Abstract

This article is concerned with value-based non-democratically structured voluntary organizations, which constitute an ever-increasing portion of the voluntary sector. We argue that the democratic significance of these organizations is not accounted for within conventional, empirically oriented research on democracy, including neo-Tocquevillian approaches, in which Robert D. Putnam is a central figure. In the discussion, we distinguish between internal democracy, ie democracy within an organization, and the external democratic role of the organization, ie democracy in a society. Our point of departure is the role played by passive supporters within the non-democratically structured organizations. We argue that the passive supporters of these organizations are not as marginalized, neither in relation to their organization, nor towards the society at large, as most theories a priori assume. We claim that to an increasing degree, developments in organizational society itself necessitate more emphasis on the external democratic role at the expense of the internal.

Introduction

The role of voluntary organizations in a democracy is a dual one. On the one hand, the organizations serve as a link in the democratic process between the citizens and the political system at large. On the other hand, these organizations serve an educational function as disseminators of values and creators of social capital. Voluntary organizations may thus be faced with a dilemma: they are to be the guarantors of democracy and as such are considered a vital prerequisite to democracy, while at the same time, many of the organizations themselves are not democratically structured.

In this article, we shall discuss the role of value-based, non-democratically structured organizations within a democracy, and take a particularly close look at the role of passive supporters, by comparing organizations which are membership-based and democratically structured with those that are not. Our starting point is organizations dealing with environmental issues in Norway, an area in which a decisive change was witnessed in the mid-1980s. None of the environmental organizations formed after that time are based on ordinary membership and internal democracy.

In what follows, we shall distinguish between the internal democracy within organizations and the external democratic role these organizations play. We maintain that developments within the organizational society make it necessary to place greater emphasis on the external democratic role at the expense of internal organizational democracy and the organizations' role as "schools in democracy". This would imply, logically, if not necessarily empirically, that non-democratically structured organizations could play a significant democratic role. Furthermore, this perspective provides "passive" supporters of such organizations with an opportunity to have an impact on the democratic process.

This position entails a significant break with the rather strong micro-paradigm which currently plays an important role in empirically-based research on democracy, ie the neo-Tocquevillian perspective, most closely associated with Robert D. Putnam. We maintain that his approach, first of all, exaggerates the significance of face to face contact in the development of social capital, and secondly, that institutional links and face to face contact are not as intimate related as Putnam would have it.

From this perspective, the questions of whether we really are witnessing a deterioration of social capital and whether voluntary organizations are becoming less democratically significant, remain open. From Putnam's point of view, however, there is a considerable likelihood that diminishing social capital, ie democratic decline, will be revealed in a Norwegian context as well (see eg Selle and Øymyr 1995). However, precisely because a perspective itself so largely determines what one finds, it is crucial that we are reflexive enough to allow the possibility that what is new and growing, but different from what we are used to, may have democratic value. "If I hadn't believed it", as geologists are found of saying, "I wouldn't have seen it".

In other words, we wish to consider the problematic nature of certain central a priori assumptions in the neo-Tocquevillian approach, exemplified here by non-democratically structured environmental organizations in Norway.

The Neo-Tocquevillian approach

Robert D. Putnam, which has had a considerable impact on current conceptions of democracy and empirically oriented democratic theory, suggests two main reasons why voluntary organizations are so important for democracy: "Civil associations contribute to the effectiveness and stability of democratic government, it is argued, both because of their 'internal' effects on individual members and because of their 'external' effects on the wider polity". The internal effect of the organizations is that they "instill in their members habits of cooperation, solidarity, and public-spiritedness". They are claimed to have an important external effect because "'interest articulation' and 'interest aggregation' are enhanced by a dense network of secondary associations" (see Putnam et al. 1993:89-90). In order for an organization to have this kind of internal educational effect, it is crucial that the members be in face to face contact with each other. On the other hand, the key element in guaranteeing the external function is institutional links between the members and the political system. In other words, the organizations must serve as intermediary institutions.

Putnam's conception of democracy, influenced by the Republican tradition (see Bellah et al. 1985; Held 1987), has a good deal in common with a participant-oriented approach to democratic theory (see eg Pateman 1970; cp. Bergh 1983; Held 1987). The key here is that democracy is learned through interaction with others, which, in Putnam's view, requires face to face contact. There is an underlying fear of passivity; that passivity results in the marginalization of the individual and in a suboptimal system of government. However, in Putnam's work there is also evidence of links to the more instrumental, and elitist, approach to democratic theory, more particularly to older theories of mass society (Kornhauser 1960; cp. Berman 1997).

Even though Putnam starts out by considering the internal and the external roles of voluntary organizations as equally important and highly interrelated, face to face contact still becomes primary. In other words, the two are not equal: socialization is more basic. Without such socialization, people are unable to see themselves in relation to others, which is a vital prerequisite to the development of trust in others. Such trust is, in turn, necessary in order to be a good citizen. A good "education" through the organizations shall prevent citizens from being manipulated by the elite. This is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for a sound democratic form of government.

Putnam argues that it is vital that organizations have a true basis in a broad membership. Furthermore, he claims that the "loss" of social capital resulting from the decline in membership-based organization in the US cannot be compensated for by the growth in small local organizations with very limited objectives (eg local neighborhood organizations), or by growth in tertiary organizations (ie "mailing list" organizations), or by growth in the number of non-profits, ie service organizations that are not membership-based (Putnam 1995a:70-72, 1995b:666). Within the first type of organization there is face to face contact and emphasis on the local, while there are few institutional links which transcend the local level. Within tertiary and non-profit organizations, on the other hand, there are such institutional links, but to a much lesser extent the necessary horizontal face to face contact.

