University of Bergen

1. Introduction

The Problem

This article is meant as a contribution to a field of social science in which relatively little theoretical or empirical research has been done: namely the problem of organizational formation, and in particular the establishment of political parties and interest organizations.* The restricted aim is to develop an analytical framework, by means of which we can study the formation of mass political organizations. The reason for concentrating on political organizations in particular, rather than mass organizations in general, arises from our previous individual research on trade unions and political parties. In our studies of trade union and party support, we have both experienced the need for more detailed analysis of the processes associated with how such organizations were formed. It is, of course, to be hoped that our propositions about the analysis of political organizations prove also to be of value in the study of organizational formation in general. But we, and the reader, ought to be aware of the limitations implied in this approach. What may be of importance for the study of political organizations, may perhaps be insignificant in the analysis of, say, sports organizations. Further, we have drawn on examples from party and union formation in some European countries and the USA. This geographical limitation also implies that our propositions may be valid only within a limited time span, that is the period from the early nineteenth century and onwards. In the USA the first party system emerged in the 17905, while parties and unions in Europe appeared mostly in the last part of the nineteenth century. For a study of party and union formation in present day developing countries there may be totally different factors at work.

The study of the formation of organizations can hardly be considered a discipline
in its own right. It is therefore necessary in elaborating the analytical framework
to draw upon the resources of a wide range of research fields: organization

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* We should like to thank Derek Urwin, Johan P. Olsen, and Mogens N. Pedersen for valuable comments on the manuscript.

* We should like to thank Derek Urwin, Johan P. Olsen, and Mogens N. Pedersen for valuable comments on the manuscript.

* We should like to thank Derek Urwin, Johan P. Olsen, and Mogens N. Pedersen for valuable comments on the manuscript.

theory, developmental studies, history, political science literature on parties and trade unions, the sociology of social movements. There exists in political science a vast literature on political parties. These studies are fairly rich in describing the phases of development and also the kinds of parties that develop, but offer little in the way of the analysis of conditions for organizational formation as such.¹ In addition, there exist numerous detailed historical investigations of party and interest organizations, but without a social science perspective, and with very few attempts to develop any hypotheses or theoretical implications. Our work has been complicated by both these and two other facts: the minimal interest that organization theory has shown in the problems of organization formation, and the nearly total negligence of political parties and trade unions as research topics within the field of organizational studies.² However, some investigations of organizational formation and development have been undertaken within the discipline of organizational theory, in particular with reference to business firms and voluntary organizations.³ In the next section we shall focus upon some of the main theoretical considerations in these studies.

The electoral and organizational involvement of new groups of the population in political life have been of central concern to most authors in the field of nationbuilding and political development. However, this literature has two important limitations for our main concern in this article. First, most of these studies have focused upon the electoral part of the mobilization syndrome as their dependent variable. Far less attention has been paid to other channels of citizen influence, such as organizational membership and activity and recruitment to electoral bodies. Second, the independent variables included in most of the studies relate mainly to socio-economic conditions which can easily be quantified. The structural conditions for mass mobilization and organizational development have been included in the analysis only in a few cases.⁴

In this article we shall attempt to integrate into a coherent framework some of the points of view put forward by different studies. In so doing we shall draw on specific research findings from history and political science on mass political organizations, and see whether we can derive more general propositions about the formation and development of mass organizations.

The emergence of mass organizations is an important aspect of the general process of political development and has implications for the building of states and nations. It is therefore natural to relate organizational formation to macrotheories on nation-building and political development.

Parties and unions are organizations. As such they ought to be analysed by the
tools of organization theory. Where this is possible we will try to apply these tools
to our objects.

The end result, we hope, will be some kind of an analytical scheme, by means of which one could conduct an empirical investigation into the problem of organizational formation and development. We do not intend here to apply this scheme empirically in a detailed analysis, but later we hope to apply it to an investigation of the formation of political parties and interest organizations in Norway and Denmark. However, we hope to be able to illustrate our ideas by

means of concrete examples drawn from the historical development of such mass political associations in some European countries. Our paper is a point of departure for a discussion of these problems, and the scheme may need adjustments, additions, and reformulation before it can be applied in an empirical research project.

The Focus and Design of the Study

While our concern is mainly with trade unions and political parties, we are aware of the fact that other kinds of political organizations exist. Moreover, an organization considered non-political at one point in time may be considered political at another point in time. This is also true for organizations across countries. Sports organizations in Finland to a large extent follow class lines and thus could be considered political organizations. In Norway the same type of organization to a certain degree followed similar lines in the 19305, and thus would qualify as a type of political organization; their character is now clearly non-political, however ⁵

Because of the high degree of comparability of parties and unions across tune and space we are better able to develop a theoretical scheme for the formation of mass organizations than by considering every possible type of political organization. Furthermore, these organizations will in general have similar functions of political mobilization and interest articulation. Some of our readers may object to this limitation of types of organizations. It may very well be argued that the same type of factors influencing the formation of political organization will be at work when other organizations are being considered. However, our interest is in adding to our understanding of the emergence of political organizations, and by limiting ourselves to this type we hope to increase the degree of precision of the model.

The geo-political limitation may also contribute to a precision of the framework. Our emphasis on the European countries is due to two reasons. First, there is an empirical question. We are simply not so well acquainted with political systems outside Europe as to include other countries in our analysis. Second, there is a methodological reason. Both in the field of modernization studies and in comparative politics the value of global models has been questioned; instead it has been argued that attempts to develop region-specific models and to focus on highly comparable political systems will be more profitable.⁶

In the second section of the article we outline the main dimensions along which we propose to study organizational formation. This is followed by three sections dealing with more detailed analyses of sources of variation in the different dimensions. The article addresses itself to the problem of organizational formation, but most students of the subject will probably be equally interested in the process of organizational development. A full exploration of this problem would require a separate book-length study. However, we try to summarize schematically some developmental issues which confront the organizations once the formation phase is concluded. This is done in the concluding section.

2. The Main Dimensions of Analysis

Elements of Organizational Structure

We are dealing with organizational formation. Thus, it is important to arrive at an identification of the various elements in the structure of trade union and political party organizations. Although the same elements may be present in both types of organizations, there will also be important differences, arising from the different functions the two types of organizations perform in a society. The analysis is concerned with organizations that cover a territory larger than only a small town or community. We are therefore interested in organizations with several elements: local branches, intermediate organizational elements, a national leadership, and an organizational bureaucracy.

One can find each of these elements in most large scale organizations, but of course with great variations in the Importance of each and in the relationship between them. Our main concern here is to point out the need to identify each of these elements in the study of organizational institutionalization. In an analysis of the first American party system Formisano has assigned three characteristics to be fulfilled by an institutionalized organization:⁷ The organization must:

- be well bounded or differentiated from its environment,

- have functions that are complex and separated internally on some
regular and explicit bases, and

- use universal rather than particular criteria in conducting its internal
business.

This implies the existence of rules governing the organization's business. The rules distinguish between the tasks to be conducted by various elements in the organizational structure such as local, regional, and national elements. Furthermore, the rules separate the organization from its environment. It must be possible to distinguish between those people who are counted as belonging to the organization and those who are outside the organization. Thus, in a full-fledged organization all of these elements would be highly developed with regularized relationships between them. However, in the course of organizational formation each of the elements may appear at different developmental stages, originate from different sources, and differ in importance for the organizations.

