, first, that these norms are neither
strictly formally-rational (bureaucratic) nor entirely non-rational (reli-
gious) and, second, that they are worldly (Sciulli 1986; 1992: Chap. 7).
The problem at a conceptual level, however, is that all extra-rational
norms, and particularly those which are worldly and thus voluntaristic in
the sense above, are variables. They self-evidently vary cross-nationally
and evolve historically as opposed to being invariant across space and
time. Being variables, voluntaristic norms, therefore, cannot possibly pro-

vide sociologists with the sorts of conceptual foundations (the empirical-
based generalizations) suitable to underpin an invariant ideal type, like
Weber’s bureaucracy and Durkheim’s religion-magic juxtaposition.
2. Parsons’ Rationale for Greater Abstraction

Parsons’ prescription for escaping the conceptual dead-end just described
was equally correct: Professions can only be identified and then studied
with consistency (that is, in replicable ways) at a more abstract conceptual
level, above that of empirical generalizations. Indeed, sociologists must
operate above ideal types as well, namely with more finely drawn analyti-
cal distinctions.1 Being more abstract, analytical distinctions can be invari-
ant (if formulated correctly). In turn, any conceptual framework (or
theoretical schema) based upon them can (again, if formulated correctly)
be applied with consistency across cases, even as the empirical details
being studied, including participants’ phenomenological experiences and
observers’ ethnographic descriptions, which are social constructions, evolve,
shift and change over time.
Somewhat confusingly, Parsons’ labeled his first proposed conceptual
framework of (putatively) invariant analytical distinctions “pattern vari-
ables.” His point in using this phrase was that while normative behaviors
within and around roles do indeed vary across space and time at an
empirical level, all role behaviors nonetheless can be grasped or distin-
guished analytically in terms of identifiable patterns, role-behavior sets.
This reveals Parsons’ quest for invariance at an analytical level. However,
by the early 1960s Parsons appreciated that his first conceptual framework
1)
Here Erik Eriksen posed the following inquiry in e-mail correspondence: Can you really
come above ideal types without losing ground, that is, empirical foothold? My response is
that this is the central theoretical and methodological point of Parsons’ entire body of
work (as revealed most compelling by Harold Bershady in 1973), a point consistent with
Habermas’ turn to a discourse theory of truth. Empirical comparison cannot secure inter-
subjective cognition and agreement unless based or “grounded” either on an ideal type
(which is rightly prized, but rare) or on invariant analytical distinctions (which can be
applied to many more phenomena in social life than can any available ideal types).
lacked parsimony, another key quality of any successful social theory: there
were simply too many possible patterns.2
Parsons’ second proposed conceptual framework, designed explicitly to
remedy this problem, was even more abstract or analytical: the AGIL
schema. Initiated in print in 1964, he elaborated on and employed this
conceptual framework the rest of his career, to his death in 1979.3 Indeed,
Parsons’ single most systematic accounting of professions – in his book
(with Gerald Platt) titled The American University, published in 1973 – is
simultaneously his single most systematic presentation of the AGIL
schema. Yet, sociologists of professions critical of Parsons noted below (as
well as most others) typically fail even to cite this work in passing, let
alone to address its merits and deficiencies methodically. Parsons has been
cast from sight and mind, left (largely) to caricatures in theory and pro-
fessions textbooks (Sciulli and Gerstein 1985).
In short, instead of continuing the fated effort to convert listings of
empirical traits of professionalism directly into generalizations regarding
instances of occupational upgrading, as a putative ideal type, Parsons pro-
posed, rightly, to distinguish professions from bureaucracies, congrega-
tions as well as other types of organizations and assemblies piece by piece,
analytically. A conceptual framework comprised of such finely-grained
building-blocks, he appreciated, is not likely ever to yield an invariant
ideal type. It cannot be expected ever to yield one particular combination
of building-blocks which is invariant empirically across time and space.
But what it can deliver is pinpointing differences between instances of
occupational upgrading – differences which, absent an analytical concep-
tual framework, sociologists otherwise fail to notice even when the differ-
ences are prominent and salient empirically. Here Parsons was less clear,
and he also failed ultimately to deliver a defensible analytical approach to
professions.
In any event, Parsons’ point in moving to an analytical level of abstrac-
tion is that other types of occupations might well share some analytical
2)
This became evident by 1960 and 1961 when Parsons faced the most rigorous, non-
ideological criticisms in print he would ever confront in his career, those by Robert Dubin
(1960) and by contributors to a collection edited by philosopher Max Black (1961). See
Parsons 1960 for his weak reply to Dubin, Parsons 1961 for his weak reply to Black, and
then Parsons 1975 for his later reflections on the Black collection.
3)
See Sciulli 2001b for a brief biography of Parsons’ life, works, career and networks.
qualities with professions, in varying combinations, but only professions

proper exhibit all of those distinctive to what is a particular, identifiable
gestalt of occupational upgrading. Equally important, he also stated
repeatedly across his fifty year career why this mattered, why it is impor-
tant to distinguish professions proper from other instances of occupa-
tional upgrading at some level of abstraction.
By Parsons’ accounting, precisely because of the salience of normative
behavior within and around professional activities, these occupations con-
tribute uniquely to “social order,” particularly in commercial societies like
the United States. More particularly, he insisted that professions contrib-
ute to “social order” at both cultural and social-psychological levels. On
the one hand, they facilitate among participants shared understandings of
overarching values, what a mature Parsons called “valued cultural pat-
terns.” On the other, they also simultaneously facilitate among partici-
pants shared understandings of quotidian norms, of participants’ shared
convictions, motivations and beliefs regarding what Parsons called a “ser-
vice orientation.” No other types of occupations he insisted make such
weighty contributions to orderliness in the larger society, including other
occupations in the state administration or civil service.
However, Parsons came up against difficulties of his own as he coupled
his more abstract, AGIL analysis of professions with an essentially cultural
and social-psychological approach to professions’ consequences for the
larger social order (as opposed to a socio-economic approach used by his
critics, or a structural and institutional approach which is proposed here).
First and foremost, across his entire fifty year career he cast in vague terms
the putative relationship between professions and social order. He never
identified specifically either the source of the putatively longer-term,
socio-cultural consequences of professionalism, let alone how (or why)
professions uniquely affect the direction of social change.
As a result of his abiding vagueness here, Parsons inadvertently weak-
ened the case for bothering to distinguish professions at all. After all, if
even he proved incapable of specifying how the presence or absence of
professions matters more generally, why is it so vital to distinguish profes-
sions from other occupations?
II. Rise of Received Wisdom

Parsons’ critics, the revisionists led by Terence Johnson, Magali Sarfatti
Larson and Randall Collins, correctly drew attention to this gap in his
theorizing. Indeed, here lay the gravamen upon which they and others
not only could credibly challenge Parsons’ approach to professions but
also could extend their criticisms to the entire functionalist enterprise
in social theory. It is no exaggeration to say that Parsons’ vagueness in
characterizing the larger consequences of professionalism is what ulti-
mately underpinned the entire discipline of sociology’s increasingly nega-
tive reactions to functionalism as a general social theory, from the early
1970s forward.4
Yet, early revisionists in the sociology of professions did not at the
outset reject the Parsonian approach as a piece. Rather, they simply
downplayed the putatively positive cultural and social-psychological con-
sequences of professionalism. They instead drew greater attention to a
narrower set of putatively negative socio-economic consequences.
For instance, revisionists readily acknowledged with Parsons and other
functionalists that the expert services professions provide can either bene-
fit or harm the wellbeing of clients, patrons and communities. But then
they drew particular attention to the immediate harms. That is, revision-
ists proposed that professions introduce unnecessary and unwarranted
monopolies into the occupational order, into the labor market for expert
services, which thereby exacerbate workplace hierarchies. They added that
such monopolies and hierarchies simultaneously skew the stratification
system, by exacerbating material inequities as well as the distribution of
symbolic or status perquisites.
With this line of inquiry, revisionists not only downplayed, if acknowl-
edging at all, Parsons’ vague references to (putatively) broader, positive
cultural and social-psychological consequences of professionalism. More
important for our purposes, they flatly denied that professions introduce
any longer-term consequences into the larger society (see the discussion of
Abbott below). All consequences of professionalism, they insisted, are
both immediate and narrowly confined.
4)
Put differently, if Parsons had been specific here early in his career, then certainly func-
tionalism would have been much more difficult to challenge on scholarly grounds –
irrespective of the general iconoclasm of academe during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Given this purposively blinkered understanding of the documentable –

and possible – consequences of professionalism, revisionists then quite
logically questioned the entire enterprise of listing (putative) profession
traits or qualities. After all, if the consequences of professionalism are
so delimited, and ultimately are indistinguishable from those attending
many other occupations or status categories, what possibly can be distinc-
tive about professions?
This is why by 1988 Andrew Abbott insisted that professions compete
with all other expert occupations for workplace “jurisdictions” within the
same “system.” Worse, this is why he is noticeably silent about the conse-
quences of this jurisdictional competition for the larger social order, let
alone about the consequences of either successful or failed professionalism.
As Abbott puts the matter today (in 2002 and 2005), the sociology of pro-
fessions is “a branch of the sociology of work” concerned exclusively with
analyses of expert service delivery within the occupational order. It is not, in
his view, a branch of the sociology of intermediary associations concerned
with explaining and predicting shifts in the direction of social change.
Likewise, other sociologists today, including Randall Collins, add that
the only factor distinguishing professions from other occupations is that
profession leaders manage strategically – by one clever, underhanded or
sinister means or another – to convert an otherwise salutary jurisdictional
rivalry into unwarranted labor market monopolies. Being unwarranted,
the result is always capricious or devious, never necessary either culturally
or structurally to some end or outcome which is defensible, credible, on
the merits. As Collins puts the matter, professions contribute solely to the
“structure of privilege” in the stratification system and occupational order.
They do not bear at all on whether social change accedes to or resists
breakdown, a “mass” society vulnerable to either dissolute leveling or
autocracy.
In short, revisionists first challenged then increasingly belittled any
attempt to distinguish professions from two categories of occupations
which are more generic: expert occupations and middle-class occupations.
As they emphasized the utter irrelevance of the entire earlier list-making
enterprise, they converted, albeit here inadvertently rather than purpose-
fully, a once distinct, Anglo-American conceptual and theoretical approach
to professions into a more generic study of middle-class lifestyles and
understandings, livelihoods and diversions. With this, the Anglo-American
sociology of professions folds seamlessly at a conceptual level into long-
standing continental discussions of the Bürgertum, of middle classes (Kocka

1990, Siegrist 2002a,b).5
The socio-economic revisionism of the English-speaking world as well
as the cultural and social-psychological Bürgertum discourse of the Conti-
nent, taken together, now constitute received wisdom in the sociology of
work and occupations (and middle classes). Sociologists on both sides of
the Atlantic now insist that the presence or absence of professions in par-
ticular, whether in civil society or the state administration, does not –
indeed cannot – bear on basic foundations of the larger social order, and
thus on the trajectory of social change.
III. The Alternative Proposed Here

Our thesis cuts to this core issue dividing Parsons’ earlier, failed efforts
and today’s now self-referential received wisdom. We renew Parsons’ cen-
tral point regarding the vital importance of distinguishing professions
analytically from other occupations. Moreover, we also reassert that there
is a salient relationship between professions and social order. Indeed, we
go further: We propose that this relationship is invariant, and precisely
because it is structural and institutional, not cultural and social-psycho-
logical. Being invariant, this relationship is explainable retrospectively as
well as predictable prospectively.
However, it is apparent already that we depart from Parsons in two
notable ways, and the importance of both cannot be overemphasized.6
First, we describe and explain the relationship between professions and
social order explicitly, with greater analytical precision than any accounting
found in Parsons’ writings. We can be more precise here for two reasons.
One reason is we replace all references to “social order,” which are intrinsi-
cally vague on their face, with a typology of institutional designs (or insti-
tutional arrangements) spanning the state and civil society. The other
reason is we insist that the relationship between professions and institu-
tional designs is structural in origin. It is not cultural or social-psychological
5)
The irony is that these broader discussions deal predominantly with cultural and social-
psychological factors, not narrowly socio-economic ones. Thus, this accounts for today’s
steady return of Parsonian issues or concerns to continental discussions of “experts” and
“professions” as they understand it (see Sciulli and Halley 2009 for elaboration).
6)
For other departures from Parsons, see Sciulli 2006, 1992.
in origin, as Parsons proposed and as Bürgertum approaches still consider.