A reasonable interpretation of Putnam's view would be that face to face contact and institutional links are two separate dimensions, and that a good deal of one could never make up for a lack of the other, though the former is always a necessary condition for the satisfactory functioning of the latter. Consequently, face to face contact and socialization are decisive for the development of individual competence and democratic learning, while individual and institutional relationships to central institutions are important in ensuring that the individual has political influence through the organizations.

Putnam underlines his view by showing how more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but fewer are bowling in organized leagues (Putnam 1995a). In Putnam's view, this change towards solo bowling express a general loss in American social capital. The reason why bowling leagues; or soccer teams, choral societies or Rotary clubs, are so important in a democracy is because they are based on horizontal linkages between individuals rather than vertical ones.

The spread of the new type of environmental organization is an example which Putnam explicitly rejects as a counterexample to his case for the decline in social capital in the US. Putnam argues that these organizations do not provide evidence of the creation of social capital and social connectedness, in that the necessary face to face contact is lacking. "For the vast majority of their members, the only act of membership consists in writing a check for dues or perhaps occasionally reading a newsletter. Few ever attend any meetings of such organizations and most are unlikely ever (knowingly) to encounter any other member". For this reason, "[f]rom the point of view of social connectedness, the Environmental Defense Fund and a bowling league are just not in the same category" (Putnam 1995a:70). Our position is that Putnam's view of the role of new non-democratically structured organizations in a democracy is mistaken. Putnam takes very little consideration of the fact that there are numerous types of organizations. He shows little interest in distinguishing between birdwatchers' associations (that of course can be politically important too, like in Britain) and politically based mass movements in his discussion of the organizations' democratic significance (cp. Tarrow 1996). A distinction of this type can not be democratically irrelevant, nor can a distinction between different types within the new organizational forms. The emphasis on both organizational socialization and institutional links makes the need for a clarification of both type of organization and organizational scope all the more imperative.

The transformation of the Norwegian voluntary sector

Since the turn of the century, the Norwegian voluntary sector has predominantly consisted of organizations that are membership-based and built around a nucleus of democratically structured local organizations. Active members have been the actual foundation of the voluntary organizations, and Norwegian voluntary organizations have, compared to those in other countries, recruited members from an unusually broad social range (eg Rokkan and Campbell 1960; Klausen and Selle 1996). This has been a key factor in preventing large-scale political marginalization, and has meant that the voluntary organizations have become important actors in the democratic system. The local level, ie local organizations, have formed the basis of the organizational society, and the local and national levels have been hierarchically linked.

Contrary to most other countries, Norway has not developed a dual organizational society, in which the local and national levels are distinct and separate (Selle and Øymyr 1995). As an effect, voluntary organizations in Norway (and Scandinavia) have been real intermediate institutions in the Tocquevillian sense. Rather than just a theoretical construction as in most of the literature, Norwegian social movement organizations connected to the farmers' movement, the labor movement, the teetotalers' movement, the lay movement and the Norwegian language movement, and voluntary organizations in general, were very important in the shaping of the Norwegian democracy, even in the nation-building process itself (Rokkan 1970; Selle 1996).

In the 1960s, the Norwegian organizational society began a process of gradual change, including, among other things, an enormous increase in the number of specialized organizations that emerged as part of the growth of the "leisure society". Even though these less political organizations grew largely outside the traditional social movements, they still chose a membership-based, democratic organizational form. The core features of organizational society remained intact, ie the emphasis on local organizations, individual membership, and democratic structure.

Starting in the 1980s, Norway also witnessed growth in non membership-based, professionalized, and highly centralized non-profit organizations, in which mass mobilization was not as important as before. As this type of organization grew, and as many of the most important democratically structured, membership-based organizations suffered serious decline, it became apparent that the organizational model which had dominated traditionally was losing ground. As of the early 1990s, we are witnessing the emergence of a qualitatively new organizational society, lacking more and more those characteristics that Putnam finds so important for the development of social capital, ie a viable democracy (Selle 1996).

For the most part, these changes in the organizational society are taking place at the same time as environmental concerns are gaining political ground in Norway. The former is definitely leaving its mark on the latter. Many of the new environmental organizations choose new and untraditional organizational forms, which to a large degree break with the typical features of Norwegian voluntary organizations.

There is a clear dividing line in the Norwegian environmental movement between those organizations that were formed before and those that were formed after the mid-1980s. While the older organizations are membership-based and democratically structured, those formed in the late 1980s and early 1990s are of another type. There are a number of organizations directly aimed at, or oriented towards, the market, and which to a greater extent than earlier is action- and result-oriented. There are also numerous organizations which function as environmental consultants to the private sector (or to the public sector), organizations that have professional experts on the staff, organizations that work primarily through the mass media to influence public opinion directly, organizations that do not to the same extent as the older organizations have, or want to have, regular members, and organizations that often do not have local organizations, or a democratic organizational structure (see Strømsnes and Selle (eds.) 1996; Selle and Strømsnes 1998 forthcoming). In other words, this represents a profound organizational change that is reflected, not least, in the question of internal organizational democracy.

The new environmental organizations provide a good starting point for questioning the neo-Tocquevillian approach, ie for a discussion of the role played by new forms of non-democratically structured organizations and their supporters. It is important to emphasize that at the same time as the new environmental organizations, from a purely organizational point of view, show features which are quite typical of current trends in organizational society, they are in other respects, which we believe to be democratically significant, atypical and more like the traditional mass movement organizations.

