Relational Power in Volunteer Aid: A Preliminary Political Economy

This preliminary study examines how resources, paid and unpaid work, institutional rules, classification, and heterogeneous valuations condition the practical possibility of volunteer aid. It distinguishes resource possession from access and conversion, service delivery from the reproduction of supporting capacity, and reported performance from the historically situated relations that produce it. Its generative relational (GR) approach retains ontological suspension and models historically constituted relations through partial, evidence-indexed representations of their manifestations. Sections 1–21 examine resource dependence, labour and care, eligibility, infrastructure, information, contractual governance, credit, reciprocity, value circulation, institutional power, and historical feedback. Their individual records and assessments are integrated through a finite diagnostic configuration: a question-specific selection of typed observations, qualified cross-record links, and explicit unresolved information. Constructed cases illustrate how similar service totals can be compatible with different histories of access, burdens, control, and capacity renewal. A subsequent methodological analysis specifies requirements for construct validation, rival-mechanism testing, causal identification, and independent normative or legal judgment. The contribution is a revisable framework for identifying and comparing political-economic mechanisms in bounded aid settings, including conditions under which institutional arrangements enable support or constrain affected participants. The paper proposes neither a universal measure of value or power nor an empirically validated theory of exploitation. Its remaining obligations concern conceptual economy, source-level review, empirical discrimination among competing explanations, and responsible interdisciplinary translation.