It also is certainly not narrowly socio-economic, as Anglo-American
received wisdom either asserts or presupposes.
We identify with precision how the presence or absence of professions
supports, enervates or challenges particular institutional designs structur-
ally. Being structural, the relationship between professions and institu-
tional designs is invariant both historically and cross-nationally. This
remains the case even as the institutional designs being affected by profes-
sionalism certainly evolve historically and vary cross-nationally today. We
are proposing, in short, that the structural relationship between profes-
sions and institutional designs holds true as much on the Continent cen-
turies before industrialization as it did in the Anglo-American world from
the nineteenth century forward. Likewise, it holds equally true on the
Continent both before and after the Second World War, even as all conti-
nental languages lack indigenous synonyms for the term profession in
English-language usage (Sciulli and Halley 2009).
Here is the second way in which we depart from Parsons. A related the-
sis follows from our structural and institutional approach: the longer-
term, structural consequences of professionalism only come into view,
first analytically and then empirically, when sociologists successfully dis-
tinguish professions at a conceptual level from all other occupations,
expert and middle class. Thus, defining professions with precision –
analytically – is vital precisely because no other occupations introduce
salient structural consequences into the larger society. By contrast, the
socio-cultural and socio-economic consequences of professionalism –
whatever these happen to be – are variables, both historically and cross-
nationally today; they are never invariant.
IV. Profession Invariance
1. Constitutive Structural Qualities

Broadly scanning the occupational landscape, both cross-nationally today
as well as historically into the ancien régime,7 we isolate eight structural
7)
The sole instance of ongoing professionalism during the ancien régime, entirely inadver-
tent rather than purposeful, and thus prototypical, is that by the Paris Académie de Peinture
qualities constitutive of professionalism as such, always and everywhere.8

Taken together, these eight qualities distinguish professions, first analyti-
cally and then empirically, from all other expert occupations and middle
class occupations (including, as examples, haute couture and haute cui-
sine). By far, the first structural quality is the most critical, for it is the
baseline upon which the other seven qualities are established or come into
being, whether purposefully or inadvertently.
Always and everywhere successful professionalism projects (that is,
instances of ongoing professionalism as opposed to efforts which are still-
born or transitory):
• Unfold within structured situations. These are sites of commercial

or occupational transactions at which two sets of positions are
entrenched: positions of power, discretionary judgment and imper-
sonal trust; and positions of dependence, vulnerability and appre-
hension.
Because this first structural quality of professionalism is so vitally impor-

tant in distinguishing professions, and because it has been neglected here-
tofore in the literature, we elaborate on it at greatest length.9
A. Structured Situations and Entrenched Positions

Professionalism unfolds exclusively within and around commercial or
occupational transactions which are structured, not simply embedded
(within local norms) and certainly not more fluid (arms’-length and
market-mimicking).10 In short, it does not unfold at any alternative sites
et de Sculpture from the 1660s forward. For brief discussions of this professionalism proj-
ect, see the Preface here and Sciulli 2007a,b. For a detailed history in two volumes, see
Sciulli and Halley 2011.
8)
This section and the next, on consequences of professions, are presented here schemati-
cally. For elaboration and discussion at length, see Sciulli 2010a.
9)
This neglect originates with Terence Johnson’s relativizing of structured situations in
1972, based on a superficial and indefensible understanding of the historiographic record
of aristocratic patronage during the ancien régime (see Sciulli 2010a:Chap. 6).
10)
The reverse does not hold true: Not all structured situations host or yield a profession-
alism project. For instance, the corporate governance of publicly traded corporations is a
structured situation; but professionalism here remains a possibility rather than being guar-
anteed or over-determined. For elaboration on this point, see Sciulli 2001, 2010a:Chap. 4.
of commercial exchange or occupational interaction, whether in civil soci-

ety or in the state administration. This holds true universally and thus
irrespective of whether professionalism: unfolds historically or today,
unfolds inadvertently (on the Continent) or purposefully (in the Anglo-
American world), unfolds in occupational practice or in research, unfolds
in workplaces or in associations, organizations or instructional facilities.
One alternative to structured situations is obvious, namely commercial
or occupational transactions which are fluid, as exemplified by retail
exchanges as well as transactions involving elective diversions. At fluid
sites all participants, whether sellers or buyers or onlookers, are freestand-
ing individuals. Everyone is free at every moment to act strictly self-inter-
estedly, including to opt out, to prefer immediate and costless exit;
correlatively, everyone is also vulnerable to others’ brusqueness, self-deal-
ing and cupidity and, at the limiting case, opportunism. Fluid sites, in
short, are marked by arms’-length commercial and occupational exchanges
in which everyone operates (and is expected to operate) according to the
adage caveat emptor, for anyone who does not is considered hopelessly
naïve or oddly retiring.
Being entirely pliant or open-ended, not structured in any way, these
sorts of transactions are precisely the ones neo-classical economics treats
as iconic. After all, because there is no interpersonal “stickiness” let alone
entrenched positions at such sites, there is also: no positional power, no
positional interests, and no fiducial responsibilities for others’ wellbeing.
The only legal sanctions applicable at fluid sites are strictly statutory or
contractual and common law (or private law), not inter-positional and
fiducial (or public law). Thus, we find, as examples, proscriptions against
false advertising and product liability as well as sanctions against theft,
embezzlement and fraud. We do not find any suggestion that anyone is
otherwise liable at law for others’ wellbeing. Fiduciary law (as well as pub-
lic law), in short, is utterly inapplicable at fluid sites of commerce and
diversion.
Another alternative to structured situations is more instructive for our
purposes and precisely because it introduces greater participant “sticki-
ness” into the discussion: embedded exchanges. Rather than being fleet-
ing and arms’-length, embedded exchanges are typically continuous, more
interpersonally relational and thus more inflexible. Unlike fluid sites,
embedded exchanges are marked by emergent local norms which typically
constrain participant behavior short of naked self-interestedness – as

manifested in brusqueness or cupidity – let alone short of outright oppor-
tunism. Reputations matter in localities. For this reason embedded
exchanges are the types of commercial and occupational transactions net-
work analysts emphasize as well as institutionalists in the sociology of
organizations (Berkowitz 1982, Wellman 1983, Knoke 1990, Powell and
DiMaggio 1991).
The emergent norms characteristic of embedded exchanges include not
only brand loyalty or, in small or local markets, the manners and morals
participants associate with customer service. They also include local repu-
tational sanctions which make it difficult or costly for participants to
breach received patterns of discourse, comportment and sociability. Par-
ticipants are constrained not only by interpersonal path dependencies but
also by (shared or not) quotidian substantive-normative social-psycholog-
ical beliefs and cultural understandings regarding which types of interper-
sonal behaviors are appropriate or acceptable locally. In short, emergent
norms embed participants interpersonally, social-psychologically and cul-
turally, whether to the benefit of everyone mutually or to the benefit of
one party or another. Such embeddedness precludes or, at minimum,
modifies otherwise strictly market-mimicking behavior.
Our point in saying that embedded exchanges present a second alterna-
tive to structured situations, however, is that even these sorts of commercial
and occupational transactions, while “stickier,” are still not truly struc-
tured institutionally (and socio-culturally). That is, embedded exchanges
do not contain any positions which are truly entrenched, independently of
whatever participants’ interpersonal behaviors, social-psychological con-
victions and cultural understandings happen to be. Lacking entrenched
positions in this sense, embedded exchanges also lack positional power
and positional interests as well as fiducial responsibilities enforceable
at law.11
This returns us to the distinctiveness of structured situations and the
two sets of entrenched positions noted earlier, those of power and those
of dependence. Not only are these two sets of positions entrenched unto
11)
Network analysts overlook or collapse this distinction (Stolte 1978, Berkowitz 1982,
Wellman 1983, Perrone 1984, Knoke 1990, Field 2006) as does Günther Teubner (2003)
when discussing “expertise contracts.”
themselves. They are also fixed in relationship to each other, and in two
respects.
First, the power of one set of positions and the dependence of the other
are not contingent on emergent norms of any kind. They certainly are not
contingent on any quotidian social constructions of meaning, whether by
participants or by observers. Positional power and positional dependence
are not available to participants (or others) to preclude, or for that matter
to modify substantially or meaningfully through interpersonal negotia-
tion. Rather, power and dependence accrue structurally to the positions as
such and, thus, irrespective of the interpersonal dynamics or personal
convictions of anyone on the ground that happens to occupy these posi-
tions. Power and dependence accrue structurally to the positions irrespective
of what position-holders (or others) happen to acknowledge interperson-
ally, believe social-psychologically or understand culturally – and thus
irrespective of whatever substantive norms happen to emerge between
them on the ground amidst participant interaction.
Second, the relationship between these entrenched positions is equally
beyond social construction, modification and renegotiation. Always and
everywhere incumbents of the first set of positions are oriented first and
foremost by distinct, readily identifiable positional interests. We can con-
sider in this light a mundane illustration, that of students and teachers in
any graduate or professional school.12
Graduate or professional students share an invariant positional interest
in learning not only as much of the curriculum that is immediately prac-
ticable occupationally but also as much that is theoretical and broadly
orienting.13 It is this second part of the curriculum that prepares students
to keep up later with the scholarly literature, to learn how to identify and
assess independently the merits and practicable implications of ongoing
research.14 This positional interest, however, often fails to jibe with partic-
ular students’ subjective self-interests, which may well motivate them to
12)
The situation is trickier for schools at more elementary levels, including the undergrad-
uate college.
13)
We neglect for purposes of this illustration the “informal” part of any schooling experi-
ence, which includes interactions with other students, networking with professors and the
relationship between student habitus and their general ways of approaching any educa-
tional experience.
14)
More is said about this later.
goldbrick, to cut corners wherever possible and, in particular, to disparage

“abstraction.”15
Correlatively, and more important for our purposes in illustrating posi-
tional power, teachers share an invariant positional interest in imparting
both elements of this curriculum. However, the subjective self-interests of
particular teachers, too, often motivate them otherwise, for instance to
curry student favor instead.
Here is our point: When professors in graduate or professional school
are “dedicated,” this hardly means they are being altruistic or being moti-
vated personally by some service-orientation (as Parsons wrongly sup-
posed). It means simply that they are acting on a readily identifiable
positional interest. They are conducting themselves consistently with the
publicly articulated standards of conduct spanning anyone in their position,
and thus irrespective of student subjective impressions and colleague resis-
tance. Equally important, rather than this behavioral fidelity being altru-
istic or service-minded, it protects and advances these positional interests.
At the same time, such positional behavior is simultaneously relatively dis-
passionate or disinterested precisely because it is manifestly distinguish-
able from participant self-interests as free-standing individuals.
This is why positional behavior provides participants with an open or
public line of rebuttal to any criticism, expected or unexpected, whether
from students and colleagues, whistle-blowers or outside observers (includ-
ing investigative journalists). Absent any positional interest (as revisionists
wrongly suppose), it would be literally nonsensical – irrational – for any
professor at any time to fail readily to accommodate colleague and student
social constructions of meaning on the ground. What is the point, on the
merits?
Our general point is that always and everywhere the behavior of incum-
bents of entrenched positions of power is oriented structurally by posi-
tional interests that are readily identifiable, readily distinguishable from
their self-interests as individuals. This is why professionals indeed do not
typically act self-interestedly, let alone opportunistically, as if they are zeal-
ous retailers. They do not typically act as if they are free-standing individ-
uals providing expert services entirely unencumbered structurally, whether
by positional interests or by fiducial responsibilities (discussed momentarily).
15)
Dezalay and Garth illustrate this well in their article here when discussing the behavior
and outlook of elite students in law schools.
However, this hardly means professionals typically act altruistically or self-