The new environmental organizations may share three important features that are typical of traditional mass movements, if limited membership and a non-democratic organizational model are disregarded (cp. Selle and Øymyr 1995). First of all, these organizations are to a very high degree ideological and change-oriented (though the theoretical basis for this may be somewhat shaky, cp. Strømsnes and Selle (eds.) 1996). This differs from most other new types of organizational groupings, which often lack an independent ideological foundation and are largely niche organizations adapted to changing means of access to the public purse, ie specialized implementers of public policy (Selle 1996). Virtually all of the older value-based types of organizations are in decline, and there are few new ones emerging. Thus organizational society today is less value-based, or political and ideological, than ever before. This makes it particularly important that we understand the significance of the new forms of ideologically based organization if we believe that value pluralism is of vital importance in a democracy. The growth of new environmental organizations is perhaps the most important development in the field of "ideological organization" in the last 10-15 years (Selle and Øymyr 1995).

Second, these organizations are outwards oriented; they aim to have an impact on the society around them. People involved in such organizations have a desire to change political developments, to change something external to themselves and their own organization. In other words, they are not traditional interest groups.

A third feature of traditional mass movements is that they had an educational effect in that membership instills in the members knowledge of and commitment to a cause, the other members and the organization, ie organizational socialization (see eg Knoke and Wright-Isak 1982). We are not arguing that socialization in the new environmental organizations necessarily is on the same scale or of the same type as was ideally found in the older organizations. However, we argue that the socialization taking place may be of such an extent that it has to be taken into consideration. It is not something that may be excluded a priori.

A crucial issue in this respect is our understanding of what "passivity" actually means. One might query whether the concept means different things in different kinds of organizations, ie in traditional democratic organizations vs in centralized, professionalized, and specialized organizations. Can it be that the passive supporters in the latter type of organization actually may have a greater say than the numerous passive, and even many of the active, members of the classical democratically structured organizations? We put forward such a hypothesis and will consider its implications in what follows.

The changing role of membership: decline or evolution?

Many parts of the environmental movement are influential in Norwegian politics, and, in collaboration with the government, these organizations have made environmental politics a new and important political arena. This has been achieved without organizational strength based on high membership figures. As a consequence, the membership role itself is evolving. The tendency seems to be towards organizations which are less in need of large memberships, both in terms of the jobs to be done and the demands of legitimacy. The result is, in other words, a new type of organization and a new type of member, which from a democracy perspective, leads to unresolved and intriguing tensions.

Internal democracy

With respect to internal democracy, the tension that exists between democracy and efficacy constitutes an important point of distinction. Organizations may be distinguished in terms of whether they view members as a resource, or as a problem. According to the former view, only an extensive body of members makes it possible for the organization to achieve its objectives. This is the classical, or historical, organizational form, which has dominated the field in Norway since before the turn of the last century. According to the latter view, running, for example, an environmental organization democratically steals time and resources from the actual environmental work itself.

Tension of this sort was not experienced as a main problem until the 1980s. Not until the 80s were there organizations that chose to sacrifice their democratic organizational structure in order to gain a more efficient, professional and centralized organization. While democracy and efficiency were considered two sides of the same coin in the 1970s, from the 1980s resolving the relationship between the two is increasingly perceived as a dilemma. In this regard, the emergence of neo-liberal ideas is important. Neo-liberal ideas seem to change the way of thinking, including the views of the relationship between democracy and efficiency. What most distinguishes the new organizations from the older ones, in other words, is not the desire to be efficient, but the conception of what efficiency is. Today, efficiency means centralization, both within the individual basic organizational units, and at the central level relative to the regional and local levels. The issue of legitimacy is also involved here, in that organizations' means of achieving internal legitimacy are changed to a large degree. There is no longer a desire to spend time on extensive internal discussion, which, in the 1970s was both a necessary and natural part of arriving at a position and implementing decisions.

Furthermore, organizations that call themselves democratic are not always what they claim to be (see Strømsnes and Selle (eds.) 1996). Formal opportunities are clearly not the same as real opportunities; nor do they imply that the members actually want to take advantage of the opportunities that exist. Even if there exist great variations across organizational types, often the vast majority of members are completely passive, and only in the vaguest sense linked to the decision making structure within the organization. Even though there are, naturally, important formal differences between classical democratically structured organizations and the new professional, centralized and specialized organizations, many of the traditional organizations have also demonstrated a tendency toward centralization and professionalization (Selle and Øymyr 1995). This is not, by any means, an indication of a desire by the organizations' leaders to distance themselves from their members. On the contrary, quite often this development is a result of a lack of interest and active involvement on the part of the members. Regardless of the cause, the result is often oligarchical tendencies, and often also a certain shift in objectives.

Internal specialization may also lead to professionalization and the creation of separate departments with their own specialists who work relatively independent of the organization at large. The organizations more often function as a form of umbrella organization, under which the various sections need not be closely connected. This kind of structure, which is evident in a number of the traditional organizations in the voluntary sector (Selle and Øymyr 1995), and also within the environmental sector (Gundersen 1991, 1996), makes these organizations less unlike the new specialized organizations.

Nevertheless, when formal democracy no longer exists, we are dealing with a qualitatively different kind of organization. Formal internal democracy, ie organizations with real members who have the possibility of replacing their leadership, is based on an entirely different way of thinking. Thus, when internal democracy is no longer considered important, this constitutes a profound cognitive shift. The membership-role, and consequently one of the main forms of participation in Norwegian democracy, is undergoing deep change.

Passive versus active membership

The understanding of passive support depends on the emphasis placed on the internal vs. external democratic functions of an organization. If the emphasis is primarily on the external democratic role of the organization, then the question of membership activity will be less important. In that case, it may be sufficient for supporters that their views are represented by others and the significance of the socialization function of the organization will be played down.