Let us first consider political parties. Although there is no universally accepted definition of political parties, most definitions that have been offered either implicitly or explicitly assume an organizational structure with the elements described above.⁸ Among the most well-known models of party formation is Duverger's distinction between internally and externally generated parties.⁹ The internally generated party develops through a three-step process: (1) the creation of parliamentary groups; (2) the appearance of electoral committees; and (3) the establishment of a permanent connection between these two elements. According to Duverger this is the typical developmental pattern of bourgeois parties. He further claims that the triggering off of the second and third steps are the results

of suffrage extension. Socialist parties, or other parties, that did not have parliamentary representation, were 'externally' generated. When new groups of people were given the right to vote, they sought political influence by establishing political parties. Both the internally and externally generated parties started the building of their organizations at the local level, leading later to some kind of national federation. The model of the internally generated party is a superficial model, being unable to distinguish between the various steps involved in the process of party institutionalization. This is most clearly seen in the case of the Conservative and Liberal parties in England in the late nineteenth century. Although both parties started out as parliamentary groupings, there were important differences in the way they became organized at the national level. The Conservative party was organized from the centre downwards, while the national Liberal party came about mainly as a result of the activities of extra-parliamentary pressure groups.¹⁰ Furthermore, suffrage extension is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the development of local organizations. In Norway, for instance, changes in suffrage regulation occurred after parties had been formed on the parliamentary as well as the local levels.

Turning to trade unions and the socialist parties, the patterns of organizational formation and institutional develpment are still more varied and complex than in the case of the 'bourgeois' parties. The formation process started outside the parliamentary framework and with the social, economic, and cultural needs of the workers as the main motivational forces. In most cases the first trade unions and workers' associations were created at the local level within the context of a single factory or one small community. The degree of coordination and continuity in these early efforts to establish organizational alternatives for the low status groups in the population varied considerably, and the formation of regional and national political organizations and a national trade union federation was a slow and stepwise process which in most cases took from ten to twenty years from the establishment of the first local unit. With regard to the rapidity of this process one important factor is the size of the country and the existing communication network - for example, the development of national trade union organizations and a national federation took place more rapidly in the Netherlands than in the Scandinavian countries.¹¹

Given these variations both in the timing of the process and in the motives and aims of the different organizational elements, we assume that the context of the different steps in this gradual institutional development from one local association to a full-fledged organization with both local, regional and national units will vary considerably. It is therefore of great importance for the analysis of organizational institutionalization to identify when each of the organizational elements appears, in what form, and with what relations to the other parts of the organization.

Which part of the organization one focuses upon has important consequences for the analysis of organizational formation. Clearly, 'models' explaining the organization of a national federation may be different to those explaining the formation of a local association. We shall therefore have to bear in mind variations

along this micro-macro dimension when discussing conditions for organizational formation. At the same time, we must consider the importance for each organizational element of the interaction with other parts of the organization, as well as the different functions that may be assigned to the various elements in the organizational structure.

In spite of the fact that parties and unions perform different functions in society, their organizational characteristics have much in common. Most parties and unions have some kind of local basis, or a local branch. The local branches of an organization may appear at different points in time in various parts of the territory. Some local associations may appear before any other element in the organization exists; others may come into existence as the result of deliberate efforts on the part of the central organization to expand or to create its network of associations. Thus, there may be important differences in the social environment between communities that can be classified as innovators and those classified as late-comers. While it would seem to be important to investigate this empirically, this is a task that lies outside the framework of this article.

Intermediate links between local branches and the national organization may play different roles in trade unions and in parties, as well as varying within each of these categories. In Britain, for instance, both the Conservative and Labour parties possess area organizations, but while those of the Conservative party largely serve as consultative agencies for the constituency associations, the corresponding organizations in the Labour party have a much greater degree of independence vis-å-vis the local units.¹² The change from single-member constituency to multi-member districts in Norway in 1921 greatly affected the functions and the importance of provincial party associations. They became responsible to a much greater extent than before in nominating parliamentary candidates.

National bodies are perhaps the most important elements of large-scale political organizations, and this is particularly true of the leadership groups. The importance of this level has been emphasized numerous times in analyses of parties and other political organizations. In Duverger's study the grouping of parliamentarians constituted the basis for the development of parties, while Michels conceives the leadership as having complete control over the organization's policies. It is, however, important to distinguish between different parts of the national leadership. In a political party, for instance, there may be conflicts between the organizational leaders and the parliamentary leaders, provided, of course, that the two leadership groups do not overlap.

In the following analysis we shall therefore have to consider each of these
organizational elements at the local, regional, and national level separately in
studying the formation process in trade unions and political parties.

Aspects of Organizational Formation

So far we have established the first dimension in our analytical scheme - the
different organizational levels and units under investigation. The next problem is
to separate the different aspects included in the concept of organizational formation.

We shall point to at least three different aspects of this process which must
be taken into consideration in the elaboration of our analytical scheme.

First, there is the initial formation of one kind of organization - a local unit
or a national association; this is the innovation phase in the process of organizational
establishment.

Second, we have the aspects of the territorial spread of one kind of organization
at the local level after the initial formation phase. These two elements of the
total syndrome are related to the establishment of mass organizations.

Third, there is the institutionalization phase, which can be separated into two main components: the numerical growth of the organization (i.e., increase in members, local units, and staff) is one component. The second component of this phase has to do with the relationships between the elements in the organization, between bureaucrats and politicians for instance, or between the various units, the national, regional, and local associations. We assume that the conditions for the formation differ with regard to which of these aspects is being studied. In this section we shall first investigate the preconditions for the initial formation process and then on the basis of our reasoning introduce as a next step the additional elements of the analytical framework that are necessary in order to include the other two aspects of the process. Further, we must clarify the aspects of the formation or innovation process upon which we shall focus.

First, this question is related to the line of our reasoning, the institutionalization of the different cleavage lines in the society within and by formal organizations. Within this framework we are interested in when the different organizations were formed in the social and political history of the various political systems, the point in time when the cleavage patterns were crystallized into organizational alternatives, and which conditions determined the timing of the institutionalization process.

Second, we are focusing on how this transformation process took place. Who were the actors and how did they act in establishing the organization in question? How did environmental circumstances influence the formation? Third, in which and for which potential market for recruitment and with which membership were the different organizations formed?

Our aim is to establish a generalized framework for the study of the formation of political organizations based on mass membership and developed in relation to the specific cleavages found in the different societies. The analytical framework is intended to include a list of explanatory variables - different conditions for the formation of organizations - and some preliminary assumptions about the relationship between these variables and the actual formation process. On the basis of this analytical 'guide', one can as a next step formulate more detailed hypotheses and propositions about the conditions for the formation of different kinds of organizations at different points in time and at different levels of the society. Our assumption is that organizations have to be considered more as responses to than as causes of their environment, and thus we are looking for conditional elements rather than causal explanations of organizational formation ¹³

Conditions for Organizational Formation

Given this general framework of organizational units and aspects of organizational formation, we are now able to turn to a discussion of the various conditions affecting the innovation and penetration of mass political organizations at the local and national levels. The general concept of organizational formation involves at least three different elements:

1) the actors; the founders of the organization,
2) the environment of the organization; the total society,
3) the market; the potential members of the organization.

The actors hi this process can be either a group of individual citizens, a parliamentary fraction, or another organization. The last type of actor is the most common in the formation of national federations and joint associations for different membership organizations at the national level. The first type of actor is likely to be the most prominent with regard to the innovation of one local organization or a national organization with an individual membership structure.

