What’s the Difference Between the Mafia and the Claremont School Board?

How Claremont’s school board lost power - and what it reveals about who really rules.

Introudction

Imagine two structures that look nothing alike on the surface, yet behave similarly when money runs short. A mafia crew decides who pays, who is protected, and who takes the hit when cash is missing. A school district is supposed to be the opposite: public, accountable, voter-directed. The comparison here is structural, not criminal. It is about who actually wields power, who controls information, and who can impose costs that others cannot refuse.

Claremont’s school district entered the 2025 school year with a multimillion-dollar hole. After months of confusion, officials confirmed a deficit of roughly $5 million. The district accepted a four-million-dollar loan from Claremont Savings Bank to keep schools open, with repayment tied to anticipated state aid. Closures and cuts were put on the table, and staff positions were eliminated, while lawmakers floated new state oversight tools in response. These are the key facts we will analyze through the lens of the political thinkers Bertrand de Jouvenel and Gaetano Mosca: a confirmed $5.01 million deficit, talk of state oversight following an audit that spotlighted mismanagement, a bank loan to bridge immediate cash flow, layoffs and program cuts, and consideration of a school closure. (NH Journal)

Theory in Plain English

Bertrand de Jouvenel asked a hard question: what is Power and why does it grow? He treats Power as the capacity to command obedience and extract resources, and he argues that Power tends to expand by using crises to justify taking more. In his words, the face of Power may change, yet its essence persists.

“Power changes its appearance but not its reality.” (de Jouvenel 1945, preface) (Internet Archive)

He also describes Power in its “pure state” as command that lives for itself and its fruits, which is a concise way of saying that authority tends to seek more authority unless checked.

“I shall, therefore, take Power in its pure state, command that lives for its sake and for its fruits.” (de Jouvenel 1945) (Internet Archive)

Sovereignty in this frame is revealed by who can impose new burdens without an effective veto. If an actor can make you pay, comply, or accept losses when you would rather not, that actor is sovereign in practice even if not in law.

Gaetano Mosca focuses on who rules. His baseline claim is that every society is governed by a small, organized minority that directs the unorganized majority. The minority’s advantage lies in discipline and coordination, not necessarily in superior virtue. Mosca also emphasizes that ruling classes change over time when their capacities no longer fit the moment.

“Ruling classes decline inevitably when they cease to find scope for the capacities through which they rose to power.” (Mosca 1939, 66) (NYU Pages)

These two thinkers give us a diagnostic: follow the flow of obedience, money, and information. The place where those converge is where sovereignty actually sits.

Theory Applied to Claremont

From 2019 to 2025, Claremont’s formal sovereign in education remained the elected School Board. In practice, power drifted.

Information control and audit delays. Reporting shows Claremont was years behind in getting a clean handle on its books. By August 2025, an audit revealed mismanagement and a shortfall estimated between one and five million dollars, leaving the district with little cash to pay bills and threatening the start of school. That confusion persisted long enough that officials could not state the final number for weeks. (New Hampshire Bulletin)

Emergency finance and external leverage. To open schools, the board accepted a $4 million loan from Claremont Savings Bank, to be repaid in April using anticipated state education adequacy aid. The loan stabilized operations in the short term while deepening dependence on future revenues that had not yet been realized. (Valley News)

Cuts pushed downward. In the scramble, officials eliminated 39 positions, many of them newly created. Lawmakers and news outlets also reported that 19 educator contracts were not approved, and a mid-year closure vote targeted an elementary school. Programs, including athletics, were put at risk while administrators worked through the crisis. (New Hampshire Public Radio)

Rising state involvement. As the deficit entered statewide headlines, lawmakers proposed increased state oversight and even pathways for state intervention in local districts facing fiscal collapse. The message was clear: local mismanagement invites central control. (New Hampshire Bulletin)

Bottom line of the facts. The district later confirmed a $5.01 million deficit after an internal review. The district’s books were so chaotic that the precise figure took time to verify. Cuts and a bank loan became the bridge to keep doors open. (NH Journal)

Analysis Using Theory

Mosca’s organized minority. Mosca tells us to look for the disciplined group capable of acting in concert. In Claremont’s crisis, the decisive moves were made by a relatively small coalition: senior administrators who controlled daily financial information, legal and financial advisers brought in to steer the response, and outside institutions like the bank and, prospectively, state agencies. This coalition was coherent enough to define the options. The larger public, teachers, and non-union staff were not comparably organized.

Mosca also warns that ruling groups decay when their capacities no longer match circumstances. The district’s internal capacity to manage grants and accounting fell far short of the complexity it had taken on. When the old capacities failed, authority did not revert to the public by default. Instead, a different organized minority stepped in: consultants, lenders, and state officials. That is a textbook rotation within the political class, not a restoration of popular rule. (Mosca 1939) (NYU Pages)

Du Jouvenel’s Growth of Power. Du Jouvenel teaches that Power grows by promising protection in the midst of peril. When the district could not guarantee payroll or opening day, the price of protection was new dependence, first on a bank loan backed by anticipated future aid, then on greater state oversight. The surface face changed from local autonomy to outside supervision, yet the essence remained an expanding command over local resources.