As regards the democratic socializing function of the organizations, there will be varying views of how important it is to be an active member. Almond and Verba, for example, in The Civic Culture, claim that "any membership - passive membership or membership in a nonpolitical organization - has an impact on political competence". They continue: "Pluralism, even if not explicitly political pluralism, may indeed be one of the most important foundations of political democracy" (Almond and Verba 1989:265). Putnam would agree with Almond and Verba that an organization does not need to be political in order to be important to democracy , and this neglect of the specific political is actually a break with Tocqueville, since he himself identified political associations as the key to the rich associational life in the United States, and viewed specifically political associations as the "great free schools" of democracy (see Tocqueville 1945; cp Foley and Edwards 1996).

But Putnam would, contrary to Almond and Verba, claim that passive membership is not democratically important. The important thing is that members are in face to face contact, and it is for this reason that belonging to a bowling club is more democratically significant than being part of an environmental protection association. Almond and Verba's argument that pluralism in itself is an important democratic value, as pointed out primarily by Robert A. Dahl (1967), is undercommunicated in Putnam's approach.

We here position ourselves closer to Almond and Verba than to Putnam, but even closer to Tocqueville himself, and in our view, this is a field that the new "social capital" research must address in a manner entirely different from what Putnam has been willing to do thus far. One cannot turn measurable, but largely unresearched relationships into a priori assumptions. In our view, accepting that nonpolitical organizations may play an important role in a democracy does not make the theoretical derivation of organizational typologies any less necessary in empirically oriented research. In fact, while some organizations will play a decisive role in a democracy, others may have a detrimental effect. The civil society, and voluntary organizations, do obviously not a priori express democratic values (Cohen and Arato 1992; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992; Skov Henriksen 1994; Portes and Landolt 1996). Nevertheless, a democratic system of government is in continual need of input from a dynamic and largely democratically inclined civil society (see eg Diamond 1994; Hadenius 1996).

We support a contextual approach, in which membership, including passive membership, can mean different things in different types of organization, and in which there may exist large differences across countries (which is also implicit in the Civic Culture tradition). In a modern derivative of the Civic Culture tradition, Dekker and Van den Broek find three different types of civil society in western countries: "parochial", "active" and "broad" (Dekker and Van den Broek 1998). The first is described as typical of Southern Europe, where there are relatively few organizations and limited membership, but where the few members are highly active. The "active" system is found primarily in North America. In such a system, there is a closely knit organizational society, large numbers of members, and active members. In the third category, of which Scandinavia, West Germany and the Netherlands are typical, the organizational society is closely knit, membership is extensive, but a much smaller percentage of the members are active. This means that the relationship between membership and activity varies, and raises the interesting question of why, in the Scandinavian context, those who belong to organizations but are not active consider it of value to belong at all. The answer to this question can not possibly be democratically irrelevant.

A discussion of passive support may also be related to, first of all, general theories of democracy, and to the important distinction between an instrumental- (eg Schumpeter 1942) and a participant-oriented theoretical approach (eg Pateman 1970). Our hypothesis is that the passive supporters of the new organizations are of greater significance than the participant-oriented approach would have it, even though they are not active in the ordinary sense. Furthermore, they are often more significant than the instrumental approach would have it. They are more than atomistic passive supporters. They are institutionally linked to society and politics through their organizational ties, and they may thus also have a certain political influence. This is even more so because many of them support and participate in a wide specter of organizations at the same time.

This discussion may also be related to the rather broad distinction between the American and the European traditions in the study of social movements (Morris and McClurg Mueller (eds.) 1992; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald (eds.) 1996). The American tradition emphasizes political ingenuity and professionalization. Passive supporters are completely at the mercy of the entrepreneurial organization, and have very little say. The European tradition, on the other hand, is concerned with decentralization and community, ie integration. The passive supporters are completely left out: they are excluded by definition and become "meaningless".

Like the neo-Tocquevillian tradition, neither of these traditions really tackle the significance of passive supporters. In the modern type of organization, at least, passive supporters have characteristics which are not addressed by either of these traditions. If the approach emphasizing political ingenuity were right, then organizations could do whatever they wanted, they would not need to take their supporters into consideration at all. But if that is the case, then it is hard to understand why organizations expend such resources on keeping their supporters. It is no simple matter for an organization to change strategies in order to reach new groups, ie to replace groups of supporters which they are financially dependent upon. This flexibility is often exaggerated (cp. Maloney and Jordan 1997). On the other hand, if the European tradition is mostly right, all passive supporters should be alienated and marginalized politically. We argue that this is fare from obvious.

What explains the new type of "membership"?

There are, of course, a number of reasons why the membership role is changing, and definitely not only internal ones. In what follows we shall comment briefly on two external factors which seem to have an effect, ie changes in the organizations' relationship to government, and changes in their relationship to the market.

The Scandinavian countries are thoroughly organized societies. But even though there is a sizable third sector in Norway (and Scandinavia), there is also a well developed welfare state (Kuhnle and Selle 1992; Lundström and Wijkström 1997). This is a result of the way the voluntary sector grew out of, and became closely connected with, the development of broad and politically significant social movements, while at the same time being an integrated part of the development of the welfare state. This makes the Scandinavian countries prototypical state-friendly societies (Klausen and Selle 1996). However, in spite of this state-friendliness, which has often meant ideological proximity and financial dependence, the voluntary sector has also had a high degree of autonomy, not least organizationally.