The concept of environment includes the total political, social, cultural and economic setting within which the organization is created. Three main types of societal conditions for organizational formation are frequently mentioned in the literature. First, and foremost, there are the formal structural conditions of laws and regulations concerning the very existence of this kind of association or the governing and functioning of political organizations.¹⁴ These are the institutional rules of the game or 'the system response, the outputs from institutional rearrangements in the face of pressure from below or from outside'.¹⁵ The legitimacy of organization is, however, not only a question of formal regulations, but also of informal rules and norms in the society concerning how interests are articulated and aggregated. The second type of conditions relate to the economic, social, and cultural setting in the society at the time when the particular organization is formed. This notion of societal conditions corresponds largely to Rokkan's concept of inputs into the system, 'The variations and change in the socially, culturally and economically given opportunities for the articulation of protest, the aggregation of demands, the mobilization of support',¹⁶ when these variables are used as a characteristic of a system at a certain point in time. The third group of preconditions is the presence or absence of other organizations in the market as competitors (e.g., other trade unions) or as opponents (e.g., employers' associations). All three groups of conditions will interact in determining the environment, which in turn can affect the formation of an organization at a certain pouit in time.

The total market for an organization cannot easily be defined in most cases. The group of potential members is defined either by the whole national adult population or by occupational, educational, geographical, or other personal and contextual characteristics. In the case of political parties the total market is most commonly defined as the total electorate at the national level or in terms of

specific geographical areas of a country. However, this is not necessarily true. Leif Lewin has proposed a distinction between two forms of voter mobilization: vertical and horizontal mobilization.¹⁷ Vertical mobilization is defined as constant penetration by a party of the class from which it already receives the greater part of its support'. Parties defining their 'markets' in this way can be distinguished from those attempting horizontal mobilization, that is, attempt to mobilize voters from classes differing from the 'natural social base' of a party. Just as trade unions may find themselves competing with other unions (if they exist) for members, and at the same time opposing employer association(s), a similar situation may confront political parties. One extreme case would be a twoparty system in which each party had a separate social basis, and had the same strength in the electorate. This would be a perfect situation where parties opposed, but did not compete with each other. The other extreme would be a case where several equally strong parties had the same chance of recruiting voters from any social class, and where all possible coalitions had the same probability of occurring. In such a case we would have complete competition, but it would not be clear who was opposing whom.

By contrast, interest organizations are based either on one specific sector of the population or more generally on the population as a whole. Such a distinction in the definition of an organization based on the potential market corresponds largely with the distinction between organizations in which the membership is expected to be the prime beneficiary of the activity of the organization, the Mutual Associations as termed by Blau and Scott, and the 'Commonweal Organizations' where the public at large is intended to be the prime beneficiary.¹⁸ In the case of political parties we can find examples of both types of beneficiaries. Some parties, based on a particular geographic region or a particular occupational group, can argue for improvements for their followers rather than for all kinds of voters. The same would be true for parties defending specific minority interests, such as a religion or a language. The Swedish People's Party in Finland is essentially of this kind. On the other hand, there are catch-allparties', which do not attempt to recruit voters from only one particular social segment.¹⁹

With regard to the actors and the market the two main conditions for organizational formation are the motives/resources of these two elements in the formation process: the motives for the establishment of an organization and the resources available for the formation and maintenance of the association. The specific content of these conditions will vary according to which organizational element is being studied, upon which of the two aspects of the formation process we focus, and which type of organizational formation is being investigated - the innovation or penetration of a 'new' organization, or the split or merging of 'old(er)' organization(s).

So far we have established the main dimensions and elements of our analytical scheme, and have tried to specify in some detail the aim of this article and the restrictions implied in the formulation of the problem. The next task is to discuss the content of the various cells in the matrix of organizational units, aspects of

organizational formation, and the conditions for these processes with regard to motives, legitimacy, resources and organizational content. The most obvious starting point for such an elaboration is why people establish organizations - the motives of the actors in the formation process.

3. Individual Motivations: Leaders, Followers, Issues

Individual and Functional Representation

The formation of an organization is not an arbitrary process - it does not come into existence simply by chance. We therefore believe that the motives of both founders and followers are important variables that ought to be taken into consideration in a study of organizational formation, and perhaps even more in an analysis of organizational development.

Economic and political developments in the last century changed social and political life hi many ways. In particular, they altered the dominant pattern of relationships, those based upon individuals giving way to those based on collectivities. With the emergence of trade unions collective bargaining replaced the man-to-man relationship between masters and artisans, while political parties have become the major intermediary in the relationship between citizens and the government. What have been the reasons for substituting individual relationships by collectivities?

In the economic sector technological innovations changed the location of production from small to large enterprises; the same process destroyed the patterns of social relationship in the old type of workshops. The change from artisans to workers provided for a new type of organization, the trade union. In the political sphere the enlargement of the electorate changed the processes of elections and elite recruitment. Possibilities for participation in political affairs by a larger proportion of the population were suddenly introduced, but more important, it also changed the way politics came to be run. Politics changed from an individual affair to a collective affair in which the ability to organize became crucial. Before the enlargement of the electorate politics in most countries was an individual enterprise - even groups of parliamentarians were rare.²⁰ But in order to mobilize the newly enfranchised voters, the politicians sought help by means of organization. This is a very common view of the forces leading to organizational formation.²¹ However, these are examples of organizations being implemented to deal with a new type of social and political structure. Organizations may also be grafted upon an already existing social network, such as the system of the traditional patron-client relationship in Southern Italy. This system is a social organization, just as the family can be considered a social organization. Thus, this kind of organization may be extremely important in political life, yet it has none of the characteristics of formal organization with which we are concerned. The implementation of a formal organization may therefore in many cases mean nothing more than the addition of a label to something that already

exists. The establishment of farmers' associations and workers' associations in Belgium in the 1890s was essentially of this type. Often the new associations were formed by the lower clergy and worked to preserve the influence of the Catholic church.

The relationship between social and formal organizations will vary enormously
from country to country, and will have to be taken into consideration in each
special case.

In the field of organization theory we can find some very explicit formulations
regarding the motives for the formation of organizations. According to
Stinchombe there are five reasons why people found organizations:22

- when an organization is an alternative way to do things not easily achieved within
existing social arrangements;

- when the benefits from running an organization are believed to be higher
than the costs;

- when some social group with which they identify will receive some of the
benefits of the better way of doing things;

- when resources and legitimacy needed to build an organization are available;
- when they can defeat or at least avoid being defeated by their opponents.

The extension of the suffrage or the break down of social relationships in the small work-shops are examples of a change in environment which affects the operations of political leaders and workers respectively. In a great many cases one can find explicit statements from political leaders on this point; when they no longer are able to manage affairs as before, they accept party organization even though they may have rejected the idea for as long as possible.²³

Costs and Benefits of Organizational Formation

Closely related to the reason of an urgent need for new social arrangements is the point that organizations are accepted when the benefits are greater than the costs of the formation process. This is first of all a very rationalistic statement. As it stands, it assumes that those interested in forming an organization can evaluate the costs and benefits of the operation. The same critique is applicable to Olson's statement that for some purposes individual action can lead to the same or better benefits than collective action, or that small groups in some instances are superior to both individuals and large groups.²⁴ It may be, however, that small groups are qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from large groups. Thus, the existence of large groups may not necessarily be explained by the same factors that explain the existence of small groups.²⁵ This rationalistic motive behind organizational formation is almost impossible to test empirically. Furthermore, there is something self-evident about it. Have, for instance, organizational leaders ever experienced a decline in benefits compared to non-organized action, and subsequently abandoned the organization? It is probably very difficult to attempt to compare benefits. Moreover, because personal value hierarchies may

vary from person to person, then what is counted as costs and as benefits will also
vary.

Stinchcombe's third motivational reason is related to the problem of who benefits from an organization. Blau and Scott distinguish four types of organizations according to who are the main beneficiaries of their existence: '(1) mutual benefit associations, where the prime beneficiary is the membership, (2) business concerns, where the owners are prime beneficiary, (3) service organizations, where the client group is the prime beneficiary, and (4) commonweal organizations, where the prime beneficiary is the public-at-large'.²⁶ Stinchcombe's motivational reason would thus fall into category (3) or (4). However, such altruistic motives may be questioned as regards organizations in general, and political organizations in particular. Generally speaking, altruistic motives may surely be present in the minds of the organizational fathers, but, in addition, the latter will probably also benefit from their action, even if it is only a feeling of satisfaction from being altruistic.

