American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1987 Can We Empower Others? The Paradox of Empowerment in the Governing of an Alternative Public School I Judith Gruber 2 University of California, Berkeley Edison J. Trickett University of Maryland, College Park Empowerment is defined in terms of the extent of decision-making power that people actually wieM in an organization. The concept is developed through an analysis of the participative decision-making of the Policy Council or governing body o fan alternative public school, on which parents, students, and teachers were equally represented. The council failed to empower students and parents for two reasons. First, the council existed in a broader institu- tional ecology of inequality in which teachers were dominant. Council members came with significant inequalities in the roles they played in the school, responsibility for the school, knowledge of school activities, educa- tional expertise, and control of implementation of council decisions. Second, the school's overall ideology of egalitarianism created organizational dynamics that made it all but impossible to overcome the impact of these inequalities. The authors concluded that although more careful attention to contextually based inequalities would improve the prospects for empowerment, there is a fundamental paradox in the idea of people empowering others because the very institutional structure that puts one group in a position to empower also works to undermine the act of empowerment. ~The authors thank the faculty, parents, and students of High School in the Community for allowing their work to proceed. Willis Hawley, director of the overall evaluation of the school, provided consistent support. We thank Patricia Brown, Joseph Houska, Janet Weiss, and John Witte for their constructive comments, and Jacqueline Asmussen for secretarial assistance. In particular, the substantive comments provided by anonymous reviewers were very valuable. 2All correspondence should be sent to Judith Gruber, Department of Political Science, Bar- rows Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720. 353 0091-0562/87/0600-0353505.00/0 © 1987PlenumPublishing Corporation