Community Power and Public Welfare*

Abstract

the concept of community. However, of the variety of possible issueareas that could be related to power structures, some are relevant for municipalities, others for the county, and others encompass smaller and larger corporate units.1 Both the scope of these issues-areas and the participants who shape their outcomes must still be considered in spite of the inability to determine community boundaries. It would appear, therefore, that researches of local power structures must confront alternative units of analysis such as the municipality or the county. The immediacy of this problem has been underscored by the organization of most Community Action Agencies under the Office of Economic Opportunity on a county or multi-county basis, and by public welfare, which tends to be administered on a county basis. The purpose of this investigation is to apply a theoretical and methodological orientation developed in some structural community power research to the county as a unit of analysis in hopes of assessing the viability of both the unit and the orientation. The study is necessarily of a preliminary and exploratory nature since precedents in both these main concerns are