However, we do not believe that political organizations were formed with only
altruistic motives in mind. There are nevertheless some interesting differences between
the two types of organizations considered here.

Unions, for example, obviously attempt to increase benefits for their membership. Parties, on the other hand, with their function of recruiting political leaders, reward leaders more than they do members. This may be more a matter of degree than a question of either/or. For instance, in the USA in the 1860s and 1870s party members, or rather party activists, were rewarded through the extensive use of a spoils system.²⁷ In England, at about the same time, Conservative party workers complained to the leadership that they were not being rewarded for their work, and that the Liberals were much more generous towards their party workers ²⁸ In addition to their membership and leaders, parties may also claim to work for the benefit of the nation or the whole people, or for some social group, be they members or not. The establishment of the Conservative Working-men's Associations in England in the 1860s by Conservative politicians may serve as an example of how an establishment group claimed to represent the interests of another group, but where the real motive - to gain control of a new political force -is clearly apparent.²⁹ The same argument also holds true with regard to the formation of Catholic (and Protestant) trade unions and other workers' associations in the Catholic and mixed religious countries of Continental Europe. Lorwin has argued that 'the religiously oriented organizations helped to reconcile workers' and peasants' traditional loyalties with the new voluntary associations and political action of an area of social mobilization'.³⁰ Thus, motives are important in the analysis of the formation of political organizations. But it is necessary to go beyond the formal statements and look for possible alternative interpretations of the desire to form organizations.

The fourth motivational reason mentioned by Stinchcombe relates to the availability of resources and legitimacy. That people form organizations when they have the necessary resources for it, and not earlier, seems self-evident. From our point of view the interesting question is to ask what kind of resources. Resources

mean more than mere membership fees. We should like to view resources in terms sufficiently broad to include those characteristics of the environment which may be conducive to organizational formation as against those that are not. This is, however, closely linked to the wider question of environmental conditions for organizational formation. We shall, therefore, leave the discussion of this point until later.

The Organizational Context

Organizations may be a means to defeat or avoid being defeated by an enemy. Thus, the organizational context creates both the motive to form an organization and also one aspect of the social environment in which the organization is created - the societal conditions for organizational formation. The avoidance of defeat has proved to be one of the most important incentives in the formation of organizations. The literature provides much evidence on this with regard to political parties. In the labour market there is in many cases a similar pattern of development - labour organizations, for instance, are triggered by the establishment of employers' associations or by other trade unions operating in the same field of membership recruitment. In general we can say that the presence or absence of other organizations will influence the timing of the establishment of organizations that emerge as a final link in a long chain of development, and organizations that appear to oppose other already established organizations or to compete with other organizations. The first question is mainly relevant for new types of organizations, such as European political parties and trade unions in the nineteenth century. As a new type of organization, these had to overcome the problem of legitimacy, as we have stated earlier. Often, parties and trade unions were preceded by associations or movements of a similar kind, which in many cases prepared the ground ideologically, and made it easier for the later organizations to mobilize people. This is illustrated in England by the Registration Societies, which led to the formation of the political parties, and in Norway, where the peasant Societies preceded the establishment of the Liberal party.

The second aspect of this problem relates to organizations that develop as a response to already existing and similar organizations. We can distinguish between two kinds of responses. First, organizations may be formed because organizations of the same kind already exist, i.e., organizations that operate as competitors in the same 'market'; and second they may be formed as opponents to already existing organizations. Political parties are mainly of the first type. They all try to mobilize the voters, and especially in the early phase of party organizations, this was of great importance. The relationship between Stinchcombe's motivational reason one - the availability of resources and legitimacy - and this type of motive is close, at least as far as parties are concerned. In the 1880s in Norway and ten years earlier in Britain it was a combination of these two reasons that persuaded Conservative politicians to form organized parties. The 1868 election was a landslide for the British Liberals - the effectiveness of the Birmingham caucus and other Liberal associations frightened the Conservative

leadership. Similarly, in Norway the Liberal landslide of 1882, although won without organizations similar to the English ones, caused the Norwegian Conservatives to build up an organizational network. The comparison of the two countries is interesting because of differences in the starting point. In Britain there already existed widespread local associations of both parties, but they worked most effectively for the Liberals. The defeat of the Conservatives was caused, among other things, by this effective Liberal party organization. To save themselves, the Conservatives also had to strengthen their organization. In Norway party organizations were practically non-existent before the 1882 election. The Conservative defeat, however, demonstrated, as in Britain, the need to build an organization. The Conservative efforts in organization building were promptly followed by a corresponding Liberal response. As the victorious party it was. at first unnecessary for the Liberals to have an organization. But once their opponents had one, it became too dangerous to remain without one.³¹ To a certain extent, however, a two-party system is also a system of organizations which work as opponents to each other, and not only as competitors in the same market. However, the best example of this type of situation is to be found in the labour market. The relationship between workers' and employers' associations is one in which there is no competition about the membership market, but an opposition of one organization against the other.

The Elitist Point of View

This discussion of motives for founding organizations has, because of the examples employed, been biased towards an elitist point of view. We have seen how political elites try to defend their power basis or how, by means of organizations, they attempt to recapture or gain power. Organizations may, however, have a purely social purpose, such as the friendly societies in Britain. This is not to deny that these same associations later proved to be effective politically, but organization building may also be motivated by social objectives. The organization can be a place to 'hide', where the individual's grievances may be shared by like-minded people. On the other hand, elites may found organizations because they can no longer retain their power base as before; but new voters who have never had influence may form associations in order to achieve influence. In this last instance, it is not a matter of retaining something one has already, but of securing something completely new.

The several motives of elites for forming organizations are not necessarily transferable to those who eventually become members of such organizations. Motives for becoming members may range from an individual's beliefs in achieving political aims if he or she becomes a member to social pressures to become members. In the latter case people may be completely uninterested in the aims and activities of organizations, but nevertheless still become members in order not to be negatively sanctioned by their friends or neighbours. In an analysis of organizational members today one can use survey techniques in the analysis of membership motivations, but when we are analysing organizations in the past,

such information will be difficult to find. This is mainly due to the fact that most
historical writing is elite oriented.32

The study of motivations occurs at the micro-level. They are characteristics of individuals, but sometimes also of groups. However, motivations may be generated by macro-phenomena. It is therefore important hi each case to identify the issues underlying organizational formation. We may distinguish between latent and manifest issues. A manifest issue would be similar to the constitutional crisis of 1882 in Norway; it was in the wake of this crisis that the parties emerged as mass organizations. However, underlying this crisis was an economic conflict between the peasants and the bourgeoisie. If the Conservative government could be ousted by impeachment, it would mean a Liberal government dominated by the peasants. Thus, the issue of agricultural economic policy may be seen as an important latent issue in the formation process.

Another necessary distinction has been drawn by Smelser between that of the existence and that of the activation of an event as a determinant for collective behaviour.³³ In terms of this distinction an issue may be 'present' for a long time without generating any activity in the direction of organizational formation - it is activated only if changes occur in the environmental conditions.