lessly. They are not typically motivated social-psychologically or oriented
culturally as individuals to be monkish, blithely abnegating.
In addition, professionals always and everywhere exercise positional
power over dependents, as they protect and advance distinct positional
interests. Likewise, being incumbents of power positions, they also are
held accountable structurally or positionally (and typically by law) to
fiducial responsibilities, first and foremost for dependent wellbeing. Being
structural-based, this responsibility, too, is invariant.
In short, the power and responsibility of the first set of positions in
structured situations remains in evidence empirically always and every-
where. This is why we find evidence of both even when incumbents of
power positions in structured situations are socially lowly and the patrons
or clients they are serving are socially superior.
For instance, visual académiciens during the ancien régime were entirely
unaware of what a profession is, for such a term or cultural understanding
is anachronistic in their day. Moreover, they provided expert services (of
painting and sculpture) to patrons who unambiguously were their social
superiors, gentilshomme. Yet, visual académiciens nonetheless exercised
positional power even over gentilshomme within the structured situations
at which ambitious painting and sculpting services were exclusively avail-
able during the ancien régime in Paris (unlike the case in Rome or
elsewhere).16 They also bore a fiducial responsibility for advancing the
gloire (thus, well-being) of their gentilshomme patrons. In short, within
these structured situations, unlike the case in all other commercial or occu-
pational transactions in an aristocratic society and dynastic state (including
those of law and medicine, science and engineering), socially lowly visual
académiciens occupied entrenched positions of power whereas socially
superior gentilshomme occupied entrenched positions of dependence. And
both parties (and all informed observers in Paris) were well aware of this.
Our general point stands: professionals, being oriented structurally by
positional interests, literally never act strictly altruistically or selflessly. They
also never act consistently with what Parsons called a “service orientation.”
Yet, they nonetheless typically act more disinterestedly or dispassionately
16)
See Sciulli and Halley (2011) for an extended discussion of how and why Paris differed
in this respect during the ancien régime from Rome, let alone Florence, Venice and other
art centers of Italy and the continent more generally.
than either narrowly self-interestedly or one-sidedly. That is, as profes-

sionals simply protect and advance their immediate positional interests,
their behavior appears (to participants and observers) to be more disinter-
ested and dispassionate than the behavior of other individuals acting self-
interestedly at fluid sites of commerce and diversion.
In addition, professionals typically stop short of exercising their posi-
tional power and of advancing their positional interests one-sidedly, to
their own unilateral advantage at the expense of client or patron well-
being. They are nonetheless quite capable of acting otherwise, and thus of
doing great harm. Yet, they typically bear fiducial responsibilities instead.
Indeed, this accounts for why the appearance of relative disinterestedness
and dispassion noted earlier is invariant: Always and everywhere profes-
sionals protect and advance their immediate positional interests only by
typically acting consistently with the fiducial responsibilities and occupa-
tional orientations (discussed momentarily) intrinsic to all positions of
entrenched power in structured situations.
In short, none of the qualities just discussed – positional interests, posi-
tional power, fiducial responsibilities – is found in embedded exchanges,
let alone fluid sites. This is why it is not possible, for instance, to distin-
guish positional interests in embedded exchanges from either participant
self-interests or participant emergent-normative (or relational) behavior.
This is also why it is not possible in embedded exchanges to distinguish
exercises of positional power from participant opportunism (whether
cupidity or goldbricking) and deviance (normative, interpersonal or repu-
tational breaches).
B. Socio-Cultural Authority and Fiducial Responsibility

In addition to unfolding within and containing structured situations,
professionalism is also constituted by seven other invariant structural
qualities. Always and everywhere professions:
• Successfully claim an independent socio-cultural authority within

their structured situations (areas of expertise). They assert and exer-
cise this authority consistently with the positional interests noted
above, and openly so.
The independence of a profession’s socio-cultural authority, along with the

fiducial responsibilities (introduced next) intrinsic to structured situations,
is effectively what typically constrains professionals’ exercises of positional

power short of one-sidedness or abuse.
Being independent, the socio-cultural authority of professional practice
and research is available to be cited and employed by anyone – whether
organizations or individuals, whether insiders or outsiders – to identify
overreaching, one-sidedness or abuse, or carelessness or opportunism.
This authority is not controlled directly by profession leaders, let alone
unilaterally, whether in associations, instructional facilities or workplaces.
Profession leaders do not control its direction of change nor the uses to which
it can be put, whether by dispersed practitioners in workplaces, dispersed
researchers in universities, or dissidents internally and critics externally.
Put differently, the socio-cultural authority of professional practice and
research is available to be cited and employed by anyone in support of
their own interests on the merits. Thus, the independent socio-cultural
authority of professions:
1. can be used by profession leaders against overreaching state admin-

istrators or regulators;
2. can be used by dispersed profession practitioners against aggran-
dizing profession leaders; and
3. can be used by clients, journalists, litigants or other observers of
professional behavior against abusive, negligent or opportunistic
practitioners and researchers.
Third, professions:
• Are held accountable structurally, positionally, to two sets of fiducial

responsibilities. One set is assumed purposefully, namely fiducial
responsibilities for the wellbeing of client or patron wellbeing and,
by extension, for that of local communities.17 The other set is invariant
historically and cross-nationally but also typically assumed inadvertently
rather than purposefully, namely fiducial responsibilities for the insti-
tutional design of the larger social order.
17)
This set is variable in part and invariant in part, a point which we touch on briefly at
page 30 and elaborate on more fully elsewhere (Sciulli 2010a:256–58).
Manifestly norm-based, extra-economic behavior is as constitutive of any

ongoing professionalism project as is providing expert services and exer-
cising positional power within structured situations. By contrast, all other
expert occupations and middle-class occupations, including haute couture
and haute cuisine, may well exhibit market-mimicking behavior alone.
Professionals are constrained by their own immediate positional interests
and independent socio-cultural authority to bear both sets of fiducial
responsibilities. However, this structural constraint on their behavior mani-
fests itself somewhat differently in each set. On the one hand, when profes-
sionals simply act openly in ways which advance their own positional
interests with integrity, consistently with their own independent socio-cul-
tural authority, they simultaneously exhibit behavioral fidelity to the first
set of fiducial responsibilities, whether purposefully or unawares. They bear
fiducial responsibilities for the wellbeing of patrons, clients and any third
parties affected by their services, including local communities. The reverse
holds equally true. Professionals simultaneously neglect or subordinate their
own positional interests whenever they fail behaviorally to bear this first set
of fiducial responsibilities, again whether purposefully or unawares.
Behavioral shortcomings here mean professionals either are acting
self-interestedly to a point of opportunism or, alternatively, they are
advancing their positional interests one-sidedly, to a point of abusing their
positions of power. In either case such shortcomings literally invite chal-
lenges to the place and purpose in civil society or in state administration
of anyone in these entrenched positions. Such behavior does not affirm or
advance the independent socio-cultural authority and positional interests
of professionals.
By contrast, couturiers and chefs, as examples, are entirely free struc-
turally, like everyone else providing goods and services retail at either fluid
sites or in embedded exchanges, to act as self-interestedly as they wish
(short of violating basic contractual terms and general legal statutes).
Indeed, when these “artists” or “entertainers” act utterly opportunistically
or otherwise conduct themselves in aggrandizing ways it is preposterous
for a client or patron to imagine accusing them of somehow abusing their
power, their positions. The position of couturier or chef lacks positional
power and, as a result, is hardly fiducial; it is strictly contractual, and then
can be celebrated socio-culturally in middle class circles – an extraneous
accompanying variable.
Going further, professionals also bear, equally structurally or position-

ally, on the other hand, a second set of fiducial responsibilities, and even
more fulsomely – that is, irrespective of whether they act with integrity or
not. Always and everywhere, professionals bear structurally – thus, irre-
spective of their beliefs or understandings – fiducial responsibilities for
the institutional design of the larger social order and its direction of
change. This is obviously a more complicated matter than professionals’
typically bearing fiducial responsibilities purposefully for immediate
harms. Yet we show momentarily that this second set of structurally
imposed fiducial responsibilities attending professionalism is as invariant
as the first (see note 15). For this reason, it is readily identifiable both his-
torically and cross-nationally.
C. Dividing Line and Two Occupational Orientations

A dividing line in the occupational order (or in what Abbott calls the
“system of professions”) goes here: The three qualities or traits above this
line are exclusive to structured situations, and thus professions. By con-
trast, the five below can be, and today frequently are, adopted or feigned
by other occupations. However, all qualities or traits across the dividing
line, those below as much as those above, are constitutive of professional-
ism as such, always and everywhere.
Fourth, professions:
• Are held accountable structurally, positionally, to two occupational

orientations, one epistemic or scientific and the other didactic or
moral.
As behavior, credible claims to incarnate truth and morality are invariant

in professionalism; but, in content, these claims certainly evolve histori-
cally as well as vary by specialty.
All professions nonetheless provide expert services consistently with an
epistemic occupational orientation and then also typically, where applicable,
with a didactic occupational orientation. This is as true of the behavior of
professional practitioners as it is of the behavior of professional research-
ers. The epistemic orientation is structurally universal (again, not in pro-
grammatic content) and thus invariant across all fields of professional
practice. By contrast, the didactic orientation varies somewhat across pro-
fessional fields, depending on the nature of the expert services being pro-
vided or research being undertaken within structured situations.
Epistemically, professionals as well as their associations and scholarly
disciplines are literally compelled structurally or positionally to provide
expert services consistently with prevailing standards of (scientific) truth,
whatever these standards happen to be. Prior to the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury such standards tended to be ontological (as in emblematic and natu-
ral-philosophical worldviews) or otherwise directly substantive-normative
(as in positivist or copy theories of truth). From the mid-nineteenth
century forward prevailing standards of scientific truth have jettisoned
ontology and positivism, becoming increasingly epistemic and procedural-
normative, including standards of theorizing, methodology and discursive
consensus formation.
Not coincidentally, the mid-nineteenth century is precisely the period
when painters and sculptors voluntarily abandoned the inadvertent pro-
fessionalism project bequeathed to them by the Paris visual Académie. The
ontological and substantive-normative standards of Truth, Morality and
Beauty which for over two centuries had oriented visual narrations were
by then no longer compelling. This is also the period, again not coinci-
dentally, when medicine and engineering, along with science, increasingly
embarked on their professionalism projects, following that by British law
and medicine. Increasingly, they proceeded consistently with quite differ-
ent standards of truth (and, where applicable, morality), namely primarily
epistemic and increasingly procedural-normative.
One manifestation of an epistemic occupational orientation is that
professionals and their associations are compelled structurally or position-
ally to provide their services relatively dispassionately and disinterestedly
(in the sense noted above). This does not mean, nor require, that they do
so oblivious to, or unconcerned about, their remuneration, their social
status or, certainly, their immediate positional interests and positional
power. What it does mean is that professionals are constrained structur-
ally or positionally from advancing these interests and exercising this
power beyond limitations set by prevailing scientific theories, scientific
findings, scientific methods and then also fiducial responsibilities.
For instance, professionals cannot openly or publicly make claims for
the curative, remedial, figurative or other outcomes of their expert services
which exceed these limitations. By contrast, retailers and hucksters of all
sorts, as well as renowned chefs and couturiers, have far greater latitude
here (short of fraud, negligence or other failings proscribed generally by
contract law or private law).
Turning briefly to the didactic commitment or mission imposed upon
professions structurally or positionally, this is reflected behaviorally in
practitioners’ typical quotidian prudence, comportment and decorum.
Considering only one contemporary example of such behavior, psycho-
therapeutic ethics in the United States include proscriptions against any
and all social interactions with patients, what are called “dual relation-
ships.” These proscriptions are expansive in their behavioral demands.
Psychotherapists are expected not only to refrain from sexual relationships
with current or former patients. They also are advised to avoid: living in
same neighborhood, attending the same church, supervising patient grad-
uate studies or employing them as research assistants, exchanging gifts or
entering business partnerships (Shapiro 2003:169).
Of course, the particulars of similar behavioral proscriptions in other
professions, being substantive-normative rather than strictly procedural-
normative, vary across occupational fields, the nature of the expert ser-
vices being provided. They also vary both historically and cross-nationally.
Moreover, many other expert occupations, not professions exclusively,
may well encourage practitioners to adopt or feign adopting similar
proscriptions.
D. Four More Invariant Structural Qualities

Turning to the remaining four structural qualities constitutive of profes-
sionalism, professions:
• Establish and maintain their independent socio-cultural authority in

both internal governance and external regulation through ongoing
procedural-normative integrity, deliberation and relative disinterest-
edness organized in a collegial form of organization.
They do not establish and maintain their authority through unwarranted

social closure, through occupational or labor market monopoly organized
bureaucratically or strictly commercially or clientelistically. Professions also:
• Establish collegial formations which uniquely institutionalize proce-

dural-normative integrity – a bright-line threshold of rule clarity and
consistency18 – which, first and foremost, permits dispersed profes-

sionals themselves, and then also any interested outsiders, shared
cognition of:
1. instances of possible positional one-sidedness (or opportunism);

