The Internal Life of Groups; Protest Business or School of Democracy?

Why do some associations provide members with an effective voice whereas others have internal democracy in name only? We theoretically combine population-ecology with Hirschman’s strategic response model. This leads us the hypothesize that in dense, competitive organizational environments, the effective choice available to members will lead members to respond to decline with exit rather than voice. In low-dense, monopoly-like situations members demand and receive effective voice options. We assess this argument on the basis of the CIG survey among interest group leaders in several European countries. We control for the types of members (individuals, firms, agencies), level of professionalization and use country dummies to identify country-level differences. We measure the competitive pressures on the basis of a self-assessment on the part of leaders and a measure of density. Our study contributes by theoretically connecting the macro-level population-level factor to micro-level intra-organizational processes, and by specifying the nature of the organizational link between interests in society and those represented in the interest group population.