Iron Law of Institutions

The Iron Law of Institutions is a proposition in the field of political science. The proposition states that the people who hold power in institutions are guided principally by preserving power within the institution, rather than the success of the institution itself. As originally stated, there is some ambiguity as to whether the people who control the institution are prepared to ignore the success of the institution, or its power. However, in most cases it may be safely assumed that the two things being ignored amount to the same thing.
As originally stated
The expression is often attributed to Jonathan Schwarz at his blog, A Tiny Revolution. He phrases it thus:
:The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.
:This is true for all human institutions, from elementary schools up to the United States of America. If history shows anything, it's that this cannot be changed. What can be done, sometimes, is to force the people running institutions to align their own interests with those of the institution itself and its members.
The context in which Schwarz is speaking is his contention that the Democratic Party leadership is willfully indifferent to the huge potential numbers of disaffected voters who would most likely vote for it in droves if it embraced (in this case) the standing antiwar movement. Put another way, Schwarz, et al.., assume that adopting policies much closer to their own is so obviously a huge vote-getter, that no compelling explanation exists for the Democratic Party failing to do so except Iron Law of Institutions: the existing leadership fears losing power within the Democratic Party if it embraced the incoming hordes of enthusiastic new antiwar voters. Two questionable assumptions must be taken as given by this theory, however. First, that there were "hordes" of potential new voters to be gained by embracing the antiwar movement. Secondly, that doing so would not alienate another large set of voters. Both Presidential Campaign in the primaries and general election campaign demonstrated the limits of Schwarz' example. While both mobilized additional support, neither achieved electorial success.
Other examples cited by Schwarz include the late President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, whose decision to invade Iran, then Kuwait, resulted in catastrophes that he ought to have been capable of anticipating; a cabal by the Democratic Party leadership in 1972 to undermine the chances of George McGovern's election; and purging of the Red Army prior to 1941. In each of these cases, as understood by the writer, the leader obviously placed his own power within the organization above the survival or success of the organization itself.
A Google Books search for "iron law of institutions" yields hits going back to 1972, so Schwartz may have been referencing a law previously formulated elsewhere.
Origins of the phrase
The term is a play on Ferdinand Lassalle's expression, "Iron law of wages." Numerous "iron laws" exist, such as the "Iron law of oligarchy", and so on.
Criticism
The concept is problematic for several reasons: first, there is a difference between an institution's power continuing to exist over time, and that same institution's success in a particular mission. In the examples Mr. Schwarz cites (see above), this distinction is quite important: Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran certainly had a high probability of failure, but it is not at all clear that the would have regarded such a war as a defeat. (The possibility that Saddam believed a disastrous war would prolong his rule, or strengthen it, may well be the case, but needs some defense.) If Mr. Karp's allegations regarding the Democratic Party in the 1972 elections are true, there arises the question of what the institution's mission really was. "Success" may weaken the long-run power of the institution.
Another problem is that the "law" cannot be falsified, since there are many potential "institutions" and "meta-institutions" that may exist. Saddam Hussein, for example, was not merely leader of Iraq; he was leader of the Baath Party, and also leader of a faction within the Baath. If a conclusive exception is discovered, then the defender of the law can argue that the virtuous leader was defending a faction within the institution; or one can insist that the leader thought of herself as leader of the nation, rather than the party. The law can be applied so vaguely that calling it an "iron law" sounds like snark. This objection can be defeated by reformulating the law to clearly specify what institution any leader or group of leaders can be supposed to care about. However, this is not as easy as it sounds, since most powerful people can be understood to identify as leaders of many different organizations.
A final criticism is that the Iron Law of Institutions does not incorporate a logical role for probability. In situations where institutions take risks, it would be reasonable to demand a prediction of how managers would weigh risks and benefits. If a manager realizes that a risk will endanger the very existence of the institution, then it would be trivial to assume that the manager's own career within the institution would also be endangered. Moreover, the probability of the manager's own career debacle would be greater than the probability of the institution's collapse.

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