2. the principles and precepts of a profession’s independent socio-
cultural authority;
3. the substance of professionals’ structurally or positionally imposed
fiducial responsibilities and occupational orientations;
4. the evolving and varying programmatic content of professional
instructional and occupational activities;
5. professionals’ ongoing disinterestedness and deliberation, as sub-
stantive-normative behavior.
In addition, professions:
• Privilege merit structurally in both instructional entry and matricula-

tion and then occupational placement and advancement, as opposed
to permitting open nepotism, patronage or venality to displace or
subordinate demonstrable merit.
Meritocracy is vitally important especially during the pioneering initiation

of professionalism projects in any occupational field historically, whether
in painting and sculpture in mid-seventeenth Paris, or in law and medicine
18)
This threshold is taken from Harvard legal theorist Lon Fuller (1964/1969:46–84).
His central thesis is that governance structures of any kind, whether courts, other tribu-
nals or regulatory agencies, professional associations or corporations, can only enforce
rules with consistency over time and across cases when the rules themselves display eight
procedural-normative qualities (irrespective of what they require in substance from those
subjected to them or enforcing them). Consistently enforceable rules: apply generally to
violators, do not contradict each other, and are publicized, prospective, clear, relatively
constant, possible to obey, and congruent with the actual conduct of enforcement agen-
cies. See Sciulli 1992 for an extended discussion of why and how Fuller’s “desiderata” of
rule integrity or lawfulness are consistent at a conceptual level with Habermas’ discourse
theory of truth as well as with Parsons’ references to collegial formations. See Sciulli 2010b
as well as my review of the articles here on how and why Joseph Ratz’s understanding of
the rule of law contradicts Fuller’s threshold and yet why his understanding has nonethe-
less insinuated itself into the democratization literature.
in mid-nineteenth century London, or in medicine in late-nineteenth cen-

tury Baltimore (at Johns Hopkins University) or elsewhere earlier in France
and Germany. But meritocracy then diffuses far more generally into the
occupational order. By contrast, patron-client networks, bureaucratization
or commercialism stem this diffusion, and thereby enervate professionalism.
Finally, professions:
• Establish and maintain identifiable jurisdictions or fields (if not

monopolies) in the labor market for expert services which are rela-
tively well-patrolled.
Effective patrolling is possible by professions only because these jurisdic-

tions span structured situations based on an independent socio-cultural
authority and framed by structurally imposed fiducial responsibilities. As
a result, this means the jurisdictions of professions proper are warranted
both structurally and institutionally (and also typically socio-culturally).
They are never wanton, never frivolous, capricious or sinister; they can be
defended openly and publicly on generalizable grounds, on the merits.
2. More on the Dividing Line
The dividing line in the occupational order noted above serves two pur-
poses in our sociology of professions. One purpose is that it indeed
accounts, at least in part, for why the term “professional” is applied so
broadly in colloquial usages. The dividing line likewise also reveals one
major source of confusion in the scholarly literature. The other purpose is
that the same dividing line reemphasizes the importance of the first three
structural qualities (and institutional consequences, see below) of profes-
sionalism, for these are indeed uniquely constitutive of professions exclu-
sively. The dividing line thereby reveals why professions proper and, equally
important, the consequences of professionalism are indeed distinctive,
irrespective of scholarly confusion and quotidian usage.
Our thesis is that in distinguishing professions proper from all other
occupations both analytically and empirically it is vital, first, to identify
the structural qualities distinctive to professionalism exclusively. Then, in
addition, it is equally vital to identify the immediate and institutional con-
sequences which follow intrinsically from these structural characteristics.
Only professions, not any other expert occupations or middle class

occupations, provide expert services within structured situations on the
basis of an independent socio-cultural authority and consistently with
structurally imposed fiducial responsibilities. In turn, only professions are
compelled structurally – as they simply advance their own immediate
positional interests – to exhibit ongoing behavioral fidelity to occupa-
tional orientations and then the additional structural characteristics listed
thereafter, including a collegial form and procedural-normative integrity.
When professionals fail openly to exhibit such behavior as a piece this is
literally suicidal for professionalism projects. It runs directly counter to
professionals’ (and their associations’ and scholarly disciplines’) immedi-
ate positional interests.
This remains the case even if particular failures – such as goldbricking
or negligence – clearly can advance the self-interests of particular profes-
sion leaders or particular professional practitioners or researchers. Any
pattern of open failures:
• Jeopardizes the positional power and compromises the positional

interests of anyone in a professional position;
• Compromises the place and purpose of professions’ occupational
activities in civil society or state administration, thereby literally
inviting increasingly open and direct challenges to professions’ inde-
pendent socio-cultural authority; and, at the limiting case
• Calls into question the cultural truism which heretofore had distin-
guished structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid
sites. This is what happened in the fine arts during the 1870s.
Other experts and practitioners, in short, may well exhibit behaviorally

one or both of the same occupational orientations which animate profes-
sional behavior always and everywhere. The also may adopt or feign
adopting the other qualities listed after that. But these same experts and
practitioners routinely and openly neglect or disregard both fiducial
responsibilities constitutive of professionalism. Chefs and couturiers, as
examples, are hardly fiduciaries, dedicated positionally to advancing the
wellbeing of others. The same is true of entertainers, athletes and sports-
men (including bowlers, golfers, poker players and billiard players). Yet, all
of these practitioners are nonetheless called “professionals” colloquially. We
can now see why this usage is mistaken. Because these practitioners earn
their livelihoods outside of structured situations, none of these experts are
professionals and none of these occupations can ever professionalize.
Fiducial behavior comes into play exclusively within ongoing profes-
sionalism projects (and, more broadly, within other structured situations,
which include the governance of publicly traded corporations). Correla-
tively, when nonprofessional experts and practitioners fail unambiguously
to exhibit fiducial behavior they never suffer any comparable loss of posi-
tional power or socio-cultural authority. This does not happen precisely
because they lack this power and this authority in the first place. They
provide expert services solely within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites
of commerce or diversion.
Thus, nonprofessional experts and practitioners – such as chefs, coutu-
riers and the others noted above – never exercise positional power over
clients and patrons. They also never claim credibly an independent socio-
cultural authority, let alone consolidate this authority across cohorts and
generations. After all, autodidacts frequently prepare cuisine for gourmets
or design attire or accessories for notables. By contrast, autodidacts rarely
composed ambitious visual narrations (to the mid-nineteenth century) or
today undertake complex legal matters, perform intrusive medical proce-
dures (including diagnostics), conduct scientific research, or engineer
building construction.19
V. Immediate and Institutional Consequences

We identify the place and purpose of professions structurally in any civil
society or state administration once we appreciate at a conceptual level
that these occupations uniquely (a) provide expert services within struc-
tured situations (b) on the basis of an independent socio-cultural author-
ity and (c) consistently with positional interests, fiducial responsibilities,
occupational orientations and the other invariant qualities described
above. In turn, this place and purpose of professions structurally then
helps us to grasp at a conceptual level all consequences which profession-
19)
Architecture, on the other hand, has always been and remains an occupation open to
autodidacts, for reasons beyond the scope of this paper.
alism introduces into the larger social order structurally, thus always and
everywhere.
Our structural approach to professionalism reveals that the activities,
governance and regulation of professions and their associations and
instructional facilities introduce into the larger social order structurally two
distinct sets of consequences simultaneously: immediate consequences
and institutional consequences. Not all immediate consequences are
invariant or unique to professions, but all institutional consequences are.
1. Immediate Consequences, Variable and Invariant
The immediate consequences of professionalism are those noted fre-

quently in the scholarly literature as well as in journalistic coverage (typi-
cally of professional misbehavior). These are the consequences of the
activities, governance and regulation of professions which either harm or
benefit particular clients, patrons and local communities, on one side, and
particular colleagues, workplaces, associations and instructional facilities,
on the other. For instance, on one side, professional activities may either
harm or benefit client wellbeing and condition or lived situation (Lebenswelt).
On the other side, professional activities may also either harm or benefit
practitioner and researcher reputations and livelihoods.
However, all perquisites of professional careers and positions are vari-
ables, not invariant qualities constitutive of professionalism as such. For
instance, professional careers and positions may or may not confer greater
renown or prestige on practitioners or researchers than that conferred by
many other occupations. They also may or may not yield practitioners or
researchers greater remuneration and social influence. As examples, law-
yers, doctors and scientists frequently have lower incomes – far lower –
than entertainers and even journeymen athletes (let alone the stars). They
certainly lack the latter’s renown and public visibility. Likewise, the sala-
ries of academic professionals, including those of Nobel Laureates, are
routinely less – far less – than those of football, soccer or basketball
coaches, let alone star players.
Being immediate, these sorts of consequences of professionalism are
self-evident, readily identified. This is precisely why they are noted and
debated so frequently in both scholarly and journalistic accountings of
professional activities (particularly by specialized trade publications and
subscription newsletters). Aside from being familiar, many immediate

consequences of professionalism are indeed also confined to the occupa-
tional order and stratification system, as received wisdom expects. More-
over, as we just noted above, most (but not all) of these consequences are
variables: they evolve historically as well as vary cross-nationally today.
For all of these reasons, received wisdom in the sociology of professions
rightly points to this first set of consequences in support of its thesis that
profession is simply a status category, nothing more. There are, however,
several problems, first and foremost at a conceptual level, with emphasiz-
ing the salience of the immediate consequences of professionalism.
A. Problem One: Harms Displace Integrity

One problem is that proponents of received wisdom typically dwell on
the harms professionals cause, neglecting entirely – particularly at a con-
ceptual level – the much more self-evident mass of empirical findings right
in front of them. That is, professionals typically advance the wellbeing of
patrons and clients, as opposed to harming them – even as all profession-
als occupy positions in which they can do great harm to them whenever
they wish, including whenever it serves their self-interests (whether pecu-
niary, psychological or narcissistic). Put differently, professionals – unlike
retailers – do not typically take full advantage of their positions even though
this option stands fully available at all times. They instead typically draw
back from positional one-sidedness – and substantially so, well before
even approaching the limiting case of caprice or abuse. On the other
hand, they do routinely advance their positional interests, to be sure, but
they typically do this far more adroitly than heavy-handedly. Thus, they
do so in ways which typically are more evenhanded – again, disinterested
in the sense above – than self-evidently one-sided or opportunistic.
Our point is that the behavioral abnegation so typical of professionalism
– and so atypical of retail commerce – is worthy of sociological study and
theorizing on its face. Sociologists who claim to advance a social
science cannot simply neglect describing, explaining and predicting such
evenhandedness or disinterestedness by anyone in a professional position,
as if such empirical behavior (including that by fellow sociologists) is
not manifestly and unambiguously in evidence before them. They cannot
possibly advance a scientific study of professions by sweeping all of this
documentable behavior under the rug, as if it is (for some unstated rea-
son) beneath theorizing and empirical study. If retailers with anything like
comparable advantages over customers (such as automobile salesmen,
realtors, or large appliance dealers) were likewise as abnegating anywhere
in the world, such a finding would startle the world of sociology. Then,
certainly, sociologists would study this behavior methodically (including
by employing network analysis or institutionalism).
Equally duplicitously, sociologists cannot continue to address at a con-
ceptual level this mass of abnegating behavior by professionals in ways
which simultaneously disregard the very real safeguarding it provides cli-
ents and patrons against moral hazards and, correlatively, the very real
demands of fiducial responsibility, of impersonal trust, it imposes on pro-
fessionals – and their associations and scholarly disciplines. Indeed, pre-
cisely because commercial and occupational transactions demanding
fiducial relationships often involve strangers, they also are aptly called
relationships of “impersonal trust” and of “precarious trust” (Shapiro
2003:92 and note 7).
Yet, the concepts currently available to sociology from received wisdom
disregard, disparage, or otherwise negatively label all such evenhandedness
by professionals. Received concepts predispose sociologists to consider
this behavior rare, unusual, quaint (the nineteenth century professional
gentleman) or devious, not typical, let alone constitutive structurally or
positionally of professionalism as such. Thus, received concepts frequently
characterize professional evenhandedness: as conspiratorial behavior pro-
moted publicly by profession leaders, as part of a grand strategy to main-
tain an ultimately unwarranted monopoly in the labor market for expert
services; or as some ideological smokescreen, employed cleverly by lower
level professionals to veil practitioner or researcher cupidity and cravenness
on the ground.20
20)
Here Julia Evetts hits the mark, noting (2003:401) that “Parsons’ work has been over-
zealously criticized” by revisionists who reject his view of professionalism as a “value sys-
tem” in favor of seeing professions as “elite conspiracies of powerful occupational workers”
(also Evetts 1998:64). Sociologist of law Susan Shapiro (2003:201) is similarly critical of
received wisdom, noting that many sociologists today, on both sides of the Atlantic, view
professions “as strategic devices to achieve monopoly, not self-regulated institutions struc-
tured to deliver and shore up trust.” These sociologists see professional codes of ethics, for
instance, as mere window dressing or, worse, as “linguistic Trojan horses” designed to
Our point is that the evenhanded – disinterested and deliberative –

behavior so typical of professionalism is entirely worthy of methodical
sociological inquiry and examination on the merits, shorn of all dismiss-
als, disparagements and labeling. The continuing disregard of this behav-
ior by received wisdom, particularly at a conceptual level, runs so counter
to unambiguous empirical evidence on the ground that at this point it is
embarrassing for the entire discipline of sociology in the United States
(and elsewhere). It enervates further this scholarly discipline’s once inde-
pendent socio-cultural authority; too much of sociology today is subordi-
nated to partisanship and ideology, and this is well illustrated by the
professions literature (as well as the race literature).
B. Excursus: Disciplinary Bias

