The Distinct Internal Logics of Associations and Professionalized Voluntary Organizations

Abstract This chapter explains how a synthesis of incentive-theoretical and resource dependency approaches provides a sound foundation for specifying central organizational trade-offs that confront membership-based organizations reliant on voluntary support when engaging in processes or activities essential to their democratic contributions (e.g. the cultivation of member activism, political engagement and societally responsive behaviour). These trade-offs make clear why organizations often realize their democratic potential in some way but not another. How these trade-offs are handled by CSOs essentially depends on the interplay of three groups of intra-organizational actors. Members, organizational leaders, and managers can be associated with different orientations and priorities with regard to CSO self-maintenance and external goal attainment, two demands that can be difficult to reconcile. The two contrasting governance templates—‘voluntary association’ and ‘professionalized voluntary organization’— in which these three actor types have different positions allow us to theorize how these trade-offs (such as between member control and leader autonomy; between stable linkages and the maximization of external, short-term support) play out on the level of individual CSOs that share characteristics associated with each template.