Robert Michels stated that all democratic organizations sooner or later end up as ruled by the few. But are there certain dilemmas forcing organizations more or less easily into the oligarchic path? In the interview material from six small voluntary associations such dilemmas were identified. Dilemmas seemed to arise regarding representativeness and competence among leaders, handling of external forces, interpretation of goals, and maintaining commitment. Some of the dilemmas were implicit, some were more explicitly acknowledged. It is concluded that the "iron law of oligarchy" is avoidable, if the organization becomes aware of these dilemmas.

In the last decades, many ventures and stakes into the creative and cultural industries (CCI) have been undertaken across the world. It has become somewhat more of a rule than exception that cities, regions and nations all have outspoken goals into this field. Research into the CCI tends to focus on larger cities and densely populated regions, and little research has focused on rural and sparsely populated regions.In this paper, the purpose has been to investigate the impact on economy and employment of the cultural and creative businesses away from urban areas. A second purpose was to study ways of improving the sectors potential to grow in such regions. Thereby a contribution is made towards reducing the knowledge gap between rural versus urban areas in the field of cultural and creative industry studies.The main methodology of the study can be characterized as interactive, as the researchers have closely followed a venture, called Drivkraft, into stimulating CCI in a remote context. The results point towards lack of efficiency and effective ways on behalf of the public sector to support the growth of CCI. In the studied venture, commercial actors themselves are shown to be better able to perform such a task. The study also shows that the CCI can be a strong contributor of employment and business opportunities in remote and sparsely populated regions as well, with high numbers of micro-businesses in our example case.