4. Contextual Conditions for Organizational Formation

The Question of Legitimation

The establishment of political organizations will be dependent on decisions taken at the macro level, the group level, and the individual level. Macro-level variables that may affect political organizations include the legitimation of political organizations, and to some extent the settings of incorporation and representation, that is, the structural conditions for organizational formation and development.³⁴ Since we are dealing with countries which at present accept the existence of different political opinions in their respective populations, we will exclude from the discussion problems associated with the operation of clandestine political organizations. However, even in the countries under investigation legitimacy sometimes was a barrier to the development of this kind of organization. We may think of at least three ways in which legitimacy is an important question for organizations: it may be important first for the very existence of organizations; second, for their goals', and third, for the means by which they seek to achieve their goals. These three aspects of legitimacy often go together, but it is not a necessary condition. In some countries all kinds of political organizations, with the exception of those controlled by the power holders, are declared illegal. In the countries which we today normally include under the heading of democratic states there have been few instances of parties or other political organizations being prohibited concurrently with the acceptance of the notion of democracy through the free election of candidates for various offices.³⁵

In Germany, however, in the 1870s there existed the so-called Anti-Socialist

laws, which in theory outlawed the Social Democratic Party. The party organizations were outlawed, but election campaigns for the election of socialist candidates were permitted.³⁶ This is an example of permitting activities while prohibiting organizations. In Japan under the Meiji-regime the first political organizations were allowed to exist but not to communicate with each other.³⁷

This method of allowing organizations as such, while placing limits on their activities, was often employed against the first trade unions. This was the case in Britain, where the Osborne judgement in the House of Lords in 1909 declared unions per se to be legal corporate entities, but they were nevertheless not allowed to use their funds for political objectives.³⁸

Most of the countries have for some period of time possessed legislation which restrained or denied the formation of trade union organizations. The main argument of the state was that negotiations between workers and employers should be on an individual level - no intervening organizations between these two counterparts should be permitted. In Nation-Building and Citizenship, Reinhard Bendix emphasizes the importance of the legitimation of the right to combine and form associations in the development of civil rights in Western Europe.³⁹ Describing the gradual increase in these rights in the different European countries from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, he states:

When the decline of the guild system together with the increasing pace of economic development suggested the need for new regulations of masterservant relations and of journey-men's associations, several Western European countries responded with three broadly distinguishable types of policies. These are:

1) 'The Scandinavian and Swiss type (which) continued the traditional
organization of crafts into the modern period'. The right to combine
and form associations was preserved and extended.
2) Both combming and the formation of associations were prohibited..
Prussia is the best example of this type of reaction.
3) The third type is exemplified by Britain; the right to combine was
denied, but the right to form associations was preserved.40

It is difficult to date exactly when the submission of workers' right to combine was put into law in the different countries. Most have had some regulation of workers' duties and rights towards the employers since the Middle Ages. The new factor appearing in the late 1700s and after the turn of the century was the introduction of a clear right in law to prosecute workers who organized in order to set forth their interests against the employers. These restrictions were partly, as in the case of England, based upon an ideology of 'laissez faire': workers and employers should negotiate as free individuals, and wages and working conditions should be decided by demand and supply in the labour market. Sometimes the prohibition of workers' organizations was partly based on a plebiscitarian principle 'which does not tolerate the organization of any immediate interest',

as in the case of France.⁴¹ In Prussia and Austria denial of the right to combine had its origin in the absolutist structure of government. In the French case the prohibition of trade unions lasted for 93 years until 1884, and in Prussia for 105 or 124 years, depending upon the criterion for 'legal recognition of trade unions'⁴² Denmark denied the workers' right to organize for 49 years and Great Britain for 75 years, with some important modifications in 1824.⁴³ These differences in the regulation of the organization of workers' interests had important consequences for the development of the trade union movement and for trade union attitudes towards the political system.

So far, we have pointed to how formal, judicial intervention by governmental authorities can obstruct the existence or activities of political organizations. But we suggest that legitimacy of political organizations ought also to be judged in relation to social norms. In a community there may exist social norms against engaging in organizations which may be as significant as the legal prohibition of such activity. This kind of reaction to organizations was characteristic of the economic elite's attitude to trade unions in the last century. Under the dominance of laissez-faire economics, where the emphasis was on the individual effort, and where relations in the labour market were regulated by contracts between one man and another, the idea of trade unions as bargaining partners in the economy was an utterly alien notion. One accepted the right to 'associate', but not the right to 'combine'. The same attitude existed among Conservative politicians towards the organization of political parties. Parties, even in the sense of parliamentary groupings, were sometimes considered as obstructing the free will of the representatives of the people.

But the idea of political organizations was also sometimes rejected on the mass level. This was often a reflection of the attitudes of conservative sections of the society to the political activity, as in the case of Italy, where the church for a period did not allow Catholics to participate in political life,⁴⁴ and thus also restricted their engagement in political organizations. In the analysis of the formation of organizations, close attention ought to be paid to this question of legitimacy, which may have been of crucial importance, especially in the early phase of organizational development.45

Environmental Conditions and Resources for Organizational Formation

Resources and legitimacy are two of the most important elements in an understanding of the development of mass political organizations. We have already discussed legitimacy as a macro-variable, in both its legal and normative meaning. The importance of resources in terms of both environmental conditions and personal resources with regard to the actors and the potential market ought, also, to be considered within the framework of the formal conditions. The environmental conditions are perhaps those most obvious and easily definable in relation to the formation of mass political organizations. However, few students have paid any systematic attention to these factors in this context. Leon D. Epstein includes social structure in his list of explanatory variables for the formation of political

parties, along with suffrage rules, constitutional executive-legislative relationships, the degree of federalism, and the various electoral arrangements, but he offers no further elaboration of the relationship. In the case of trade unions all authors are occupied with industrialization as the main cause and determinant of trade union formation and development, but few attempt a more specific discussion of how to undertake an empirical investigation of this aspect of the economic development syndrome. To our knowledge, there has been no attempt in the literature to systematically and empirically test the relationship between organizational formation and the aggregated economic structure of the society. Understandably, there are some serious problems involved in such a project. Often the data needed are difficult to ascertain. Perhaps even more difficult is the question of the comparability of units. The unit of the organization may very often have borders different from the unit where census information is collected. In the case of political parties, and in some instances also in the case of trade unions, it is, however, highly likely that electoral and census boundaries will be identical.⁴⁶

Although Stinchcombe includes resources in his list of 'motivational reasons', it is natural to think of the availability of resources also as a separate set of conditions for the formation of organizations. Stinchcombe has something similar in mind when he speaks of basic variables affecting the organizational capacity of populations. Among these variables are:

- general literacy and specialized advanced schooling
- urbanization

- monetarized economy

- 'political revolution', i.e. the changing of political power from a traditional
to a modern type of power balance

- the density of social life.47

Stinchcombe is here pointing to some variables that refer to more than the presence or absence of individual resources for organizational formation or membership. In cases where it is possible to link aggregate characteristics of the community with the presence or absence of organizations, it will be possible to say something about the importance of various characteristics, of the community, such as social and economic composition, degree of heterogeneity or homogeneity along religious or linguistic lines, and the community's place on a centre-periphery dimension, for the formation and development of various kinds of organizations. This approach to analysing organizational development has also been remarked upon by other scholars. Thus, Philip Cutright states: 'We believe that the key to an explanation (and to future research in this area) [that of maintaining party competition in city elections] may be found in the social structures that are necessary for party organizations to develop'.⁴⁸

And for a totally different kind of organization in a different setting, Asa Briggs says that for an explanation of the variation in the strength of the Chartist movement, 'local differences need to be related to economic and social structure .. .'.⁴⁹

The role of individual resources as a condition for motivations to form organizations or become members is related to contextual variables such as class differences, social networks, etc. Exactly how these relationships work together will be very difficult to discover. It requires an excellent data base to undertake such an analysis, which would greatly contribute to our understanding of the individual - group - community relationships hi so far as they affect organizational membership.