To digress for a moment, from the mid-1980s or so forward the discipline
became and remains partisan-left and everyone knows it, though few are
willing to speak its name. Where is the evidence? Everywhere. In the first
place, opinion surveys of university professors have shown for decades
that ninety-percent of all sociologists in graduate programs vote Democrat,
exceeded only by anthropologists. They also characterize themselves as
liberal, progressive or radical. Can anyone name a single graduate Faculty
where this number is reversed, favoring Republicans or conservatives? Is
this really because right-leaning sociologists are congenitally unthinking,
unscholarly, unserious – utterly incapable of delivering advanced publica-
tion and teaching? Would sociologists dare think this, let alone permit
themselves to appear to act on this, by openly, unambiguously displaying
these sorts of outcomes for decades as transferred to any minority or “sub-
jugated” demographic group?
Still, even with this hard data I am quite prepared to acknowledge
(with hope) that, say, Faculties of Chicago, Indiana, Iowa and North
Carolina are relatively disinterested in hiring and advancement. But can
anyone say the same about Berkeley (and entire University of California
system), Wisconsin, Michigan, Stanford, Duke, Texas-Austin, Arizona
and any Ivies? In addition, simply peruse the public policy positions the
American Sociological Association has taken officially, as an Association or
deflect attention and criticism from professions’ ever-broadening power. The great French
social theorist Pierre Bourdieu is an exemplar of this position (see my article review here).
through its ruling Council, since 1990; without exception all are left-parti-
san. Here the ASA conducts itself more like a zealous labor union or
touchy sworn guild, not a learned corporation, not a truly professional
association.
Consider also that three Presidents of the ASA since 1990 are openly
committed left partisans. Has any scholar in America contributed more
writing to helping destroy the black family and to convert poverty into a
laudable or acceptable cross-generational condition than Frances Fox
Piven, the 2007 President? See Joel Schwartz (2000) for where her posi-
tion fits in the sweep of American approaches to poverty since the mid-
nineteenth century. Her position on poverty originated as an unserious,
readily dismissible outlier, but it became mainstream precisely as the dis-
cipline of sociology (and of social work, her discipline) turned partisan-left.
In an interview with “Sociologists without Borders” in the year of her
Presidency, Piven is quite candid (see their website): “I personally do schol-
arship as a way of doing politics. In other words, my political commit-
ments come first, and determine the sociological problems that I study,
and I am frank to say, my interpretations of the complex empirical world
we all try to understand. However, I would not issue this as a mandate, as
a statement of what all social scientists should do. What all sociologists are
morally obligated to do is to be reflective about the political implications
of the work they do, and open about the sources of support for that
work.”
Can anyone read any monograph by Joe Feagin, 2000 President, or
Patricia Hill Collins, 2009 President, without finding bias literally drip-
ping from every chapter? Put differently, if the ASA truly were dispassion-
ate, learned and professional, none of the above would happen or could
happen. A good counterexample is the American Political Science Associ-
ation across the same period of time. It is not possible to attach a partisan-
left characterization to the APSA, or to its major graduate Faculties, or to
its Presidents since 1990 (or earlier); it truly is a professional scholarly
association and its Faculties truly are learned corporations.
For instance, can anyone name a single APSA President who is at all
akin to Piven, Feagin and Patricia Hill Collins in the open, unapologetic
politicization of their “scholarly” writings? In comparison could any soci-
ologist, no matter how well and prominently published, be as candid
publicly about his or her openly rightist approach – worded in Piven’s way
above – and possibly be elected President? Amitai Etzioni, 1995 President,

faced protestors during his presidential address (thankfully small and rela-
tively respectful) who complained his work is too “conservative,” thus
unacceptable. Yet, he served in the Carter administration and today writes
a column for the Huffington Post website, The popular mandates from
voting members of the ASA which decide presidencies better reflect level-
ing (and patronage, networking) than professional integrity. Yet the mem-
bership is not discomfited in the slightest, nor, of course, does it even
consider challenging ASA public policy positions openly in the name of
professional integrity. The ASA literally has no bright line threshold stan-
dard by which to identify the latter; everything is a social construction,
thereby negotiable, prone to leveling (and patronage-networking).
Even more, content analyses of the American Sociological Review, the
discipline’s first or second premier journal, can readily reveal a left tilt, albeit
far more subtly, particularly in certain sections or subdisciplines (as opposed
to, as examples, demography, methodology and other highly technical
areas). This is not to say that ASR articles are openly politicized; they are
not. But the issues addressed and how they are framed and addressed are
hardly value-neutral or dispassionate; they tilt left unambiguously.
See John McWhorter (2005:247–48,418–20), for instance, for a recent
captivating examination of race articles published in American Sociological
Review from 1990 to 1999; the institutional bias here is unambiguous,
self-evident. McWhorter is a linguist, and thus detached from and not
affected in his career by the sworn “mysteries” of the ASA guild or labor
union which he divulges with this analysis. Tellingly, who in sociology
reads and challenges his analysis, despite its obvious merits? For that mat-
ter, who in sociology reads or challenges Bourdieu and Wacquant’s earlier
(1988), first-rate discussion of the American race literature as a form of
American “cultural imperialism.” Their thesis is that this literature is so
fundamentally biased, so removed at a conceptual level from credible
application cross-nationally, that it is strictly an American preserve; yet its
proponents believe their positions hold up anywhere and everywhere
today. The same silence by other sociologists prevails here that we find
regarding ASA policy positions.
Finally, as editor of a journal and book series for nearly three years I
routinely receive manuscripts, worldwide, which are openly, unapologetically
leftist (and I cite Weber to rein this in, for I do not publish partisanship
whether left or right). By contrast, very rarely do I find this on the right.
To be specific, I have received one such submission to the journal (and,
citing Weber, I reined in this author in exactly the same way).21
C. Problem Two: Immediate Consequences Alone

Returning to our central argument, a second problem with received wis-
dom is equally damning but more subtle, given Parsons’ failures to iden-
tify the larger consequences of professionalism for social order. Received
wisdom assumes or believes that the first, quite delimited set of conse-
quences of professionalism, the immediate ones, exhausts all consequences
attending professionalism (or “expertization”). However, this neglects at
the outset an entire second set of consequences of professionalism (as we
will see momentarily). In addition, it also neglects one great exception
even within the first set itself.
The exception here is that some identifiable immediate consequences
of professionalism are invariant, not variables. In addition, the impact of
these immediate consequences on the larger society extends far beyond
the occupational order and stratification system, as opposed to being con-
fined to them.
Always and everywhere professions’ socio-cultural authority diffuses
broadly into the larger society and culture. That is, professionalism does
not simply and solely upgrade the condition or lived situation of patrons,
clients and other cognate practitioners and researchers, those who are
not professionals, those who provide expert services within embedded
exchanges or retail. More important, professionalism also invariably stim-
ulates a much more general lexical and discursive upgrading across an
entire civil society. This happens because, unlike guilds of yore or entre-
preneurs today, professionals are not permitted structurally to withhold
“trade secrets” or discoveries from public view.22 To the contrary, always
and everywhere, from the Paris visual Académie to professions today, pro-
21)
For other examples of bias more generally see the Comparative Sociology website and
the title “Bias in Comparative Sociology” among the listing of forthcoming special topic
issues.
22)
When sociologists draw parallels between guilds and professions, because they see both
as monopolistic, they universally fail to appreciate that Academies differed structurally
from guilds. They thereby fail to appreciate that professions stem from Academies, not
guilds. Guildsmen literally swore oaths not to divulge practitioner secrets; academicians
fessions proper openly present their findings; for that matter, they equally
openly present their methodologies and instructional materials. This
openness is what upgrades the verbiage, knowledge and discernment (and,
where applicable, sociability) of current and prospective clients and
patrons. In addition, it also upgrades the same qualities in any and all
knowledgeable outsiders and thus alters literate publics, popular conscious-
ness and general cultural understandings.
In short, this immediate consequence of professionalism, this diffusion,
is invariant and precisely because it is structural in source even as its
effects are cultural and social-psychological, not directly institutional.
With this exception alone we already have moved beyond received wis-
dom in the sociology of professions. We are no longer dealing with conse-
quences of professionalism confined to the occupational order and
stratification system. But our larger point is that there is an entire second
set of consequences of professionalism which is equally invariant, equally
structural in source, and equally expansive in scope – spanning the larger
civil society and state administration.
2. Invariant Institutional Consequences

The second set of consequences of professionalism is comprised of those
consequences of the activities, governance and regulation of professions
and their associations and instructional facilities for institutional design.
Our thesis is that the successes and failures of ongoing professionalism
projects within structured situations always and everywhere affect in
invariant, thus predictable, ways whatever institutional design happens to
be in place. That is, these longer-term consequences of professionalism are
invariant because they are structural in source; but the institutional
designs being affected by them are clearly variables.
Institutional designs evolve historically as well as differ and change
cross-nationally today. After all, the institutional design of mid-seven-
teenth century Paris is obviously unlike that of mid-nineteenth century
London. The latter, in turn, is equally obviously unlike the institutional
designs of the U.S., the EU or Pacific Rim today.
routinely published or otherwise publicized their findings and activities. This is a curious
corporate policy for a putative monopoly to institutionalize.
Put more specifically, the bright-line, procedural-normative threshold of

rule clarity and consistency constitutive of professionalism (and also, for
instance, of corporate governance within certain institutional designs) pro-
vides us with a lodestar in distinguishing institutional designs (see note
16). It moves us beyond a stale polarity between “democracy” and “autoc-
racy.” Such a crude contrast is hardly salient today in identifying the more
subtle relationship between professions (and corporate governance) and
the larger civil society and state administration in contemporary democra-
cies. The threshold is important because it brings into view two other dis-
tinctions between societies and states upon which sharper contrasts can be
drawn.23
A. Formal Democracy, Limited Government, Lawful Democracy

One distinction is between formal democracy and limited government, and
the other is between limited government and lawful democratic society. By
drawing these distinctions explicitly, on structural and institutional
grounds, we bring into view the specific relationship which is salient
today structurally between professions (and corporate governance) and
institutional design.24
We begin trivially, by identifying formal democracy: Unlike any autoc-
racy (including those of the ancien régime), a formal democracy institu-
tionalizes regularly held elections, competing political parties, and general
First Amendment freedoms – the latter reflected empirically, for instance,
in the presence of a relatively independent press. This set of institutional
designs includes prewar continental Rechtsstaats as well as American
democracy prior to Progressive reforms at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury. It also includes most new democracies in the South and East today.
The problem is that formalities of democratic electioneering and gover-
nance may remain in place while both public authorities and private elites
rely on force and threats, manipulation and “distorted communication”
to maintain order in civil society. As the case of contemporary Mexico
well illustrates, both before and after the elections of Vicente Fox and
23)
More distinctions between and within institutional designs can be drawn, but these are
beyond the scope of this paper. See Sciulli (2010a,b) for further discussion.
24)
We show elsewhere that it is this specific relationship which implicitly (and inconsis-
tently) informs the social vision of Delaware judicial rulings in corporate governance dis-
putes (e.g. Sciulli 2001, 2010:Chap. 4).
Felipe Calderón, formal democracy is quite compatible with arbitrary

