The Deeper Inquiry

The social movement literature on institutionalization provides the most extensive analysis of how transformational projects are transformed by their encounter with the world. Sidney Tarrow's Power in Movement (1994, 3rd edition 2011) examines the dynamics of movement cycles — how movements mobilize, sustain themselves, and either institutionalize or dissolve — with particular attention to how the encounter with the state and with commercial institutions shapes movement development. John McCarthy and Mayer Zald's resource mobilization theory, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward's analysis of how institutionalization weakens movements, and the more recent work of Sarah Soule and other organizational sociologists on movement-institution dynamics collectively constitute the most empirically grounded available analysis of the contact problem.

The institutional theory literature's analysis of isomorphism — the process by which organizations come to resemble each other regardless of their founding differences — is directly relevant to Providence's scaling challenge. Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell's foundational paper 'The Iron Cage Revisited' (1983) identified three mechanisms of isomorphism: coercive (conforming to external requirements), mimetic (copying successful organizations), and normative (conforming to professional standards). All three will exert themselves on Providence as it grows, and the constitutional architecture must be designed with the specific awareness that isomorphic pressure is continuous and often operates below the level of conscious awareness.