ABSTRACT
It is often stated that an ‘institutionalist turn’ has taken place in the social sciences, i.e. that ‘institutions matter’. They matter because they structure political behaviour and influence political outcomes. This chapter examines the internal institutional structure of associations and how this relates to activity and volunteering in associations. The internal structure of associations is old – often as old as the associations themselves. The organizational society is based upon a continuity that we largely do not find in other segments of society. In the ‘classical secondary association model’, formal democratic procedures of decision-making are combined with hierarchical structures that connect local associations with regional and national umbrella organizations. This model had particularly strong roots in the northern part of continental Europe, where it became the organizational basis for the new class-based associations that emerged in the late nineteenth century. The model was regarded as a particularly advantageous instrument in creating strong movements capable of mobilizing large numbers of members and participants. Many of the new associations that expanded within leisure, culture and sport adopted the same model with local branches integrated in national organizations based on elected decision-making bodies (Klausen and Selle 1996). In the course of the second half of the twentieth century, the secondary associations model became a more general model for the internal structuring of associations in Europe. The questions discussed in this chapter are: how widely is it proliferated? And how firmly is it anchored in the different countries?