Social environments constitute important conditions and restrictions for organizational formation. The size of the local community will be important for the formation of organizations. This is also true of the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the community as regards various social and economic characteristics, such as religious and linguistic composition, income and occupational composition. For example, a community in which one social class is dominant may be of importance for the opportunities of those not belonging to that class with regard to organizational formation. If the political norms of the dominant class conflict with those of the minority, the latter may find it difficult to establish separate organizations. In such a situation the minority may find it more convenient to work inside the majority's organizations. A related problem is that of the density of social life. This refers to the size of the population which the organization is going to serve and the possibilities these people have of becoming mobilized. This requires the presence of an infrastructure. The factors influencing the organizational capacity of populations indicate that a society has to achieve a certain level of 'modernization' for organizations to develop. The importance of social structure, not only for developing organizations but also for sustaining them, is pointed out by Cutright in his analysis of nonpartisan elections in American cities⁵⁰

The relationships between social structure and organizational formation were significant in the formation of the first political parties. For instance, in an analysis of the first parties in Norway in the 1880s there exists a rather strong correlation between the time of the establishment of a party organization and the economic characteristics of a community; in those areas where the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy had already reached a certain level, party organizations appeared earlier than in areas in which agriculture and/or fishery still dominated.⁵¹

A similar relationship has also been found in Britain where the urbanized middle class initiated the drive for Conservative mass organizations.⁵² The same applies to the Liberal party: 'Only hi the narrow band of boroughs where a consciously modern business class was faced with stiff Tory opposition did the party organization really develop'.⁵³ But in order to develop into an important political force, organizations have to go beyond their 'clique-character'. Chambers argues that the first attempt to develop party organizations in the USA failed because of the 'notable character' of the parties.⁵⁴ On the other hand, the need to widen the membership of a party to also include workers may meet with several obstacles. Workers were often difficult to organize and did not control resources needed for electioneering.⁵⁵

In any analysis of organizational formation it can therefore be assumed that

contextual variables (i.e., characteristics of the community in which organizations are formed) will greatly affect the tuning of formation and the speed with which an organization is diffused to or penetrates into other communities. One important task will be to analyse the innovators versus the latecomers in this process: What, for example, were the differences in economic and social structures between those areas that developed organizations early and those in which they appeared late? An equally important task will be to find out if there exist any differences between communities which 'imported' the idea of organizational formation, that is through diffusion, and those in which organizations only came into existence through the extensive work on the part of an agent or a neighbouring organization.

So far we have considered only organizational formation without taking into
account variations in internal structural characteristics. It is these to which we
now turn.

5. Internal Structural Characteristics

The Completion of the Organizational Structure

Organizations differ in their internal arrangements and also vary in the process by which they acquire the characteristics of complete and institutionalized organizations. We can identify two different 'sets' that make up an organization. There is a set in which the elements are made up of organizational levels - the national, regional, and local levels. The other set consists of actors - leaders, bureaucrats, and members. We may discuss the completion of an organizational structure in terms of relations within and between elements of each of these two sets.

Some of the traditional models of party development, such as Duverger's, view the process for the internally generated parties as starting from a combination of leaders at the national level and moving to a combination of followers at the local level. The organization is completed by the establishment of a permanent link between the two first stages, presumably as some kind of bureaucracy. However, Duverger does not go on to specify this last stage in detail. Neither does he distinguish among the different paths that internally generated parties may take in their formation process. If we look more closely at the formation of parties in Britain in the late nineteenth century, we soon see differences in this pattern. The Conservative party was largely an elite-constructed party, while the Liberals were generated from the grassroots upwards. We have pointed elsewhere to the different roles played by area organizations in the British Conservative and Labour parties. In the Norwegian Liberal party the regional organizations played an important role. The local rural Liberal organizations could not become members in the national federation, but had to join indirectly through a provincial organization; urban local organizations, however, could become direct members of the national organization.

In addition to the various paths towards a completion of the organizational structure, we have the problem of relationships between three sets of actors - the leaders, bureaucrats, and members. We have seen how conflicts arose in the British Conservative party due to disagreements between the party agents, on the one hand, and the traditional aristocratic leadership on the other. Similar conflicts may arise in the relationship between leaders and members. To what extent does the organization provide channels for transmitting opinions from the members to the leadership? Paul M. Sacks has pointed to variations in this relationship among Irish local party organizations. In the peripheral parts of Ireland, politics can be characterized by the 'broker' model. The local TD serves as the principal link between citizens and the centres of political power. In urban areas like Dublin this kind of relationship is absent. Citizens have access to decisionmaking bodies through a network of voluntary associations.⁵⁶

Another question is the role that the bureaucracy plays in filtering information
between leaders and members.

To complicate the picture further one could focus on the relationship between the organizational levels for each group of actors. One obviously interesting focus could be leadership recruitment on the various organizational levels and the extent to which there exist competing chains of command, one between leaders and one between bureaucrats at the different levels.

Although the nine-fold table bears more on the problem of organizational development than on organizational formation, we nevertheless believe that it will be worthwhile to analyse variations in institutionalization process along these lines.

In our analysis we have drawn heavily on examples from Britain and Norway, the two systems with which we are most familiar. However, we believe our scheme to be sufficiently flexible for it to be tested on other countries as well. It would be most valuable to study a wide range of parties and countries in order to arrive at a more precise description of the conditions underlying the various paths to organizational completion. What kind of environmental conditions would be conducive to an organization with only one organizational level, the national? This in fact was the case with the first German trade union, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (1873). The authoritarian way in which this organization was run 'was an outcome, not so much of the historical necessity of the moment, as of the traditions and of the racial peculiarities of the German Stock'.⁵⁷ Phrased somewhat differently, do some kinds of political culture more readily permit the development of organizations of this kind, and if so, how does this interact with other conditions, such as monetization and occupational composition of communities? A similar point could be made about the appearance of bureaucrats in party organizations. Michels argued that a solid organizational structure would lead to the replacement of 'the emergency leader by the professional leader'.⁵⁸ There is a great amount of comment to be made about each combination of elements in the two sets. It would carry us far beyond the aim of this article, but we feel possibilities ought to be presented to direct attention to yet another problem in the study of organizational formation.

6. Aspects of Organizational Development

The Growth and Decay of Organizations

We have in this article addressed ourselves mainly to the problem of organizational formation. But where is the borderline between the formation and the development of an organization? We should like to reserve the term development to the lives of organizations once they have acquired all those characteristics which define organizations. Thus, formation will in this way be linked mainly to the first phase of organizational institutionalization, while change and development are associated with the process of growth and decay. As an indication of the direction of inquiry after the completion of analysis of the formation phase, we shall outline briefly some possible lines of investigation.

By organizational growth we mean three kinds of expansion: numerical, territorial,
and institutional. Although these are closely intertwined, they nevertheless
are logically separate kinds of problems for the organization.

Numerical growth can take place within the area originally covered by the organization, or it can also occur in new areas. Numerical growth in itself can be dealt with by an organization simply by expanding the archives, depending of course upon the organization's activities. The problem of putting more and more names into your membership files involves only a little more work than has already been done with the existing membership.⁵⁹ In most cases such numerical growth is desired. It increases the strength of the organization, economically as well as in relations towards other organizations.