government as well as what we can call an imposed, rather than lawful,
orderliness in civil society.
However, by nonetheless using formal democracy as our baseline, we
can now identify two finer distinctions more salient in comparing advanced
societies today: limited government and lawful democratic society. Lim-
ited government differs from formal democracy in that, beyond adopting
the formalities just noted, it also institutionalizes rules of public gover-
nance (applicable to executive, legislative and judicial branches of govern-
ment) which are lawful procedural-normatively, which are clear and
possible to perform. For instance, public authorities in limited govern-
ment may only make arrests or seize property by enforcing publicized
statutes and also by otherwise proceeding in ways consistent with proce-
dural-normative integrity. This set of institutional designs includes Ameri-
can democracy following the Progressive era as well as (more ambiguously)
postwar continental Rechtsstaats and Sozialstaats and, thus, many estab-
lished liberal democracies today.
On the ground the quality of public governance distinctive to the insti-
tutional designs of limited government comports with the threshold
noted earlier when courts (or, in Europe, state-administrative agencies)
enforce with consistency over time rules of public governance which are
lawful procedural-normatively, which are clear and possible to perform.
As this is done, judicial (or state-administrative) rulings instruct all public
officials and all citizens, not simply those directly involved, regarding
what existing standards of lawfulness require of anyone exercising public
authority. Thus, this quality of public governance and oversight is unique
to the institutional designs of limited government; it is absent in formal
democracy – as the case of Mexico again well illustrates.
However, one problem we identified with formal democracy none-
theless remains unaddressed by these second institutional designs: Lim-
ited government may well be incompatible institutionally with arbitrary
government; but it remains compatible institutionally with imposed
orderliness in civil society. Japan illustrates this well (in the eyes of many
area specialists), and the same is true in at least certain sectors of civil
societies in Europe as well as the United States.25
25)
On Japan, see Eisenstadt 1996:367–76; on Europe, the U.S. and Latin America, see
Diamond and Morlino 2004; O’Donnell, Cullell and Iazzetta 2004.
Consider, for instance, the susceptibility across the Continent to one-

sidedness and abuse in civil society stemming from institutions of “neo-
corporatist interest intermediation” (Schmitter 1981; Collier 1995; Molina
and Rhodes 2002). As for the U.S., one-sided exercises of positional power
are well documented first in postwar medical research and then in postwar
medical practice (Rothman 1992). Indeed, numerous examples of one-
sidedness in structured situations run through the continental literature of
cultivated middle classes (Bildungsbürgertum) as well as the Anglo-Ameri-
can literature of professions (Burrage and Torstendahl 1990; Torstendahl
and Burrage 1990; Sciulli 1996).
With this we can appreciate that the procedural-normative threshold
serving as our lodestar brings into view how the institutional designs of
lawful democratic society differ from the institutional designs of limited
government. A lawful democratic society adopts electoral and First Amend-
ment formalities, of course, and then also shares with limited government
judicial (or state-administrative) oversight of one-sidedness by public
authorities. But it goes a step further institutionally. A lawful democratic
society also institutionalizes procedural-normative integrity within major
private or independent governance structures either in civil society or in the
state administration. Such private or independent governance thereby
encompasses the structured situations of professions, publicly traded cor-
porations and independent agencies of the state administration.
Thus, courts (or state-administrative agencies) in the institutional
designs of lawful democratic society endeavor ceaselessly to extend from
public to private governance the procedural-normative threshold standard
of lawfulness. They thereby instruct leaders of major intermediary associa-
tions and independent state agencies regarding what existing standards of
lawfulness require of them and those they are governing, of anyone occu-
pying an entrenched position of power within major structured situations.
Such leaders include those of professions and universities, hospitals and
law firms, publicly traded corporations and independent state agencies.
B. Centrality of Structured Situations in any Institutional Design

Despite being invariant, and thus both eminently explainable in retro-
spect and predictable prospectively, the institutional consequences of pro-
fessionalism just noted are precisely those which eluded Parsons and other
functionalists. As a result, they also have been overlooked and neglected
heretofore across the sociology of professions. But it is precisely these
institutional consequences of professionalism which most directly chal-

lenge at its core today’s received wisdom in the sociology of professions,
for it was Parsons’ lacuna here in theorizing, to recall, which opened the
door to revisionist criticism and then disregard.26
Why is it possible now to identify so unambiguously the institutional
consequences of professionalism whereas this was not possible earlier?
Only now do we see (or appreciate at a conceptual level) that professions
are unique instances of occupational upgrading within structured situa-
tions. Seeing this, it is then possible to see (and appreciate at a conceptual
level) a corollary: short of absolute autocracy, social elites never entrust
major structured situations, whether in civil society or in the state admin-
istration, to informal assemblies or, certainly, to strictly commercial enter-
prises, whether of embedded exchange or of arms’-length retail trade.
They never entrust major structured situations to occupations (or avoca-
tions) whose practitioners are permitted structurally or positionally to act
in ways which are abusive (positionally one-sided), irresponsible (negli-
gent), opportunistic (manifestly self-interested) or otherwise market-mim-
icking (strictly commercial).
Rather, structured situations are invariably constituents of either major
intermediary associations in civil society (in the Anglo-American world)
or, alternatively, of independent state administrative agencies (on the
Continent and elsewhere). There is no third option of organizational con-
text or setting for structured situations, and thus for professions.
As a result of this organizational context, professions always and every-
where introduce into institutional design a new independent governance
26)
Correlatively, the explicit listing of these consequences below simultaneously invites in
sociology the first detailed reappraisals of where and why Parsons and functionalists failed
earlier in their efforts to associate professions with social order. Again, the Parsons and
Platt book published in 1973 has never been addressed methodically in the sociology of
professions literature. There are wrong turns in this book, to be sure, and it is time for
these to be identified. But it is far past time for this book to continue going unread or off-
handedly disregarded as wrongheaded – solely because it is labeled functionalist. This
would be equivalent to scholars disregarding a major work by a major social theorist sim-
ply because his or her approach is labeled historical materialist (such as Habermas’ Struk-
turwandel ), systems-theoretical (Luhmann’s works), field-theoretical (Bourdieu’s works),
structuralist (Donald Black’s works), or interactionist or ethnographic (Gary Fine’s or
Robert Prus’ works).
structure of one kind or another, whether private or public. They either

introduce into civil society distinct venues of private governance (in the
case of major intermediary associations in the Anglo-American world) or
they introduce into the state administration distinct venues of public gov-
ernance (in the case of independent, state-warranted agencies on the Con-
tinent and elsewhere). In addition, in either case above elites also insist
upon state (judicial or administrative) oversight and regulation of these
independent governance structures. They never permit the latter to be
entirely self-regulating, autopoietic in Luhmann’s sense.
C. Institutional Consequences
The institutional consequences of professionalism stem structurally from
the fact that professionals, and their associations and instructional facili-
ties, always and everywhere exercise positional power over dependents in
structured situations on the basis of an independent socio-cultural author-
ity within major intermediary associations or state-warranted agencies.
Given this, how professionals, and their associations, typically and openly
exercise positional power over dependents always and everywhere bears
structurally on institutional design. It supports, enervates or irritates
structurally whatever institutional design is in place.
The following three consequences of professionalism for institutional
design (and its direction of change) are invariant, both historically and
cross-nationally today. Professions:
• Disperse authority and power away from any hierarchical state admin-
istration, and thus invariably enervate or irritate structurally – not
necessarily purposefully or consciously – any autocracy (including
that of Louis XIV).
Professions disperse a publicly, openly exercised socio-cultural authority

and positional power from the state-administrative hierarchy to either pri-
vate intermediary associations in civil society or to state agencies which
become (relatively) independent, self-governing, not strictly subordinate
within or to the hierarchy.
• Exercise entrenched positional power short of one-sidedness and oppor-

tunism by operating consistently with an independent socio-cultural
authority, fiducial responsibilities, and identifiable positional inter-

ests. With this, professions help to institutionalize within identifiable
positions of power a set of bright-line, procedural-normative restraints
on arbitrariness, public or private.
• Are “arbitrating” institutions which, in restraining positional one-
sidedness, extend lawfulness as procedural-normative legal integrity
from the state to either major intermediary associations in civil soci-
ety or to independently governed, state-warranted agencies.27
As a result of this third institutional consequence, professions support

structurally one and only one set of institutional designs in particular,
namely that of a lawful democratic society which is globally competitive
economically. Otherwise, professional power, authority, responsibility,
occupational orientation, procedural integrity and collegiality, and meri-
tocracy challenge or enervate structurally all other institutional designs.
Also as a result of this third institutional consequence, professions,
correlatively:
1. enervate structurally (and typically inadvertently) all autocracies,

in which one-sidedness characterizes both state administration
and major intermediary associations;
2. expose (often more purposefully) structural limitations in formal
democracies, in which fair and free elections are held but one-
sidedness continues unambiguously to characterize both state
administration and intermediary associations;
3. expose (typically even more purposefully) structural limitations in
limited governments, in which state one-sidedness is restrained
procedural-normatively but one-sidedness continues to character-
ize major intermediary associations in civil society;
4. support structurally lawful democratic societies, wherein one-sid-
edness by at least some major intermediary is restrained proce-
dural-normatively.
This four-part elaboration of the third institutional consequence of profes-

sionalism indicates why many prominent continental (and other civil law
27)
See Robert Rohrschneider (2005) for the term in quotations, absent any reference to,
let alone discussion of, professions.
country) sociologists have long considered professions to be Trojan horses.

Living within “’state’ societies” (Dyson 1980) – within Rechtsstaats and
Sozialstaats – which at best institutionalize limited government, not lawful
democratic society (see Sciulli 2010c) they see professionalism insidiously
challenging received institutions, practices and communities. Worse, they
see it spearheading an ongoing, ultimately sinister diffusion of “Anglo-
Saxon cultural imperialism.”28
V. Discussion and Examples: A Structural and Institutional Approach
1. How Professionalism Affects Institutional Design

We can see how profession structural invariance couples with institutional
design variation simply by considering what happens structurally and
institutionally when professionals act with integrity, that is, when they
act consistently with their independent socio-cultural authority, fiducial
responsibilities and other qualities. Professionals then, by definition, exer-
cise positional power short of one-sidedness or abuse, to say nothing of
opportunism or negligence. Variation in institutional design enters the
picture here.
Simple integrity in professional practice and research always and every-
where supports structurally the institutional designs of lawful democratic
societies. By contrast, the very same occupational behavior by profession-
als always and everywhere either enervates or irritates structurally all other
institutional designs, those antagonistic to or falling short structurally of
democratic societies.
In the first place, successful professionalism enervates structurally all
institutional designs of autocracy, whether during the ancien régime or in
Europe and elsewhere from the nineteenth century through World War II
to today. These institutional designs hardly tolerate either substantive
socio-cultural independence or procedural integrity within any gover-
nance structure, public or private.
In the second place, successful professionalism always and everywhere
introduces a structural irritant into the two remaining institutional designs
28)
For examples, see Bourdieu and Wacquant 1998:197–98 note 40; Dezalay and Garth
1996, 2002; Fournier 1999; and Sousa Santos 1995, 2005.
we discussed above. Formal democracies, which fail to institutionalize

procedural legality in public governance, are clearly too brittle in institu-
tional design to accommodate over time the irritation introduced struc-
turally by ongoing professionalism in structured situations, whether
public or private. They either evolve into limited governments, by accom-
modating professionalism at least in state administration, or else profes-
sionalism gives way to patronage (or other forms of favoritism) or
commercialism. In turn, limited governments, which do institutionalize
procedural legality in public governance, find that professionalism in civil
society, in structured situations in the private sector expose additional
structural limitations in their institutional designs. They either evolve into
lawful democratic societies, by accommodating civil society professional-
ism, or else the latter gives way to state paternalism, dispersed patronage
or market-mimicking behavior.
This returns us to the point that professions are structurally – intrinsi-
cally – “arbitrating institutions” in the state or civil society. They operate
as such more or less independently of more familiar arbitrating institu-
tions, namely state-administrative and judicial tribunals. Indeed, profes-
sions bring with them, independently of economic liberalization and
political democratization (as the Paris visual Académie well illustrates),
horizontal restraints on arbitrary power, and they do so irrespective of the
latter’s source.29 They ameliorate arbitrariness which originates in state
agencies as well as that which originates in structured situations in civil
society, whether in private commercial enterprises (publicly traded corpo-
rations), in occupational associations, in research and instructional facili-
ties, or in dispersed workplaces.
This means that citizens’ everyday experiences with professions can and
do bear directly on how they (and elites) perceive the “representativeness”
or “responsiveness” of an entire regime. Here is a good illustration of how
“regime” extends beyond the “state.” It also illustrates, moreover, why
29)
Günther Teubner draws attention in various publications to what he calls “the hori-
zontal effect of fundamental rights,” which extends beyond the state to private “centers of
economic power” (2004:7; also 2002, 2000, 1998; Fischer-Lescano and Teubner 2004;
Paterson and Teubner 1998). We are proposing that substantive-normative rights attached
to persons are today increasingly less effective horizontally in identifying and restraining
arbitrary power. Much more effective are procedural-normative duties or responsibilities
attached to positions, both public and private.
“institutional design” is more descriptive than “regime” and, as a result,

