ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some of the major debates concerning organizational democracy, relating to the conflict between notions of elite and mass membership. The origins of an idea, such as organizational democracy, are both complex and demanding. No two writers would agree on a common view. Nonetheless, an attempt to discuss the problem must not only cover possible areas of consensus but also present a subjective vision. One of the problems in disentangling the disciplinary influences nourishing the idea of organizational democracy relates to the fact that the professionalization of knowledge is relatively new. The impetus for writing the contribution to the debate on the origins of organizational democracy stems from an initial reaction to a conceptual schema drawn up elsewhere by colleagues. In studying the nature of both classical and modern oligarchy, a number of models may be cited. Taking the simplest possible model, the author can distinguish theories on the one hand, and experiments on the other.