His maxim applies directly:

“Power changes its appearance but not its reality.” (de Jouvenel 1945, preface) (Internet Archive)

The reality was that someone had to decide who would bear the pain. That choice is the test of sovereignty. In Claremont, cost shifting landed on the least organized: non-administrative staff were cut, families faced school closure and program losses, and taxpayers were implicitly pledged to future repayment schedules. Meanwhile, the technical stratum that managed the information environment retained influence during and after the crisis. (New Hampshire Public Radio)

Who could impose costs without consent? Legal sovereignty, said the board, represented the voters. Practical sovereignty emerged where actors could impose unavoidable burdens. The bank set terms, the state outlined conditions for any assistance, and the administrative-legal coalition selected which positions and programs would be sacrificed. The public did not meaningfully consent to those specifics. They were confronted with outcomes that followed from prior opacity and delay.

Where the analogy to a mafia is useful and where it stops. A mafia enforces tribute through credible threats of violence. Claremont’s outcomes arrived through legal and administrative channels. The structural similarity lies in the choreography of extraction and protection. A small group controlled the indispensable information, framed the choices, and presented a bill that others could not refuse. The analogy ends there, which is an important limit to keep in view.

State centralization as the crisis dividend. Du Jouvenel stresses that central authorities gain by allying with the public against intermediate bodies. In this case, state leaders offered the prospect of stronger oversight to protect taxpayers and students from local mismanagement. The likely result would be more centralized leverage over local districts, a shift that rarely unwinds after the storm passes. (New Hampshire Bulletin)

Implications and Conclusion

The lesson is stark. When elected bodies do not master their own numbers, sovereignty migrates to those who do. In Claremont, the migration ran from voters to board, from board to administrators and advisers, then outward to lenders and state officials. At each step, the ability to impose costs moved further from the people who must bear them.

If citizens want policy to match consent, they need more than ballots. They need standing visibility into money and obligations, and they need board members who can read a balance sheet as fluently as they can read a mission statement. Otherwise, the district will continue to be run by the only organized minority in the room.

Three practical commitments would change incentives.

First, transparent, real-time finance. Publish a public-facing cash ledger that reconciles monthly with bank statements and flags variances against the voted budget. No jargon, just simple categories that any resident can follow. [source unavailable]

Second, audit discipline. Insist that no new budget is advanced to voters without the timely completion of the prior year’s audit and an open reconciliation session with the board. Where audits slip, spending growth pauses automatically.

Third, informed representation. Recruit and elect at least one board member with professional accounting or public finance credentials, and require periodic training for all members on state reporting and grant compliance.

These reforms are not glamorous. They are sovereignty preservation. Without them, Claremont will drift back to the same structural pattern: a small, coordinated group setting terms while the public reacts to faits accomplis.

Du Jouvenel’s warning about Power’s persistence and Mosca’s clarity about organized minorities are more than theory. They are a map. Follow the map to the place where burdens are assigned without your consent. That is where sovereignty actually sits. Claremont’s crisis is painful precisely because it shows that truth in the open. The path out is straightforward if not easy: rebuild public control over information, tighten the link between audits and budgets, and keep decision authority close to the people who pay. Only then does the legal sovereign become the real one.

Works Cited

• de Jouvenel, Bertrand. On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth. New York: Viking Press, 1945. Quote cited from the public domain text hosted at Internet Archive: “Power changes its appearance but not its reality.” (Internet Archive)

• de Jouvenel, Bertrand. On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth. Public domain text, Internet Archive. “I shall, therefore, take Power in its pure state, command that lives for its sake and for its fruits.” (Internet Archive)

• Mosca, Gaetano. The Ruling Class. Excerpt with pagination reproduced by New York University course site. “Ruling classes decline inevitably when they cease to find scope for the capacities through which they rose to power.” Page 66. (NYU Pages)

• Fisher, Damien. “In Claremont Deficit Disaster, Bluff Elementary Could Be First Casualty.” NH Journal, September 8, 2025. (NH Journal)

• Fisher, Damien. “Claremont Schools Confirm 5 Million Deficit After Internal Review.” NH Journal, September 25, 2025. (NH Journal)

• Fisher, Damien. “From Claremont to Concord, School Deficits Spark Debate Over State Oversight.” NH Journal, October 13, 2025. (NH Journal)

• DeWitt, Ethan. “Claremont School District Budget Woes Prompt GOP Calls for More State Oversight.” New Hampshire Bulletin, October 15, 2025. (New Hampshire Bulletin)

• DeWitt, Ethan. “Amid Claremont Fiscal Crisis, Republicans Propose Path for State Takeovers of School Districts.” New Hampshire Bulletin, November 7, 2025. (New Hampshire Bulletin)

• Valley News. “Claremont Schools Secure 4 Million Loan Amid Fiscal Crisis.” September 5, 2025. (Valley News)

• Valley News. “Fate of Claremont School Year Still Is in Limbo as Officials Await Financial Data.” August 21, 2025. (Valley News)

• NHPR. “How did this happen? Uncertainty continues amid Claremont’s school funding crisis.” August 28, 2025. (New Hampshire Public Radio)

• WCAX. “Facing budget crisis, Claremont to close elementary school next month.” September 19, 2025. (https://www.wcax.com)

• InDepthNH. “Senate Committee Puts Off Action on Claremont School District Help.” October 14, 2025. (InDepthNH.org)