more helpful both empirically and theoretically.
To be sure, all private-sector group activities in civil society – whether
entrepreneurial, occupational, associational, non-profit, voluntary or
avocational – disperse collective power away from the state. They disperse
power the state would otherwise amass. Indeed, this is the single strongest
argument in favor of constitutional or statutory guarantees of private
property, as articulated by Locke and the American Founders and Fram-
ers as well as Adam Smith and neo-classical economists.
However, professions are unique in their power-dispersal properties.
They disperse a publicly, openly exercised socio-cultural authority, posi-
tional power and fiducial responsibility from (previous or possible) state
control to structured situations, not to fluid sites or embedded exchanges.
That is, whether operating privately in civil society as intermediary asso-
ciations or officially as state-warranted agencies, professions disperse col-
lective power from (previous or possible) state hierarchy, organized in a
bureaucratic form, to an independent socio-cultural authority within
structured situations, organized in a collegial form.
Only a collegial form of organization can ensure that the socio-cultural
authority legitimating entrenched power within these structured situations
is indeed independent – of hierarchy, commercialism, patronage. Thus,
the presence of collegial formations explains why profession leaders – and
state officials – do not and cannot control this socio-cultural authority.
Even the most renowned, respected or influential profession leaders, or
state officials are unable to employ a profession’s socio-cultural authority
to employ it unilaterally or capriciously, one-sidedly in their own posi-
tional interests, without attracting notice, questioning and, ultimately,
challenges, from insiders as well as outsiders.
Indeed, the issue for institutional design is not whether professionalism
introduces structural pressures of support, antagonism or enervation pur-
posefully or inadvertently. The issue is also not whether contemporaries
label abuse – one-sided exercises of positional power – in structured situa-
tions “public,” as in civil law countries, or “private,” as in common law
countries. The issue for institutional design is whether specialized courts
or regulatory agencies (a) are capable of identifying one-sidedness with
consistency as it occurs in structured situations, whether in the state or
civil society. Then the issue becomes whether these courts or agencies
(b) endeavor to eliminate, reduce or mediate one-sidedness with consis-

tency on either public law grounds (in civil law countries) or fiducial law
grounds (in common law countries). If they do so exclusively regarding
one-sidedness within and by public governance structures, state agencies,
then the institutional design in place is that of limited government. If
they extend this to one-sidedness within and by private governance struc-
tures, including professions and publicly traded corporations, then the
institutional design in place is that of democratic society.
In either of these cases, consistency here hinges first and foremost on
judges or administrators applying bright-line procedural-normative
threshold standards of behavior as mandatory rules, respectively, on state
officials, corporate officers, and profession leaders. Such consistency is not
possible if instead they endeavor to apply more directly any substantive-
normative standards of behavior, in particular those of “social justice,”
whether administrative, statutory or constitutional. All such standards
are social controls, not possibly integrative.30 They are applied indepen-
dently of the collective guidance, the shared cognition and understand-
ing, which only procedural-normative thresholds provide and, certainly,
can institutionalize. Only on the basis of such bright line thresholds can
dispersed, specialized courts or regulatory agencies support institutional
designs spanning the state and civil society which distinguish limited
government from formal democracy, and then democratic society from
limited government.
In short, the activities, governance and regulation of every ongoing
professionalism project whether within intermediary associations or state
agencies always and everywhere bears on the larger social order first struc-
turally, then institutionally. Whatever cultural and social-psychological
consequences happen also to attend professionalism are strictly phenome-
nal; they are extraneous accompanying variables, not invariant. They are
not constitutive of professionalism as such.
Seemingly paradoxically, therefore, the institutional consequences of
professionalism are always and everywhere fully in evidence empirically,
even as they are typically illusive culturally. This remains the case even
when professionalism projects are stillborn or never initiated in certain
30)
See Sciulli 1992:28–39 for an extended discussion of the distinction between demon-
strable social control and possible social integration.
structured situations. That is, the institutional consequences remain invariant

irrespective of whether professionalism unfolds successfully within certain
structured situations, public or private, is stillborn or is never initiated
within others. Always and everywhere the governance and occupational
activities of certain structured situations in intermediary associations of
civil society affect institutional design because this affect is structural.
In all cases of professionalism the same institutional consequences are
in evidence irrespective of what individual professionals or observers hap-
pen to believe social-psychologically or happen to understand culturally
about their own activities. The same institutional consequences are in evi-
dence irrespective of whether any “ideology” of professionalism happens
to be available to occupation leaders or their patrons and sponsors. They
also are in evidence irrespective of the (substantive-normative) “valued
cultural patterns” which professionals happen to acknowledge implicitly
or recognize openly and then endeavor to implement purposefully.
All of this holds true irrespective of the particular society and particular
era in which professionals are providing expert services, as long as a
prevailing cultural truism holds fast which is distinguishing structured
situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites. Consider, by con-
trast, that no one, including in France, believes that haute cuisine and
haute couture unfold within structured situations whose occupational
activities and private governance bear on the institutional design of the
Republic. Of course, many French officials and citizens may believe
social-psychologically and understand culturally that haute cuisine and
haute couture contribute mightily to institutionalizing in French civil
society substantive-normative “valued cultural patterns.” Such beliefs and
understandings are entirely consistent with Parsons’ approach to both
social order and the sociology of professions. But they are irrelevant to the
structural and institutional approach to the sociology of professions being
presented now.
Haute couture and haute cuisine fail to qualify structurally as profes-
sions, first, because the clients and patrons of these expert services never
occupy entrenched positions of dependence. These clients and patrons are
hardly compelled by condition or circumstance to acquire, let alone
retain, particular design or culinary services over time. More important,
these occupations fail to qualify as professions, second, because couturiers
and chefs never occupy entrenched positions of power. They instead
remain free structurally, like everyone else providing goods and services at
either fluid sites or in embedded exchanges, to act as self-interestedly as
they wish (short, again, of violating general legal statutes). It goes without
saying that it is not credible to attribute to couturiers or chefs any respon-
sibility for shifts in the direction of change of institutional design, includ-
ing in France.
2. How Institutional Design Affects Professionalism
The converse of the relationship just discussed holds equally true, namely
how institutional design affects professionalism. All societies today and
since the mid-nineteenth century which fall short structurally and institu-
tionally of a lawful democratic society delimit, discourage and distort
professionalism in one way or another. Antagonism to professionalism is
particularly unambiguous in autocracies. From the French Revolution
through the mid-twentieth century to today such regimes not only govern
or otherwise regulate professions (and all other intermediary associations)
through decree. They also typically permit, encourage or mandate nepo-
tism and patronage (or other forms of favoritism), which compromise the
integrity of professional recruitment, instruction and advancement.
Correlatively, in both formal democracies (such as Mexico) and limited
governments (such as Japan and continental Rechtsstaats and Sozialstaats)
we find lesser degrees of antagonism to professionalism. Thus, we find
lesser degrees of structural delimitation, discouragement and distortion.
Yet, we do find varying degrees of this, which now we can identify analyt-
ically and thus with specificity.
In civil law countries of the Continent and elsewhere professions (and
corporate governance structures) are more likely to lose integrity as a
result of policy or substantive-normative encroachments, whether by
state-administrative decrees, legislative statutes or constitutional provi-
sions. After all, the ideal animating the occupational order on the Conti-
nent and elsewhere in civil law countries is disinterested, self-disciplined
and fiducial state administration (Dyson 1980). The ideal is not “free”
professions exercising positional power short of one-sidedness and bearing
fiducial responsibilities independently of the state.
In common law countries of the Anglo-American world professions
(and corporate governance structures) are more likely to lose integrity in a
different way, namely as a result of general diffusion of self-interestedness

(cupidity and opportunism) and market-mimicking behavior (commer-
cialism) from fluid sites and embedded exchanges into structured situa-
tions. Profession leaders and corporate officers are less likely within these
institutional designs to defer unduly to bureaucratic decrees.31 They are
also less likely to permit open nepotism and patronage, let alone venality,
to displace entirely procedural-normative thresholds of meritocracy for
entry, instruction and advancement. However, they are hardly immunized
or insulated entirely from this possibility, as the evolution of affirmative
action policies from the 1970s forward makes quite clear (see Belz 1991;
Pedriana and Stryker 1997) as well as today’s policy changes in energy,
health care and the other areas noted in footnote 31.32
As for commercialism, this can diffuse not only into dispersed profes-
sional-client and professional-patron relationships. It also can insinuate
itself into corporate sites of professional practice such as universities,
hospitals and research centers. At all such venues professionals can be per-
mitted, if not encouraged, to act in self-interested ways, and then oppor-
tunistically and one-sidedly. It goes without saying that commercialism
can intrude even more readily into the governance structures of publicly
traded corporations.
31)
From July 2009 to March 2010, however, the new Obama Administration is testing
this firewall quite dramatically, particularly in the areas of energy, health care reform and
regulation of and state intrusion into banking, home mortgages, insurance-retirement sol-
vency (including labor union and teacher union pension funds). Will professionals, and
their associations, in various occupational areas simply defer to new (notoriously vague)
executive branch decrees, too often absent congressional statute, or strenuously resist as
best they can in the name of a “higher calling” (namely, in the name of their own inde-
pendent socio-cultural authority and in the name of procedural-normative integrity more
generally)? Breakdowns by civil society professionals across so many occupational areas
could well shift the entire institutional design of the United States, from that of a (rela-
tively) lawful democratic society to that of a mere limited government. This will return
the U.S. institutionally to where it had been from the 1920s to the 1940s, such that all
citizens will experience phenomenologically increased one-sidedness (and opportunism) in
structured situations all across civil society.
32)
The congressional deals over health reform in the U.S. unambiguously include patron-
age (particularly to labor unions) and open venality (to Senators of Oklahoma, Louisiana,
New Hampshire and others).
Encroachments of commercialism are more likely to be exacerbated

than counteracted by stakeholder balancing, or any other seemingly
democratizing or leveling reforms of private governance structures. For
instance, stakeholder balancing in corporate governance does not some-
how ameliorate automatically or systemically encroachments of contracta-
rianism, of shareholder cupidity (see Sciulli 2001a). When corporate sites
of professional practice and the governance structures of publicly traded
corporations endeavor simply to broaden representation by stakeholders,
this trajectory of change is strictly substantive-normative in its mediating
power. It is not procedural-normative. Whether it is ameliorating or exac-
erbating of commercialism, therefore, is a matter exposed intrinsically to
incommensurable, competing interpretations. This is not an assessment
that possibly can readily secure intersubjective cognition and then shared
understanding or interpretation.
Indeed, the logic of balancing leads to publicly traded corporations as
well as professional associations (such as the ASA) becoming indistin-
guishable structurally from logrolling legislative bodies. In itself this
already represents a regression in the institutional design of a lawful demo-
cratic society, even as seemingly it simultaneously democratizes or levels
governance representativeness and responsiveness. It moves this institu-
tional design closer to that of simple formal democracy, as opposed to
shoring up that of even limited government. Stakeholder balancing and
other democratizing reforms do not intrinsically support – do not sup-
port structurally – institutional designs distinctive to either limited gov-
ernment or lawful democratic society.
Indeed, we propose that ongoing extensions of balancing are structur-
ally not unlike the diffusion of commercialism noted above. Always and
everywhere, a quickening of either balancing or commercialism can enervate
institutional designs of both limited government and lawful democratic
society. Somewhat ironically, they can enervate in particular structural
support for the parts of both institutional designs which bear on gover-
nance, as opposed to the parts which bear on either political representa-
tiveness and responsiveness or economic competitiveness. After all, the
integrity of governance in limited government and lawful democratic
society does not stand or fall on whether stakeholder representation is
broadening, as opposed to remaining relatively confined or, say, indirect
(through republican representation). Rather, it stands or falls on whether
one-sided exercises of positional power are being identified and sanc-