Environmental organizations are also highly integrated with the public sector, though in varying degrees. In all probability, there has been a tendency towards extended integration as organizations have become more dependent on public funding for various projects (Gundersen 1996). The increased use of government project funding, replacing basic support, augments the general processes of professionalization, centralization, and specialization witnessed in the organizational society, ie those tendencies which deplete the membership role (Selle 1996; Selle and Strømsnes 1996). Thus it may be that even at a time when the public sector is be emphasizing the great significance of the voluntary sector and voluntary work, and when the public sector wishes to take advantage of this work in its implementation of public policy, it still is developing forms of financial support which gradually debilitate the genuinely voluntary. And all of this is contemporaneous with the changes internal to the sector itself. It may appear that the increasing concern with service functions, and the development of a new type of contract culture within the public sector ("New Public Management"), may lead to less of a membership orientation and more market thinking in the voluntary sector as well.

At the same time, the organizations' relationship to the market has changed fundamentally. The market has an entirely different legitimacy then before, not only in environmental organizations, but also more generally in the voluntary sector and in the society at large. This is not merely a matter of influence from "management" thinking in the voluntary sector, but also of closer relationships between the voluntary sector and the market. In other words, the sectors are to an increasing degree involved with each other. But, what the market is "asking" for does not necessarily go very well together with the traditional membership role. In other words, enter market thinking and increased service orientation, exit regular membership.

These changes in the relationships to state and market do put a pressure upon the traditional membership role, but also upon the role of the volunteer within the voluntary sector. Increased use of project funding leads to a move away from the amateur approach of many organizations, towards a more professional orientation, towards efficiency and results.

Changes in the view of the volunteer

Even though a number of the newest environmental organizations are structured as foundations, they still consider themselves to be voluntary organizations, and also consider their legitimacy to be related to that tradition. For that reason, it is important to take a close look at the changing conception of the volunteer within the voluntary sector. It may be that the decreasing membership figures and low level of activity witnessed by many of the traditional organizations have made the transition to a new form of organization much easier, even though a cognitive change of this magnitude can not originate exclusively in this particular type of experience.

That environmental organizations, both old and new, have become largely centralized and professionalized, implying rather meager conditions for the voluntary aspect within organizations (Selle and Øymyr 1995). The development is most likely not only related to the general professionalization, but also to the environmental movements strong links to the scientific milieu, and their emphasis on the role of scientific knowledge. This connection is particularly strong within the environmental movement, and probably has an amplifying effect on a more general tendency in the sector at large: there is less and less room for amateurs. Furthermore, the implementation of public policy must be done properly, ie professionally and effectively, if an organization is to be awarded new public sector responsibilities. Government funds are not to be "wasted" in "the age of management by objectives".

In the environmental field, not even in the membership-based parts, is there a great emphasis on the genuinely voluntary, in the sense of "untrained work"; that is, this type of work is not overtly emphasized as having value in itself (see eg Habermann 1993). Non-professional work, as an idea, is on shaky ground, and there is no fundamental objection to paid labor. The organizations are both less careful about how they spend their money, and are less unwilling to hire paid employees, even well paid employees. To the extent that organizations are financially reticent and restrictive in their use of paid employees, this seems to be more due to necessity, ie insufficient resources, than to a sense of morality.

Changes in the view of the volunteer may be seen in relation to changes in the view of membership; they are part of the same phenomenon. This is a profound and far-reaching change. Members, in the usual sense, may be considered amateurs, volunteers for whom there is no longer any room. Thus far, this has been most evident in the outward-oriented, often service-directed organizations, as well as in those organizations which are most performance-oriented (Selle and Øymyr 1995). When the volunteer, or the voluntary, as a cognitive category is devalued, it is also easier to de-emphasize the significance of membership purely organizationally. But the relationship is not unidirectional. When membership declines in many of the organizations, this naturally reinforces the tendencies toward professionalization and centralization in the sector. We have also seen that increased emphasis on cost-effectiveness implies that organizations are less willing to train "amateurs" to become "professionals". They would rather hire in experts when someone else is paying the bill.

All of these factors indicate profound changes, not only in the relationship between the organization and the member, but also in the form that organizational participation takes at a more general level. None of them fits Putnam's requirements for developing social capital.

Internal vs. external democracy - a reconsideration

What happens within an organization can not be considered in isolation from changes in the organizations' external role in a democratic society. Returning to the discussion concerning the significance of face to face contact and institutional links, we would argue, firstly, that it is not at all certain that the passive supporters in the new type of organization, without close horizontal ties, are unable to develop trust and affiliation, ie social capital. At any rate, this is an empirical question, and a good deal of contextual variation is to be expected. Secondly, we open for the possibility that the passive supporters in the new organizations, through their affiliation with the organization, develop important institutional links, both to the organization itself and through the organization to the society at large, among other things as a result of the often comprehensive informational systems of which they are a part.

Face to face contact and democratic learning

In the new professionalized, centralized and specialized organizations, there are purely formal organizational reasons why supporters are passive, in addition to the ideological, internal cultural, life-cycle, or psychological reasons that may underlie the passivity found in classical democratically structured organizations. Perhaps many of the passive supporters in the new organizations are just as committed to the cause, and even as strongly attached to their organization, as the members in traditional democratically structured organizations?

For many supporters, the new forms of participation involve more than donating a meager sum of money to a good cause in order to ease a guilty conscience (Strømsnes, Grendstad and Selle 1996). We need to know more about the extent and breadth of this kind of support and we need to know who these passive supporters are and what their opinions and attitudes are, eg the extent to which they want to exert political influence. It is important that we investigate the degree to which modern "passive" membership is periodic by nature, or whether it is a life-cycle phenomenon, ie whether people alternate between being active and passive supporters. In addition, we have to understand whether organizational activity exists as a potential that the individual chooses to utilize if and when s/he finds it necessary, which is an important argument within instrumental democratic theory (eg Schumpeter 1942).

