THE ECOLOGICAL APPROACH IN MEASURING COMMUNITY POWER CONCENTRATION: AN ANALYSIS OF HAWLEY'S MPO RATIO.

Comparative research into the causes and consequences of variation in community power structure has been hampered by the absence of a reliable objective indicator of power concentration, in an earlier work, Amos Hawley suggested that the "MPO ratio" (the proportion of the labor force classified by the US. census as Managers, Officials and Proprietors), could be used as an index of power concentration in a community. The lower the MRO ratio, the more concentrated the power. This hypothesis is tested by computing MPO ratios for three groups of communities whose power structures had been previously studied by the reputational or decisional methods. The results show that MPO ratios are larger in communities with concentrated tower structures, directly contrary to Hawley's prediction. This may be due to the MPO's relationship to community stratification and type of political organization. The small amount of variation in power concentration "explained" by variation in MPO ratios leads to the conclusion that it is not a valid indicator of relative power distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]