tioned, first within and around the state, in limited governments, and
then within and around major structured situations in civil society, in
lawful democratic societies.
Again, any decline in the procedural-normative integrity of profession
governance or corporate governance uniquely enervates institutional
designs of lawful democratic societies. Because this remains the case struc-
turally, it does not matter whether the source of decline is commercialism,
balancing or both – or clientelist favoritism (see below). Any decline,
from any source, not only renders lawful democratic societies less distin-
guishable institutionally from limited governments. It goes further: it
increases structurally any democracy’s vulnerability to (at time sudden)
autocratic regressions.33 Increasing incidences of one-sidedness in the
structured situations of intermediary associations, in major private gover-
nance structures, can only help to legitimate, in citizens’ everyday cultural
understandings, social-psychological beliefs and then ever-evolving collec-
tive memories, increasing instances of one-sidedness by the state, in pub-
lic governance structures.
We can identify these encroachments, and these structural conse-
quences, using a direct, parsimonious point of analysis. We can monitor
whether and when the corporate judiciary or related regulatory agencies
falter, rather than remaining steadfast, in upholding and extending a
bright-line procedural-normative threshold of behavior from the state to
major structured situations in civil society.
Finally, in clientelistic societies of the South and East, professions (and
corporate governance structures) are more likely to lose integrity as a
result of patronage or other types of personalist networks and favoritism.
33)
This is why the Tea Party movement’s centerpiece of returning to earlier constitutional
limitations on the federal government emerged so suddenly in the wake of bailouts in early
2009 and then efforts to pass, as a piece, major health care reform. In a democratic soci-
ety, this is not an outdated or passé concern. The Founders and Framers appreciated that
citizen vigilance is the ultimate bulwark against autocratic turns, whether sudden or
longer-term. Labeling such vigilance “regressive” or “conservative” today is to miss the
point entirely, which always is more structural (and procedural-normative) than policy-
specific (and substantive-normative). See Lowi 1969, 1995 for some of the most prescient
historical analyses of the stakes placed in jeopardy by federal encroachment, including by
activist federal courts.
Like commercialism and balancing in common law countries, and like

state-administrative decrees in civil law countries, patronage networks in
any setting can encroach into professional-client relationships, into cor-
porate sites of professional practice as well as into the governance struc-
tures of publicly traded corporations.
More distinctive to civil law countries than common law countries,
encroachments by patronage networks may stem, respectively, from Rechtsstaat
and Sozialstaat traditions as well as from even more deeply ingrained path-
dependence in accommodating and tolerating patron-client networks
(particularly in southern Europe).34 Or, as another option, patronage
encroachments may stem from contemporary efforts to maximize stake-
holder balancing in private governance structures, in the name of some
absolutist notion of “social justice” (a substantive-normative concept and
standard).35
Irrespective of their sources, encroachments – whether by patronage
network, administrative decree, or commercialism and balancing – can
reduce, and at the limiting case displace, the procedural-normative integ-
rity of professionalism projects. Encroachments from any source can
thereby introduce structural consequences into received institutional
designs. Everywhere these encroachments enervate in particular structural
support for the parts of any institutional design which bear on gover-
nance, public and private.
In short, the salience for both research and theory of identifying conse-
quences of professionalism which are institutional and invariant cannot be
overstated. We are now seeing conclusively, for the first time since the
founding of the sociology of professions in the 1930s, that certain conse-
quences of professionalism are never confined, either empirically or ana-
34)
Encroachments of patronage (and nepotism) are hardly restricted to southern Europe;
they are common across the Third World as well as typical in small towns everywhere.
Indeed, nepotism is hardly absent from Hollywood, or academe. Christian von Soest of
the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (CIGA) in Berlin is currently organizing
a collection of papers on neo-patrimonialism in non-OECD countries which will appear
in 2011 in Comparative Sociology.
35)
Obama Administration legislation, decrees and policy proposals advance simultaneously
into private governance structures: state decree, labor union favoritism (or advantages),
and both funding and encouragement for ACORN and other “community organizing”
entities which support the President both electorally and in policy preferences – all are
done in the name of “social justice” or “hope” or “empathy” or similarly vague goals.
lytically, to the occupational order and stratification system. With this

insight, we not only advance the empirical study of professions into virgin
territory, both cross-national and historical.36 We also advance the theory
of professions, by effectively shattering today’s received wisdom in sociol-
ogy and history which stems from revisionists’ most basic early criticisms
of Parsonian functionalism. We expose two crippling deficiencies in today’s
received wisdom: first, conceptual deficiencies at its theoretical core, and
then also either a naiveté or a more purposeful ideological posturing in its
reading of cross-national and historical cases of both successful and failed
professionalism. In addition, we simultaneously bring precision to Par-
sons’ earlier, vague references to the putative relationship between profes-
sionalism and social order.
VI. Addressing the Thirteen Questions in Brief

Given the overview above of our structural and institutional approach
and of how it departs from both Parsons’ cultural and social-psychological
approach and received wisdom’s socioeconomic approach, we can address
briefly each of the thirteen questions listed in the Preface.
1) The theoretical or conceptual framework we prefer is that presented
schematically above, which renews the two central tenets of Parsons’
efforts: to distinguish professions from all other occupations and to pro-
pose that the consequences of professionalism proper bear on the larger
social order.
2) Professions are unique instances of occupational upgrading within
structured situations which include an independent socio-cultural author-
ity, positional interests, two sets of fiducial responsibilities, two sets of
occupational orientations and the other constitutive qualities discussed
above. Not all learned occupations are professions, for instance: university
literature departments and social science departments dominated by
deconstructionists are not. Conversely, any manual occupation can
become a profession, to the extent it upgrades in the manner noted above
36)
It is very rare to find in scholarly journals devoted to comparative politics and compar-
ative sociology in general and to democratization more particularly even passing references
to professions, let alone methodical discussions of the relationship between professional-
ism and democratization. See Sciulli 2010b.
within structured situations (for instance, first-responders to natural and

man-made disasters may professionalize) (see Sciulli 2010a:188, 191,
237, 325–26,433 for elaboration).
3) Not all occupations, including expert occupations or middle-class
occupations, can professionalism. For instance, haute couture and haute
cuisine are not professions and never can become professions. The same is
true of entertainment and sports industries (see Sciulli 2010a:201–7-
,302–3,340,433 for elaboration).
4) A great deal is lost if professions are not distinguished analytically
and empirically from all other occupations on structural grounds. What is
lost, first, is the set of immediate consequences of professionalism which
exceed unambiguously the occupational order and stratification system.
More important, what also is lost is the entire set of institutional conse-
quences of professionalism, how professionalism enervates, irritates or
supports the larger civil society and state administration.
5) Professions are major intermediary associations, whether located in
civil society or in the state administrations, because they introduce an
independent socio-cultural authority and governance structure into any
society, whether historically or cross-nationally today.
6) This means that the sociology of professions is a subdiscipline – an
extraordinarily important one – of comparative political sociology. To see
it instead as a (rather minor) subdiscipline of the sociology of work and
occupations is to miss entirely the point of professionalism as such.
7) Professionalism is not an Anglo-American phenomenon or preserve
for it originated in Paris, in the Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture, from
the 1660s to 1680. The first culture of professionalism did, however,
emerge in the United States, but professionalism as such, being a struc-
tural and institutional phenomenon, can diffuse to any society depending
on the nature of its structured situations and their oversight.
8) Just answered above.
9) Societies certainly differ greatly in the number of professions they
have. Variation depends on the nature of structured situations and the
contexts of commercialism, state decree and patronage or clientelism.
Professionalism certainly can unfold inadvertently, as the Paris visual
Académie demonstrates, with participants having not the foggiest idea
what a profession is, means or entails.
10) Being found within or containing major structured situations, pro-
fessions are always found organizationally in the context of intermediary
associations or state-warranted independent agencies. Then, in addition,

forms of organization can either constrain or support professionalism:
bureaucratic, formally-democratic and clientelist forms of organization
are constraining whereas the collegial formation is supportive – indeed,
constitutive of ongoing professionalism.
11) Professions are governed by an independent governance structure,
consistently with an independent socio-cultural authority, positional inter-
ests, fiducial responsibilities and occupational orientations and the other
constitutive qualities discussed above. This independent governance struc-
ture may be private, if located within intermediary associations, or public,
if located in state-warranted agencies. But in either case, this governance
independence is in evidence empirically in dispersed workplaces and
instructional facilities. Professionals do not simply engage in commercial-
ism, or defer to decree, or engage in patronage favoritism without simul-
taneously jeopardizing their own positional interests and socio-cultural
authority.
12) Professions institutionalize the bright-line, procedural-normative
threshold of rule clarity and consistency discussed above. Thus, they
introduce an irritant into any legal system which revolves more funda-
mentally or more exclusively around substantive-normative statutes or
constitutional provisions, or around untamed commercial opportunism,
or around insinuating patronage favoritism. In turn, this larger legal con-
text determines whether professionalism is a force of the status quo, or
reaction, or liberalization.
13) If professions are practiced, governed or regulated in ways that tol-
erate or encourage breakdowns in integrity – failures to act consistently
with positional interests, the independent socio-cultural authority, fidu-
cial responsibilities and other qualities constitutive of professionalism –
then these affects harm patrons and clients, professions and their
associations, workplaces and instructional facilities. In turn, the affect of
breakdowns in integrity on the received institutional design depends on
whether it is one of autocracy, formal democracy, limited government or
lawful democratic society. Breakdowns in integrity can be identified
empirically in various ways: by whether or not courts or administrative
agencies endeavor to extend procedural-normative lawfulness to major
structured situations; by whether or not professional associations, work-
places and instructional facilities establish and maintain collegial forma-
tions; and by whether or not one-sided exercises of positional power (and
then opportunism) are tolerated by professional bodies as well as by dis-

persed practitioners and researchers on the ground. All of this can be iden-
tified first and foremost by the threshold standard of procedural-normative
lawfulness, not by any substantive-normative standard of social justice.
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C OMPARATIVE

Why Professions Matter: Structural Invariance,

One consensus in the sociology of professions today is that professions are

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/156913310X522598

all other occupations. This consensus was ﬁrmly established in 1988 by

today’s received wisdom. First, we expose deﬁciencies at its core, at a con-

I. From Parsons to Today’s Received Wisdom

1. Why Profession is a Problematic Concept

time. Being variables, voluntaristic norms, therefore, cannot possibly pro-

2. Parsons’ Rationale for Greater Abstraction

qualities with professions, in varying combinations, but only professions

II. Rise of Received Wisdom

Given this purposively blinkered understanding of the documentable –

standing continental discussions of the Bürgertum, of middle classes (Kocka

III. The Alternative Proposed Here

in origin, as Parsons proposed and as Bürgertum approaches still consider.

IV. Profession Invariance

1. Constitutive Structural Qualities

qualities constitutive of professionalism as such, always and everywhere.8

• Unfold within structured situations. These are sites of commercial

Because this ﬁrst structural quality of professionalism is so vitally impor-

A. Structured Situations and Entrenched Positions

of commercial exchange or occupational interaction, whether in civil soci-

constrain participant behavior short of naked self-interestedness – as

goldbrick, to cut corners wherever possible and, in particular, to disparage

However, this hardly means professionals typically act altruistically or self-

than either narrowly self-interestedly or one-sidedly. That is, as profes-

B. Socio-Cultural Authority and Fiducial Responsibility

• Successfully claim an independent socio-cultural authority within

The independence of a profession’s socio-cultural authority, along with the

is eﬀectively what typically constrains professionals’ exercises of positional

1. can be used by profession leaders against overreaching state admin-

• Are held accountable structurally, positionally, to two sets of ﬁducial

Manifestly norm-based, extra-economic behavior is as constitutive of any

Going further, professionals also bear, equally structurally or position-

C. Dividing Line and Two Occupational Orientations

• Are held accountable structurally, positionally, to two occupational

As behavior, credible claims to incarnate truth and morality are invariant

D. Four More Invariant Structural Qualities

• Establish and maintain their independent socio-cultural authority in

They do not establish and maintain their authority through unwarranted

• Establish collegial formations which uniquely institutionalize proce-

consistency18 – which, ﬁrst and foremost, permits dispersed profes-

1. instances of possible positional one-sidedness (or opportunism);

• Privilege merit structurally in both instructional entry and matricula-

Meritocracy is vitally important especially during the pioneering initiation

in mid-nineteenth century London, or in medicine in late-nineteenth cen-

• Establish and maintain identiﬁable jurisdictions or ﬁelds (if not

Eﬀective patrolling is possible by professions only because these jurisdic-

2. More on the Dividing Line

Only professions, not any other expert occupations or middle class

• Jeopardizes the positional power and compromises the positional

Other experts and practitioners, in short, may well exhibit behaviorally

V. Immediate and Institutional Consequences

1. Immediate Consequences, Variable and Invariant

The immediate consequences of professionalism are those noted fre-

subscription newsletters). Aside from being familiar, many immediate

A. Problem One: Harms Displace Integrity

Our point is that the evenhanded – disinterested and deliberative –

B. Excursus: Disciplinary Bias

above – and possibly be elected President? Amitai Etzioni, 1995 President,

C. Problem Two: Immediate Consequences Alone

2. Invariant Institutional Consequences

Put more speciﬁcally, the bright-line, procedural-normative threshold of