The second kind of organizational growth, territorial expansion, involves different kinds of activities on the part of the organization, and will present new kinds of problems. A very common way in which political organizations were formed was through a three stage process. First, several local organizations emerged; second, they joined in a national federation; and third, this organization was given the task of establishing local organizations where these were missing. The third step involves the territorial expansion of the organization. This expansion took place hi several ways, most of which can be summarized under the headings diffusion and penetration. Territorial expansion as a diffusion process can be thought of simply as the response of the knowledge of organizational existence, through newspapers, individuals, etc. The early development of the Norwegian Liberal party was partly of this kind. Liberal newspapers encouraged people to form local organizations for the Liberal party. Penetration on the other hand involves the deliberate efforts on the part of the organization to establish new branches of the party. This determined effort often involved the employment of travelling secretaries or agents, as in the British Conservative party after 1870.⁶⁰ While diffusion as such need not involve any costs for the organization, penetration does. In Britain both the Liberal and Conservative parties employed several agents, so many that in both parties they formed their own unions.₆₁ The third type of organizational expansion is institutional. Institutional expansion has two separate aspects. One relates to the organization's efforts in 'domain' extension, to use Thompson's term.⁶² This kind of expansion has often taken

place in Labour movements. The emergence of the educational associations in Norway and Denmark is an example of this kind, as is the establishment of insurance companies, or publishing houses in the case of the Norwegian trade unions.

The other aspect of institutional expansion has two subcategories: the growth of auxiliary organizations and the relationship to social movements and other organizations in the environment. The establishment of auxiliary organizations is a well-known phenomenon where political parties are concerned. Most parties have youth organizations and some also have women's organizations. This kind of expansion provides for socialization into the main party organization.

The other aspect of this kind of expansion concerns other organizations in the environment. Some parties may establish formalized links with other bodies, like the relationship between the Labour party and the Trade Unions in several European countries, while others retain informal relationships such as that between employers' associations and conservative parties.

But parties, and other types of organizations, may also be related to broader
social movements in several ways. Parties may be part of a social movement or a
social movement may generate its own organizations.63

Bureaucratization and Centralization

In addition to these developmental aspects of growth and decay where the organization goes 'beyond its original boundaries', there is the problem of the continual structural development within the organization. The 'institutionalization process' in the development phase relates to the acquisition of characteristics associated with formal organizations. Among such characteristics the following can be mentioned: specification of the organization's relations to the environment; codification of rules governing the activities of the organization; establishment of a permanent bureaucracy; and development of differentiated tasks for the various departments. This type of growth, with increasing complexity in the tasks and the management of the tasks of the organizations, creates special problems which have to be tackled. With respect to mass political organizations, we can distinguish many new problems, of which we will mention two specifically:

- the development of a bureaucracy at one level will create strains with
and on the other parts of the organizations,
- the development of the organizations and the establishment of new
branches will create problems of communication, both vertically as in
the case of grass-root vs. leadership levels, and in large scale territories
horizontally, between centrally and peripherally located departments.

The growth of a bureaucracy in an organization is an indicator of both formalization and of complexity. As soon as the activities of an organization become too complex to be dealt with in an arbitrary way, more or less as a 'by-activity' for one or a few people, there is a need to establish rules for the proper conduct of

the organization's business. As the necessity for a specialized staff increases, there
may arise problems with those who took the initiative to form the organization.

The specialized staff will in many instances be better informed about the resources required to perform the activities of the organization. An illustrative example of such conflicts arose in the British Conservative party after 1870 upon the engagement of J. E. Gorst as head of the newly established Central Office.⁶⁴ Gorst became responsible for building up an effective Conservative party organization after the Liberal electoral landslide of 1968. In fact, he succeeded to such an extent that many of the more aristocratic elements in the party complained about his strong centralization policy and his interference in the affairs of the constituencies.⁶⁵ Formalization measured in this way, by looking at the size of the staff, and supplemented by information about party expenditures can bring us a step forward in understanding the importance of the party bureaucracy in relation to other aspects of party organization.⁶⁶

The increasing complexity of an organization as a result of bureaucratization and territorial expansion creates problems of communication both between the upper and lower strata and between the centrally located and more peripheral parts of the organization. The problem of hierarchical communication has been discussed extensively in the literature or organization theory. Less emphasis, however, has been laid on the second type of relationship. We believe there is a great need for more research in this area in order to increase our understanding of the way organizations work. To some extent this has been included in those studies that have focused on organizational differentiation. Such studies have paid attention to the problems associated with departments possessing varying functions. The problems we should like to see studied are concerned rather with departments possessing identical function, but spread over a large territory.⁶⁷ Especially in the early phase of party and trade union development, when communication between various parts of a territory could be difficult and imperfect, this kind of problem could impose special problems for the organization.

While this article is sketchy and tentative in character, we hope that its argument will stimulate further research into the problem of organizational formation and development. As far as we can see, the combination of organizational theory with approaches and methods from nation-building and political development studies could indicate new lines of inquiry and investigation into these problems. The next task must be to test out the propositions and assumptions presented in this article in empirical studies of the formation of political parties and interest organizations in Western Europe.

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NOTES

1. Notable exceptions are, for example, Robert Michels, Political Parties (N. Y.: Free Press, 1962); M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (London: Macmillan, 1902); and Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany (Totovva: Bedminster Press, 1963); Maurice Duverger: Political Parties (London, Methuen, 1967).

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2. See, for instance, Joseph A. Schlesinger: 'Political Party Organization', in James G. March, Handbook of Organizations, (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 764-801.

3. Arthur L. Stinchcombe, 'Social Structure and Organizations', in James March, ibid., pp. 142-191.

4. See, for instance, Stein Rokkan, 'The Structuring of Mass Politics in Smaller European Democracies', in Comparative Studies in Society and History 10 (2), 1968, pp. 173-210, and Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964), esp. part I (3).

5. Although to a certain extent they followed class lines in the 19305.

6. See Stein Rokkan, 'Models and Methods in the Comparative Study of Nation-Building', in S. Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970), pp. 46-71; and the more general discussion of comparative method in Arend Lijphart, 'Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method', American Political Science Review, Vol. LXV, No. 3, 1971, pp. 682-693.

7. Ronald P. Formisano, 'Deferential-Participant Politics. The Early Republic's Political Culture; 1790-1840', American Political Science Review, Vol. LXVIII, June 1974, No. 2, p. 474.

8. See for instance the definition given by Lapalombara and Weiner in their article 'The Origins and Development of Political Parties', in J. Lapalombara and M. Weiner (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 6.

9. Duverger, op.cit., pp. XXIV-XXX.

10. E. J. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 131. For a comparison between England and Norway on this point, see L. Svaasand, 'The Institutionalization of Political Parties in England and Norway in the late Nineteenth Century', Institute of Sociology, University of Bergen, 1974, Mimeo.

11. A comparison of the development of the Dutch and the Swedish trade union movements shows the following pattern. The first trade union was established in the Netherlands in 1861 and in Sweden in 1872. The first national trade union organization was formed in the Netherlands in 1866 and in Sweden in 1886, and the year of the creation of the National Trade Union Federation is 1871 in the Netherlands and 1899 in Sweden. Cf., Sigfrid Hansson, Den Svenska Fackforeningsrorelsen (Stockholm: Tiden, 1932), and John P. Windmuller, Labor Relations in the Netherlands (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969).

12. See David J. Wilson, 'Constituency Party Autonomy and Central Control', Political Studies, Vol. XXI, June, 1973, No. 2, pp. 167-174.

13. Leon D. Epstein, Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 19.

14. See for example the detailed account of formal structural conditions for trade union formation, development, and activity in International Labour Office, Freedom of Associations, ILO Studies and Reports, Series A. (London: P. S. King, 1928), 5 vols.

15. cit., p. 78.

16. Ibid., p. 78.

17. Leif Lewin et al., The Swedish Electorate 1887-1968 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wicksell, 1972), p. 174.

18. Peter M. Blau and W. Richard Scott, Formal Organizations. A Comparative Approach (London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1963), p. 43.

19. See Otto Kirchheimer, 'The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems', in Lapalombara and Weiner, op.cit., pp. 177-200.

20. 'On the eve of the First Reform Bill there was nothing that could seriously be called a party system either inside or outside Parliament', Robert Mckenzie, British Political Parties (London: Heinemann, 1956), p. 3. See also Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George HI (London: Macmillan, 1957), 2nd edition, who argues that even as early as the end of the 18th century it is possible to identify party groups in the Parliament.

