So, if Robert Moses was the most influential person in New York City in the 20th century. It is an extraordinary statement. It might be worth understanding where his power came from. So, let's talk a little bit about where we believe that power came from. Earlier in this module we introduced French and Raven's framework for the bases of social power. So, let's just do a little checklist. Where does Moses draw on any of these sources of social power? Well, reward power. We know that he was able to reward politicians who went along with him, landowners who went along with him, contractors who went along with him. He was famous for not profiting himself from his enterprises. He only took a dollar in salary. He had the good fortune of coming from a wealthy family but he made sure others profited from his enterprises. So that is one source. Coercive power. One of the reasons LaGuardia was reluctant to oppose him. He could have opposed him on other authorities, other commissions, he could have punished him other places. But Moses's tentacles went across so many places that if LaGuardia oppose him in one place he could hurt him in a second place. And so this coercive power with LaGuardia, with the mayor of New York. If he could do this to the mayor of New York, you can imagine there's nobody that was immune to it. He definitely had coercive power. Dropping to the bottom he had legitimate power. The offices he held gave him that. People granted him deference by title alone as we talked about in the French and Raven framework. He had referent power and this is an interesting one because you would think that a guy that had this many other sources of power might not worry about his image, might not worry about charisma, but as we learned from Cairo in his investigations to Moses and is sometimes lost in people's understanding of Moses now. He was very diplomatic he curried favor with the media and he worried about things that you would be amazed that a guy like this would worry about him for example the cardstock on invitations to an event that went out to media. He worried about the cardstock. He was very much worried about reverent power. And then finally, expert power. He was an expert in building these bridges and tunnels and infrastructure projects. Municipalities from around the world would send their people to New York to study with him. He was recognized as an expert in building and construction, engineering and running the the crews that needed to do that. But that was only one source of his expert power, what else was he an expert in? From the story alone we know that he was an expert bill writer. He was considered "the best bill rider in Albany." He wasn't even a legislator and he was considered the best bill writer in Albany. So, he had this other source of expert power. And then finally, he developed... He helped develop the whole notion of financing through authorities. He was an expert in financing in a way that basically jumped ahead of everybody else at the time. So, he had these three sources of expert power any one of which would have been enough to build a career on. We would all hope to be as expert as he was in one of these domains and one of our lifetimes and he had it in three. So, you look across what is essentially a checklist for us and you see that he drew on every source of power, multiple times in some cases. And that begins to be not surprising that he was able to hold power as long as he did. And this is something that we know about power that the more enduring power comes from those who draw from more sources. Moses had as enduring power as we've seen and it should be a surprise to us that he draws from all the sources that French and Raven suggest matter.