It is clear, after all, that the structural barriers to political influence are quite different in the new professional organizations than in traditional organizations, as the relationship between activity and passivity is far less gradual; it is in fact quite sudden (a supporter is either active or passive). The new organizations are in general more flexible in that the supporters themselves can decide when or how much time they wish to spend on keeping themselves informed, or taking part on more ad hoc basis. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that the motivation for the individual to participate or be associated with an organization has automatically changed correspondingly (see eg Knoke and Wright-Isak 1982).

Rather than take for granted that passive members are powerless and marginalized within the new types of organization, perhaps it would be wiser to consider a new type of passive power, something that a group of people, who mostly do not know each other, possess. An important issue in this respect is, of course, the degree to which the relationship between the organization and an individual supporter is asymmetrical, and the degree to which it is dynamic or static.

Expectations as to what an organization does with its members (organizational socialization) are, of course, of a different nature in the newer type of organization, compared with the older ones. It seems like people are still willing to do limited voluntary work, but increasingly run away from purely administrative work and traditional organizational activities. However, it may be that this newer form suits many of us better today (Maloney and Jordan 1997). In other words, there may be developing a new symmetry between what the organizations require and what the individual demands (Selle 1998). Though there is still, generally, a lower threshold for membership in the new organizations then in the traditional membership organizations, it has become less demanding to join traditional membership-based organizations as well. Direct mail recruiting is rapidly becoming more common, and in such a system there are few, if any, expectations, either on the part of the organization or the individual, that the "mail order member" be at all active, even if formally a "real" member.

The new organizations may also ultimately demonstrate a broader social basis for recruitment than is often the case in the classical, democratically structured organizations, partly because of less expectations concerning activity. It is, in fact, important in discussions of democracy to consider the issue of representativity; and it is in no way obvious that the newer organizations come out worse in this respect. In our analysis of representativity in Norwegian environmental organizations, there was no indication that the new type of organization was less representative of the population at large in terms of education, income, social class or sex (Selle and Strømsnes 1998 forthcoming).

It may also be important to distinguish between the establishment of a psychological or more affective link to the organization, in which face to face contact may be crucial, and the formation of a more cognitive link through knowledge building. But also establishing a psychological, or affective, link is possible within the new organizational formations, in addition to the extensive knowledge-based and normative learning within these value-based organizations. Our analysis of supporters in the new Norwegian environmental organizations indicates that there is a high degree of affective link here as well, and that without extensive face to face contact (Strømsnes et al. 1996). The supporters feel just as strongly for their organization, and not only for the politicized topic, as those in the more traditional environmental organizations. However, this must also be considered in light of the fact that the current development of membership-based organizations indicates that organizational socialization is assuming a much more limited role than it previously had (Selle and Øymyr 1995).

Even though ideally there may be factors which logically indicate that there should be higher levels of commitment within traditional voluntary organizations, it is by no means guaranteed that this is really so. We must allow that, in our age of information, commitment is something which may be developed by means other than face to face contact, and that members in non-democratically structured organizations can be equally committed as in traditional organizations. This is particularly true in organizations with an extensive information system which has an educational effect that also may strengthen the affective ties to the organization.

Furthermore, when it comes to individual learning of democracy through interaction with others, one might ask whether the democracy-promoting, educational role of the voluntary sector has been exaggerated in much recent (but also less recent) democratic theory, Putnam included. Most of us, after all, do not spend that much time in voluntary organizations. People learn democratic skills, trust, civic duty, etc (to the extent that they learn it) not only through voluntary organizations, but through their families, at school, at work, etc. There has been a considerable "democratization" of this type of institutions throughout the last generation, at least in the Scandinavian countries (Gundelach and Torpe 1997). Thus the decline in face to face contact in the new organizations is not necessarily that problematic for more general democratic socialization because of increased horizontal contact within other organizations and institutions. The lack of this kind of contact is not automatically a sign of either democratic decline or individual alienation.

In other words, in trying to determine the status of democracy we must cast our net wider than the neo-Tocquevillian approach. Not only do we have to take into account possible democratic learning in institutions and organizations outside the voluntary sector. Looking at the voluntary sector itself, it is not sufficient to analyze the links between single organizations and their supporters. We have to grasp an individual's total participation picture. In the Norwegian context we do know for instance that most of the organized environmentalists participate extensively also in more traditional types of organizations. So, having extensive face to face contact in another organizational setting; ie traditional organizational socialization and social capital building, they at the same time help obtain value-pluralism through their support of non-democratically structured environmental organizations (eg Strømsnes et al. 1996).

Horizontal vs. vertical networks

The new form of organization requires little or none face to face contact. Even so, this does not change the fact that a majority of the Norwegian supporters are recruited through personal networks (Strømsnes et al. 1996). So, even though there are no formal meeting places for the supporters, there may be other types of more informal meeting places, where relevant, and topical organizational issues are discussed. Both the spread and variety of such informal meeting places are matters of which more knowledge is required. Face to face contact in these new organizations is not, in other words, necessarily nonexistent.

Furthermore, even if horizontal contact between supporters may be quite limited, there is still extensive vertical contact through a comprehensive information system within the organizations. The information systems are primarily constructed such that they provide a type of information which is not only internal information regarding the work of the organization, but also important information regarding the area in which the organization is active. All of the core environmental organizations in Norway have extensive information systems that demonstrate an impressive standard and breadth. It is our impression that the information systems of the new organizations are at least as comprehensive as those found in more traditional voluntary organizations. This may be so because the new types of organizations are completely dependent on written rather than oral communication. Being the main form of communication, the quality becomes decisive for organizational development. Furthermore, the new types of organizations are among the first to really use the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) which opens up more interactive communication with other ordinary supporters and with the leaders of the organizations. All in all, it may be - if not at all obviously so - that the new technologies will result in more symmetric flows of information within these organizations.

