Concentrated obligation-credit enhances both individual power and collective output.

Evidence

Similarly, in political settings such as a legislature, a legislator in a position with extra resources (such as the Speaker of the House of Representatives or the Majority Leader of the Senate in the U.S. Congress) can, by effective use of resources, build up a set of obligations from other legislators that makes it possible to get legislation passed that would otherwise be stymied. This concentration of obligations constitutes social capital that is useful not only for this powerful legislator but useful also in getting an increased level of action on the part of a legislature. Thus, those members of legislatures among whom such credits are extensive should be more powerful than those without extensive credits and debits because they can use the credits to produce bloc voting on many issues. — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 93

Categorization

• XREF: The Senate Club and bloc voting connect directly to the reader’s interest in how closed/dense networks can subvert formal state institutions rather than support them. — connects to: Obligation-credit structures concentrate power in hierarchical and stratified settings. — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 92; Hierarchical structures concentrate reusable credit slips of social obligation. — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 92; Combined labor generates a social force exceeding the sum of individual efforts — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 246 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Does the reader’s Coleman frame treat this concentration of credit as the network-closure resource working FOR the institution (legislative output) rather than against it — where does the mechanism flip?

Broader Connections

• Obligation-credit structures concentrate power in hierarchical and stratified settings. #expands (0.90) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 92
• Hierarchical structures concentrate reusable credit slips of social obligation. #expands (0.85) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 92