21. See. e.g.. Duveraer. op.cit.

22. Stinchcombe, op.cit., p. 146.

23. Kaartvedt quotes a leading Conservative newspaper in Norway arguing for the establishment of party organizations in the face of the constitutional crisis in Norway in 1884, even though the same paper had earlier rejected party organizations. See Alf Kaartvedt, Kampen mot Parliamentarisme (The Struggle Against Parliamentarism) (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967), 2nd edition, pp. 167-168.

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23. Kaartvedt quotes a leading Conservative newspaper in Norway arguing for the establishment of party organizations in the face of the constitutional crisis in Norway in 1884, even though the same paper had earlier rejected party organizations. See Alf Kaartvedt, Kampen mot Parliamentarisme (The Struggle Against Parliamentarism) (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967), 2nd edition, pp. 167-168.

24. Stinchcombe, op.cit.; See also Mancur Olson, who argues that 'there is obviously no purpose in having an organization when individual, unorganized action can serve the interests of the individual as well as or better than an organization'. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (New York; Schocken Books, 1971), p. 7.

25. Ibid., p. 52.

26. Blau and Scott, op.cit., p. 43.

27. See, for instance, John Dobson, Politics in the Gilded Age (New York: Praeger, 1973), Ch. 3.

28. See, for instance, Feuchtwanger, op.cit., p. 133.

29. See H. F. Moorehouse, The Political Incorporation of the British Working Class', Sociology, Vol. 7, 1973, No. 3, pp. 341-360.

30. Val R. Lorwin, 'Segmented Pluralism: Ideological Cleavages and Political Cohesion in the Smaller European Democracies', Comparative Politics, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1971, p. 147.

31. For an account of this process see Ulf Torgersen, 'The Formation of Parties in Norway: The Problem of Left-Right Differences', Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 2, 1967, pp. 43-68.

32. Some interesting material in this respect has been collected by Stein U. Larsen at the Institute of Sociology, University of Bergen. He has coded and punched the archives of those people who were convicted for having been members of the Norwegian Nazi party. Included in the data is a statement by each person why he or she chose to become a member of the party. Cf., a similar analysis of motives for membership in the Danish Nazi party may be found in K. Brix & E. Hansen, Dansk Nazisme under Besættelsen, Nordiske studier i Sociologi, No. l, Copenhagen, 1948.

33. N. TheCollective BehaviorYork: Free20.

34. For a detailed explanation of these terms, and their place in theories of political development as put forward by Stein Rokkan, see his article 'Nation-building, Cleavage Formation and the Structuring of Mass Polities', in S. Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970), pp. 72-144.

35. This is not entirely true, since, for instance, Nazi organizations are outlawed in some Western countries today, and in some American cities parties are not allowed to participate in local elections. On this last point, see Philip Cutright, 'Non-partisan Electional Systems in American Cities', Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, 1962-1963, pp. 212-226.

36. See, for instance, Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany (Totowa: Bedminster Press, 1963), p. 78. See also Alex Hall, 'By other Means. The Legal Struggle Against SPD in Wilhelmine Germany 1890-1900', Historical Journal, XVII, 2, 1974, pp. 365-386. Hall describes how the German authorities tried to use the judiciary and the civil service in making it difficult for the SPD to operate after the repeal of the antisocialist laws.

37. Robert Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Japan (Berkeley: 1953), cited in Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 121.

38. George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (London: Palladin, 1972), 2nd ed., p. 203.

39. Reinhard Bendix, Nation-building and Citizenship (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1969), Part I (2).

40. Ibid., p. 99 ff.

41. Ibid., p. 101 ff.

42. Val R. Lorwin, The French Labour Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 18 and Bendix, op.cit., p. 100.

43. Henry Felling, A History of British Trade Unionism (London: Penguin, (1963), 1969), p. 19 ff. By the act of 1924 it was no longer a criminal act to combine in order to receive better working conditions, wages, etc., but it was an illegal act until 1875. Felling, pp. 69 and 75 ff.

44. Samuel Barnes, 'Italy: Opposition on Left, Center and Right', in R. A. Dahl (ed.), Political Opposition in Western Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 308.

45. It is interesting to observe the present demand from the Norwegian trade unions that non- members will have to become members if more than 50 % of their fellow workers are members. The right to abstain from membership is becoming a political issue, just as the right to be trade union member was an issue 90 years ago.

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45. It is interesting to observe the present demand from the Norwegian trade unions that non- members will have to become members if more than 50 % of their fellow workers are members. The right to abstain from membership is becoming a political issue, just as the right to be trade union member was an issue 90 years ago.

46. In one of the most interesting cases to be studied, Britain, this is unfortunately not so. On some of the problems involved in aggregate analysis of British election results see W. M. Miller et al., 'Voting Research and the Population Census 1918-1971: Surrogate Data for Constituency Analysis'. Paper prepared for the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Workshop in Mannheim, April 1973.

47. Stinchcombe, op.cit., p. 150. 48. Cutright, op.cit., p. 225.

49. Asa Briggs, The Local Background of Chartism', in Asa Briggs (ed.), Chartist Studies (London: Macmillan, 1959), p. 3.

50. Cutright, op.cit., p. 225.

51. Lars Svaasand, 'Regional Variations in the Process of Party Formation in Norway'. Paper prepared for the ECPR-Workshop on 'Varieties of Regional Differentiations in Europe', Strasbourg, April 1974.

52. See Cornford, op.cit., p. 405. 53. Vincent, op.cit., p. 126.

54. William N. Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 44-45. See also Ronald P. Formisano, 'Differential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789-1840', American Political Science Review, Vol. LXVIII, No. 2, June 1974, pp. 473-487.

55. J. P. D. Dunbadin, 'Parliamentary Elections in Britain 1868-1900: A Psephological Note', English Historical Review, Vol. 81, 1966, p. 94.

56. Paul M. Sacks, 'The Role of Parties in Regional Differentiation: the Case of Ireland'. Paper prepared for the EC PR Joint Sessions in Strasbourg, April 1974.

57. Michels, op.cit., p. 193.

58. Ibid., p. 73.

59. We are now dealing with the administrative problems arising from an increase in the membership stock. The problem of actually recruiting new members is another matter.

60. See, for instance, Hanham, op.cit., Ch. 11.

61. 1891: National Society of Conservative Agents. 1882: Liberal Secretaries' and Agents' Association. (Hanham, op.cit., p. 241).

62. J. Thompson, Organizations in Action (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967).

63. For a definition of social movement and review of the relationship between social movements and parties and non-party organizations, see Smelser, op.cit., ch. IX.

64. See E. F. J. Feuchtwanger, 'J. E. Gorst and the Central Organizations of the Conservative Party, 1870-1882', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Vol. XXXII, 1959, November, pp. 192-208.

65. Ibid., p. 207.

66. A useful operationalization of party institutionalization has been suggested by E. Spencer Wellhofer in his paper 'Dimensions of party development: A study in organizational dynamics' (Mimeo.), published in Journal of Politics, 34, (11), February 1972, pp. 153-182. This line of reasoning has been further developed by Knut Heidar in his study 'Det norske arbeiderparti 1887-1940: Institusjonalisering og rekruttering' (The Norwegian Labour Party 1887-1940: Institutionalization and Recruitment) Oslo, Institute of Political Science, 1972, mimeo.

67. Analyses of this kind are David Wilson's two articles 'Party Bureaucracy in Britain: Regional and Area Organization', British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 2, 1972, pp. 373-381, and 'Constituency Party Autonomy and Central Control', Political Studies, Vol. XXI, 1973, No. 2, pp. 167-173.