If this system is to work, the important thing is that the information system must function satisfactorily also from the point of view of the recipient. A major research task lies in an analysis of how strongly coupled the horizontal and the vertical networks are, and an investigation of whether, and if so, to what extent, a high level of certain types of vertical contact could compensate for a lack of horizontal contact. Vertical communication has not automatically the consequences of the Italian clientelismo system, as one could get the impression of from Putnam's writing. We definitely need to distinguish between different types of vertical integration. Furthermore, it is crucial to take into account that face to face contact often is not only "micro", but are related to the power structure of a group or a society. So what seems like horizontal contact in the Putnam tradition is quite often at the same time part of more vertical power structures in a society. This is in our opinion a serious flaw in the neo-Tocquevillian perspective. Putnam lacks a methodology (and typology) to decide when trust becomes generalized rather than results in "ghettoization" or "us against them" (cp. Portes and Landolt 1996). Furthermore, he does not in our opinion take seriously enough that the new type of mobilization may lead to a broader, but at the same time not necessarily a less deeper engagement. It may actually lead to increased pluralism and less devastating conflict, i.e., "cross-cutting cleavages" rather than democratic decline.

By the way, it is rather difficult to see just what exactly is the problem with members being autonomous in their relationship to the organization. Why is it so important that organizations or institutions are autonomous, for example relative to the state and the market, but not equally important that members are autonomous relative to the organizations? Autonomy may also be a kind of power, exit power (ie the threat of leaving the organization). The possibility of exercising exit power creates a dynamic element in the organization - supporter relationship. This is even more so because in these types of organizations there at the same time exists an information system in which members may develop loyalty and use the power of voice, as the communication is not only one way (cp Hirschman 1970).

In other words, the organizations to a certain extent must adapt to the needs and desires of there supporters, and these supporters thus may have an influence on the framework within which the organizations work. Of course, there will be considerable variation across organization types, but even if the individual supporters do not always enjoy real power or influence, this type of contact through the information system prevents marginalization in that supporters are not excluded due to a lack of knowledge about, or affiliation to ongoing events. In any case, the picture is not necessarily as black as Putnam would have it.

Conclusion

We are concerned with an area of importance for theories of democracy, an area in which various positions must be investigated empirically, rather than assumed. It may actually be that the new organizational model does not result in a new type of political marginalization, but that it brings about a broader, if not necessarily deeper involvement. It may mean that it becomes possible to be associated with more organizations, political and other, which means a more open and broader education and affiliation than was common earlier.

This is an area in which our knowledge is deficient. There is a need for new models and new means of understanding which not only derive from what has been, but which also open up for new insight into what is already there, but that we do not yet fully understand. We must, of course, realize that we may find democratic decline, but also democratic revitalization in these new types of organizations. Paradoxically, it may be that increasing centralization and increasing elitism within an organizational society do not necessarily mean that a democracy will become more elitist.

The development of organizations in the field of environmentalism provides an indication of a more general development in the voluntary sector. This more general tendency may suggest that it is time to discuss the democratic role of the voluntary sector in a new way, and that we must leave behind important elements of the cognitive map given us by the neo-Tocquevillian tradition. We can no longer romanticize the past: first of all, things were probably never quite as we thought they were, and secondly, the era of the democratic membership-based organization as the dominant form is over. We even do not know whether this form will survive as an important one. We need to understand the new organizational forms, and this type of understanding requires a shift in our thinking, with regard to our understanding of the relationship between support and influence, and between internal and external democracy.

The voluntary sector is an important and integrated part of a democratic society, both because of the internal organizational structure, but even more because of the way they participate in the democratic process, at both local and central levels. Perhaps we must, on the basis of the profound transformation of the organizational community which we are now witnessing, focus less on the internal democracy within organizations, and more on the external democratic role of the organizations. In other words, the focus should be on the role these organizations actually play in securing a pluralistic democracy.

Professional value-based organizations may play an important role in a democracy, even though the organizations are not democratically structured, and even though "membership" primarily implies passive support, with few, if any, expectations of active involvement. The non-democratically structured organizations may play a decisive role in a democracy if real alternatives to choose between are considered the basic characteristics of a dynamic democracy. Passive supporters may be an important part of such a modern democracy, because they ensure the survival of the value-based organizations, among other things. But passive support is also of major importance to the individual him/herself because it provides a link to the political system that may even merit the title of influence.

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Notes

* Per Selle is Professor at the Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen and Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Research Centre in Organization and Management. Kristin Strømsnes is Research Fellow at the Norwegian Research Centre in Organization and Management. Correspondence address to both: LOS-senteret, Rosenbergsgt. 39, N-5015 Bergen; fax: +47 55 58 39 01; E-mail: per.selle@los.uib.no; kristin.stromsnes@los.uib.no.

. See Putnam, with Leonardi and Nanetti (1993) and Putnam (1993, 1995a, 1995b). Putnam's work has been met with great interest, but also with heavy criticism (see LaPalombara 1993; Laitin 1995; Lipset 1995; Foley and Edwards 1996; Jackman and Miller 1996; Lemann 1996; Levi 1993, 1996; Norris 1996; Portes and Landolt 1996; Schudson 1996; Skocpol 1996; Tarrow 1996; Valelly 1996). See also special issue of American Behavioral Scientist devoted to "Social Capital, Civil Society and Contemporary Democracy", edited by Edwards and Foley (1997).

