Organizing for Collective Action

The Political Economies of Associations

David Knoke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351328708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Defensa política

Organizing for Collective Action investigates the political and economic behaviors of national associations, including trade associations, professional societies, labor unions, and public interest groups. It focuses upon the ways that these organizations acquire resources and allocate them to various collective actions, particularly for member services, public relations, and political action. This analysis is structured around three broad theoretical paradigms for collective action: (1) the problem of societal integration which concerns the ways that people are tied to organizations and the ways that organizations connect their members with the larger society; (2) the problem of organizational governance which considers how individuals become unified collectivities capable of acting in a coordinated manner, and (3) the problem of public policy influence which involves interactions among public and private interest groups to formulate the binding decisions under which we all must live.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER
1

UNLIMITED FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION

There is only one country on the face of the earth where the citizens enjoy unlimited freedom of association for political purposes. This same country is the only one where the continual exercise of the right of association has been introduced into civil life and where all the advantages of which civilization can confer are procured by means of it.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America
Vol. II, p. 115 (1945)

In 1983, opponents of Maine’s annual one-day moose hunt succeeded in placing a referendum on the ballot to ban the sport. At the urging of the state’s wildlife and fisheries department, the North American Wildlife Federation distributed 200,000 copies of a brochure explaining that, far from decimating the moose population, the hunt actually produced a healthier herd by culling out weak and sick animals. Although a majority of voters polled just 2 months before the election favored eliminating the hunt, the brochure apparently changed enough opinions so that the referendum was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin.

Recent innovations in electronic word processing have radically altered newspaper and magazine publishing technologies, reaching well beyond the composing room into the advertising and editorial departments. Remote personal computers and phone transmissions now allow race tracks, funeral homes, and police stations to dump news copy directly into a publisher’s computers, bypassing journalists altogether. Strikebreaking activity becomes harder to detect when reporters can work outside the office and send in copy electronically. Alarmed at the threat of job losses, The Newspaper Guild’s 1985 national convention delegates unanimously called for increased vigilance by TNG locals. “Adequate jurisdiction and coverage clauses” must be negotiated in bargaining-unit contracts, to protect union members against employers contracting work to freelancers, forcing employees to use their personal home computers without adequate reimbursement, and accepting remotely transmitted copy from news sources.

As the immigration reform bill struggled through years of congressional debate, an American Society of Engineering Education spokesman testified at one of the innumerable subcommittee hearings. Primarily an association for teachers and graduate fellowships, the ASEE observed an increasing shortage of college engineering faculty. One short-term solution would be to permit foreign nationals to teach in American colleges immediately after receiving their Ph.D.’s, instead of returning home for two years as then required. The ASEE testimony convinced the immigration bill’s congressional sponsors to modify the provisions eventually enacted into law in 1987.

In celebration of the nation’s 200th anniversary, Bikecentennial, a bicycle trip planning organization, was born. Within a decade it grew to more than 20,000 members whose annual $18 dues gave them access to organized crosscountry bike tours, discounts on books and merchandise, a free copy of the Cyclists Yellow Pages, subscription to the bimonthly Bike Report, voting rights to elect Bikecentennial’s board of directors, and assurances of “an effective voice in bicycling matters.” With a $60,000 foundation grant, the association mapped more than 15,000 coast-to-coast miles of “quiet, scenic secondary roads” for its tour members.

These episodes—easily multiplied a thousandfold—illustrate the wide diversity of purposes and activities pursued by collective action organizations. This book provides a theoretical and empirical account of the political economies of American associations. Elements for a comprehensive theory lie scattered across diverse disciplines such as sociology, political science, organization analysis, business management, social work, labor economics, recreation and leisure studies, and law. The common threads stitching these strands together are people’s decisions to become involved in a collective activity, the organizing efforts of association leaders, resource exchanges within and between organizations, the provision of incentives to participants, collective decisions on the allocation of group resources, and the pursuit of political goals in the larger society. Extracting a multilevel conceptual model from these elements and testing its implications with data from numerous American associations comprise the focal point of this book. This chapter lays the background for the specific research questions raised in subsequent chapters. It begins with an analytic definition of the collective action organization.

What are Collective Action Organizations?

