Live to Fight Another Day? Organizational Maintenance and Mortality Anxiety of Civil Society Organizations

Abstract

Communities of civil society organizations are characterized by substantial volatility, as new organizations are continuously established and old ones are regularly disbanded. This article aims to improve our understanding of the dynamic nature of civil society by focusing on a particular aspect of organizational maintenance, namely, mortality anxiety. Building upon previous work that assesses actual and perceived survival chances of civil society organizations, we examine how inter-organizational competition, ties with public authorities, and the internal institutionalization of civil society organizations shape how these groups assess their survival chances. Our results demonstrate that high levels of inter-organizational competition and a strong reliance on government funding significantly increase mortality anxiety. Furthermore, they highlight the importance of a professionalized and internally differentiated structure. We rely on survey data and focus on the case of Belgium, in this way providing a first assessment of mortality anxiety in a neo-corporatist political system.

The Comparative Interest Group-survey project: design, practical lessons, and data sets

“…To date (2019) the CIG data have produced some outstanding research outputs, e.g. the role of interest groups as transmission belt in representative democracy (Albareda 2018); party-interest group interactions (Berkhout et al 2019); the effect of public opinion on organizational survival (Hanegraaff and Poletti 2019); coalition building (Hanegraaff and Pritoni 2019): interest groups system density and access : mortality anxiety of interest groups (Heylen et al 2018); the funding of interest groups (Heylen and Willems 2019); interest group access (Willems 2020) and development of national interest representation systems (Novak and Fink-Hafner 2019a, b). Numerous other publications are being prepared and/or are under review.…”

Self-maintenance vs. goal attainment: drivers of mortality anxiety in organized civil society

“…Clark and Wilson 1961;Wilson 1973;Moe 1988), central works on mortality anxiety of interest groups (e.g. Gray and Lowery 1997;Halpin and Thomas 2012;Heylen et al 2018;Hanegraaff and Poletti 2019) and influential works on organizational maintenance and survival within the respective specialist literatures on groups and parties (e.g. Panebianco 1988;Katz and Mair 1995;Scarrow 1996;Weisbrod 1997;Schmitter and Streeck 1999;Jordan and Maloney 2007;Fraussen 2014;Halpin 2014;Maloney 2015).…”

“…Studying mortality anxiety -as compared to actual disbandment -is important as it grants a fine-grained understanding of the drivers of organizational stress (Heylen et al 2018), which is crucial for the adaptive capacity of organizations -their ability to counter vulnerabilities causing anxiety -and (to the extent such ability is limited) the evolution of group populations (Halpin and Thomas 2012: 217). This aligns with a growing literature stressing the centrality of the 'survival imperative' to understand better what groups do, when they do it and how they do it (for an overview see .…”

“…This aligns with a growing literature stressing the centrality of the 'survival imperative' to understand better what groups do, when they do it and how they do it (for an overview see . More specifically, Halpin and Thomas have stressed (2012: 216-7) that given the prominence of ecological theory in group research it is important to determine whether mortality anxiety is predominantly driven by intra-organizational factors (such as related to an organization's membership) or by external challenges (such as competitive pressure) (see also Gray and Lowery 1997;Heylen et al 2018). Similar questions have been raised in research on party performance and change contrasting the influence of intra-organizational properties with party system dynamics as central drivers of party behavior and survival (e.g.…”

“…They also -in the reverse -grant insights into the roots of a fundamental 'representation bias' in organized civil society reinforcing societal inequalities, which does not relate to organizational mobilization but affects existing organizations' survival prospects on the one hand and their influence strategies on the other (Schattschneider 1960;Halpin and Thomas 2012;Fisker 2015;Hanegraaff and Poletti 2019). Finally, the fact that drivers of mortality anxiety to date have only been studied within single country settings -notably Belgium, Scotland and the US (Gray and Lowery 1997;Halpin and Thomas 2012;Heylen et al 2018), stresses the importance of cross-national research to put existing knowledge on a broader footing.…”