2. A main problem with Putnam's approach, we think, is the lack of typological thinking. An interesting such typology is to be found in the so called Cultural Theory (Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990). This theory argues that there exists different forms of social capital, ie trust and solidarities. The theory defines four main such forms: Individualism, egalitarianism, hierarchy and fatalism. As we read Cultural Theory, the Putnam perspective is only able to distinguish between fatalism and the rest. The full consequences of this lack of a typological perspective within the neo-Tocquevillian approach will not be systematically discussed here.

. This is not a new distinction being introduced by Putnam. It is a distinction which has long been recognized in the study of democracy, and which is important for Tocqueville (see Tocqueville 1945). It is also important, for example, in Lipset's classical study Political Man (1960). See also Cohen and Arato (1992).

. Nor is his approach that different from another important school of thought which is also currently gaining ground, ie the communitarian approach (see eg Etzioni 1988).

. Grant Jordan and William Maloney refers to this type of organization as "Protest Businesses" (see Jordan and Maloney 1997; Maloney and Jordan 1997). The shift that took place in the mid-1980s with regard to organizational model within the environmental field, is also found in other contexts (see eg Eyerman and Jamison 1989; Jamison, Eyerman and Cramer, with Læssøe 1990).

. This is also evident in the declining membership figures in traditional membership organizations. The Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature, for example, which is the largest of the classical environmental protection organizations in the country, has lost more than a quarter of its members over the last few years (from approx. 40 000 in 1991 to approx. 28 000 in 1996).

. There are also examples of elitist organizations, in the area of environmentalism not least, such as The Norwegian Association of Hunters and Anglers and the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association, which were able to affect public environmental policies without adopting the dominant organizational form. This was possible up until the 1960s, as long as the policy area in question was relatively unimportant. Later, these and others changed in a more democratic direction in order to maintain their ability to influence public policy.

. In fact, Putnam does not find any difference between "civic" and "non-civic" Italian regions when it comes to political participation (see Putnam 1993:109).

9. However, a contextual approach implies that "membership" means different things in different countries. Not to be elaborated upon here, to be a member of a voluntary organization in the US is not equivalent with being a member in a Scandinavian country (eg Kuhnle and Selle 1992). See also note 13.

. In the early post-war years, there were influential voices within this school that argued that low participation, particularly from lower socio-economic groups, was beneficial to the democratic system, because, among other things, modern survey techniques showed much greater evidence of non-democratic attitudes among members of these groups (eg Dahl 1956; Almond and Verba 1989). But, just as it was probably unwise to exclude those with little social capital from the democratic process at that time, it is now probably unwise not to consider non-democratically structured organizations an important part of the democratic process.

. The neo-Tocquevillian and the communitarian traditions in the study of voluntary organizations and local communities are here actually closer to the European than to the American tradition in the study of social movements.

. In some countries, perhaps most particularly in state-friendly countries like Norway, it is the case, however, that organizations may find alternative means of finance, for example state project-based finance or corporate funding. For that reason, organizations may invest less in keeping passive supporters or acquiring new ones.

. Also more general differences between countries point in the same direction. It seems that the more market-oriented the voluntary sector is, for example that in the US, the less comprehensive the membership, in our sense of the term (eg Selle 1996). See note nine.

. Except within the youth organization we have seen no indication that organizations believe that paid labor "conflicts with" their understanding of themselves as voluntary organizations (see Strømsnes and Selle (eds.) 1996).

. An interesting question related to the evolving role of the member in organizations is what happens to members when the organization addresses itself to an international audience. It may be a relationship between internationalization and increasing elitism within organizations.

16. This is, however, less likely in Norway, where the voluntary sector has traditionally recruited from a broad section of society.

17. Maybe this is more so in the value-based organizations; ie that it does not work the same way in all kind of organizations. See note two.

18. Of course, this argument loses its power if all or most voluntary organizations leave the democratic model behind.

. Does Putnam really argue that a system of rather strong hierarchies and with paternalistic elements should not be seen as democratic? Do all top-down relationships weaken democracy and efficiency? See Thompson et al. (1990) and note two.

. See Mouzelis (1995) for a very interesting analysis of why face to face contact most often is not purely micro, and therefore, why aggregating from micro behavior only never grasp what is the most important. Cp. Skocpol (1996).

21. Putnam does not see religion as a main producer of social capital, rather the other way around (Putnam 1993:107-109; 175-176). It is a surprise that this fact has not really become an important part of the extensive American debate around Putnam's work, since so much of the general American literature make religion into the main factor in explaining the extensive voluntary spirit in American society. Either way, this type of ad hoc reasoning is not very promising. Religion may or may not develop social capital. It depends on context, and of the type of religion we are talking about.

22. However, even if that should generally be true, it would not be the "final" attack on the "face to face" approach, ie that face to face contact not only differ from, but is more fundamental than all other forms of communication. This perspective emphasizes the deepness and internalization of commitment, and one may still argue that in time of deep societal crises only the commitment built up from face to face contact may be strong enough to prevent manipulation by non-democratic forces (eg the moral collapse in Bosnia). The broadness vs. deepness of integration (or strong vs. weak ties) is a crucial topic concerning social capital building that have to be further analyzed.

. It is important to distinguish between the influence the members have within the organization and the influence they have through the organization. This is evident, for example, with respect to the role of women in the organizational society. Organizations with a female majority in their membership and male leaders, particularly in the health and social services sector, have been highly influential in Norway. Even though the female members have been subordinate to the male leaders within the organization, it would still be fair to say that these women and women's interests have had significant democratic impact (see Selle 1997).