Examples of collective action organizations abound. They range from a neighborhood block club trying to halt property decay to an elite committee of elder statesmen seeking international security through a stronger national defense. They pervade every functional subsystem of society: ceramic manufacturing trade associations, consumer food-buying cooperatives, municipal garbage labor unions, polar exploration societies, ballet promotion councils, fellowships of religious athletes, leagues of amateur bass fishermen, self-help groups of displaced homemakers, confederacies of civil libertarians—the list is endless. At latest count, the Gale Research Company’s Encyclopedia of Associations, which does not tabulate locally based organizations, listed more than 20,000 American national associations fitting a reasonable description of a collective action organization (Koek and Martin 1987). Some of these associations are not membership groups (e.g., clearinghouses, research institutes, nonprofit foundations). However, the vast majority consist of voluntary affiliated natural-person (or organizational) members, all presumably sharing a common interest in the stated collective action goals the association seeks. For convenience, the terms “association” and “organization” are used interchangeably throughout this book to indicate “collective action organization.”

Collective action organizations seek nonmarket solutions to individual or group problems. A person joins an association to enjoy benefits and satisfactions that can only be obtained by interacting with others having similar interests. The contrast between a clinic delivering paid professional therapy to patients and a group of substance abusers meeting to support one another’s struggles with their addictions is obvious. Less evident is a trade association of widget-manufacturing companies. Although the companies buy and sell goods with suppliers and customers, their association is not itself a for-profit business. It is a voluntarily supported entity that tries to pressure the federal government and courts to arrange favorable conditions for the industry’s economic operations: lower taxes, fewer environmental regulations, import protection, weaker unions, and so on.

As with all organizations, collective action organizations’ purposes are limited. Some may encompass goals that can be met mainly inside the organization (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous, a Saturday night barbershop quartet). Others must interact with persons and organizations in the external environment (e.g., the United Auto Workers, the local parent–teachers association). Whenever services are readily provided by a government or are available to individuals through purchases in the marketplace, a collective action organization is redundant and superfluous. Thus, sewage disposal and shoe repair rarely become the purpose of voluntary associations. But neighborhood crime patrols and alumni club vacation packages do compete effectively with governmental or profit making providers in some areas. A collective action organization’s existence depends upon the perception by potential participants that some advantages will be gained by cooperation with others—whether these benefits accrue directly to individuals or to the collective whole.

Collective action organizations maintain their formal boundaries by designating specific criteria for membership status and by controlling the movement of persons across these boundaries. Members are rarely paid for their involvement, but are usually required to make some contribution of personal resources—financial or time-and-effort (the Red Cross considers a single blood donation sufficient)—to the collectivity in order to remain a member in good standing. Sometimes the dues amount to substantial sums; for example, professional societies and labor unions sometimes charge hundreds of dollars. Although affiliation is voluntary, many associations formally prevent some categories of persons from joining (e.g., those lacking proper education credentials in a professional society). Most expel members for misconduct or failure to pay dues. But, some organizations, needing to present the world with an image of broad popular support, may list withdrawn members on their rosters as still-active participants. Others may conveniently count episodic supporters and passively interested constituents who could be called on only in exceptional circumstances for financial or political sustenance. Does a $2 contribution to the heart disease door-to-door fund drive really confer affiliate status on a donor? Because claimed membership size can be a critical resource, collective action organizations find it advantageous to manipulate these figures.

Many national associations are wealthy enough to employ full- or part-time staff, but such executive, managerial, professional, and clerical participants are formally subordinate to the membership. These employees presumably conduct the organization’s daily business under authority granted by the membership, usually delegated through elected officers or a board of directors. In a collective action organization the mass membership has at least formal rights to select leaders, and, indirectly through those leaders, to sanction organizational decisions. Thus, the National Geographic Society is not a genuine association, since its 10 million “members” are really just magazine subscribers. Similarly, the YMCA’s “members” are actually fee-for-service clientele, while voting is restricted to a small circle of laymen, nominated by local branch boards of managers, who ritually ratify the board’s chosen successors (Zald 1970, p. 93).

Collective action organizations usually have mechanisms for mass membership involvement in internal decision making. Nomination and election of officials, appointments to committees, referenda on policy issues, and periodic meetings and conventions are well-known devices that allow interested members to voice their opinions and exert some control over the overall direction of association affairs. Every association displays the formal trappings of democratic governance in constitutions or bylaws. Their actual practices may fall far short of such desiderata however, as the grass-roots members of some major American labor unions well know. Still, participatory democracy remains an ideal both expressed and implemented to varying degrees in almost all associations.

To summarize, collective action organizations (1) seek nonmarket solutions to particular individual or group problems; (2) maintain formal criteria for membership on a voluntary basis; (3) may employ persons under the authority of organizational leaders; and (4) provide formally democratic procedures to involve members in policy decisions.

