brokerage

brokerage, process in which individuals called brokers act as intermediaries between individuals or groups who do not have direct access to each other.

The broker provides a link between those segmented or isolated groups or individuals so that access to goods, services, or information is enabled. Brokers possess specialized knowledge or resources that enable them to act more effectively than those individuals or groups could themselves. In some cases, brokers may have specialized knowledge that gives them access to resources or services that clients would not otherwise be able to access; in other cases, brokers may simply be trusted by different parties who do not trust each other or may be able to operate across multiple cultural systems. A crucial element of brokerage is the broker’s monopoly of exchanges between separate domains. Brokers facilitate exchanges, but their central position also confers power because they control information flows and communication between isolated groups or individuals.

Brokerage studies have developed out of various strands of research. One was the social network studies in social anthropology, sociology, and social psychology that focused on individual- or ego-centred social networks and the ability conferred by a person’s central position in a community or organizational network to control flows of information and communication between isolated groups or individuals. Another strand examined brokerage and social inequality, especially in developing societies. In these societies, brokerage linked citizens and elites via informal, voluntary, and asymmetrical relationships and was part of a broader system of political clientelism. These exchanges fulfilled crucial economic functions but were overlaid with imputed moral qualities such as friendship or kinship, which disguised the inequality that created the need for such exchanges. The distinction between broker and patron is an analytic one; both have a monopoly over resources that clients need, but patrons directly control the resources whereas brokers provide the resources that are under someone else’s control. Finally, studies of ethnicity highlighted brokerage links between ethnic groups. These studies of brokerage have been further elaborated by the work on social capital that focuses on the role of bridging capital in maintaining social consensus in culturally diverse societies.

Brokerage has also been significant in electoral systems (especially urban political machines), as political brokers trade their control over allocations of public goods for clients’ political and electoral support, and brokers may derive private advantage from their access to public resources. In contemporary politics, brokers provide informal linkages within policy-making communities and link policy communities with external groups such as community groups and special-interest groups.

Brokers act as proxies for groups whose interests or values they are familiar with, and the process makes it easier to get the support of outside groups. It is sometimes argued that diverse values and beliefs are inevitable in societies with distinctive ethnic, policy, or practice groups. In this context, brokers act as cultural translators and so reduce misunderstandings. Brokerage, as bridging capital, encourages cohesion and stability and maintains a broad social consensus in segmented societies. However, insofar as such segmentation implies inequality or power differentials, brokerage can also obscure such differentials.