Associations can be illuminated in contrast to other familiar social formations (Knoke and Prensky 1984). Primary groups, such as social circles, friendship cliques, and families, pursue highly diffuse purposes and maintain vague criteria for affiliation (Who belongs in the inner crowd at the Southview Junior High?). At the other extreme, work organizations, such as government bureaucracies and private-sector corporations, impose rigidly hierarchical authority systems on their participants. Their employees’ livelihoods depend on financial compensation for full-time work in the organization. The employment contracts in firms and bureaus stipulate an exchange of wages and salaries for participants’ labor power, allowing them few rights to collective decision making (but see recent debates over “industrial democracy”). The assembly line workers at the Chrysler plant have no say over the company’s investment and production decisions. Nor do nurses, orderlies, or even most physicians exert much control over the policy directions of the hospitals in which they work. Nonemployees coming into contact with work organizations are considered external “suppliers,” “customers,” or “clients” (welfare recipients, county prisoners), who also lack authority rights.

Just as association members retain constitutional authority over their officers, so do stock owners over private enterprises, and voters over elected governments. In practice, however, the average participant’s power relative to the managing officials in all three types of organizations may be so diluted as to render problematic his or her influence on organizational decision making. The potential for minority control and abuse of collective resources remains as much a threat in nominally democratic associations as in more overtly hierarchical firms and bureaus. Later chapters examine some of the consequences of variations in organizational governance.

Centrality of Associations in Society

In his functional analysis of modern society as a complex interlocking set of subsystems, Talcott Parsons conceptualized three basic forms of social organization that develop through processes of differentiation and pluralism: markets, bureaucracies, and associations (Parsons 1969, pp. 51–55). These “structuring principles” perform the basic adaptive, goal attainment, and integrative functions, respectively. Associations, by which Parsons seemed to have in mind chiefly professional societies of doctors and lawyers, help to integrate both markets and bureaucracies through simultaneous political and solidary actions:

The democratic association, then, both as underlying the authority of governments and in private sectors, is a political entity, but not only that. It is grounded in the solidarities of various kinds and levels of associational “communities” which, with their initially normative “definitions of the situation,” function in ways that are at least to a considerable degree independent of collective decision making and enforcement mechanisms (Parsons 1969, p. 13).

By straddling the public and private sectors, associations knit together the diverse institutions of modern civil society that threaten to come unraveled when each actor pursues a narrow self-interest. In Parsons’ wont, associations perform the benign service of fostering a consensual normative order and conferring authority upon society’s leaders. One need not embrace harmonious functionalism to recognize that associations also have the capacity to further pluralize an already refractory society. In vigorously pursuing their members’ narrow self-interests, collective action associations often constitute formidable “organizational weapons” for combat against opposing groups. The term is Selznick’s (1960) label for the Bolshevik party, but it is apt for the American Medical Association’s fight against Medicare, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s struggle to end segregation, and the Sierra Club’s effort to delay the Alaska pipeline. These contradictory qualities of collective action organizations—of promoting internal unity and external conflict—pervade theoretical analyses over the years.

To structure the large theoretical literatures on collective action organizations, three broad paradigms are elucidated in the following sections: (1) the problem of societal integration; (2) the problem of organizational governance; and (3) the problem of public policy-making. My review of these perspectives lays the foundation for the new theoretical synthesis and empirical analyses that follow.

The Social Integration Problem

As Western nations began industrial expansion, from the mid-eighteenth century on, the transformation from capitalist agricultural to factory modes of production swept away the traditional hierarchies of communal society. Urban crowding, unemployment, poverty, and crime created physical deprivations on a vast scale. Rebellions periodically racked the old regimes as democratic and socialist forces challenged the premises of the aristocratic political order. New social institutions—prisons, police forces, poorhouses, mental hospitals, schools, political parties, labor unions, and self-help associations—emerged to cope with the turmoil. The agony of Europe, and to a lesser extent America, foreshadowed the upheavals in twentieth century developing nations. The sufferings of destitute working classes began to stir “the Social Question” in the minds of political elites and social theorists: what brought about the distressful condition of ordinary people and what could alleviate it? (See Rossides 1978, p. 234.) The importance of social organizations that could reintegrate the fragmented social order figured prominently in the analyses of major theorists such as Durkheim, Simmel, and Tocqueville. A harkening after the imagined gemeinschaft of bygone eras permeates this paradigm.

Emile Durkheim’s master concept of anomie explained social disorder as a result of abnormal functioning of the division of labor that destroys organic solidarity within a population. Class wars, industrial strife, suicides, crimes against ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I. Introduction
• Part II. Theory and Data
• Part III. Organizational Economy
• Part IV. Organizational Polity
• Part V. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index