Abstract
There is an on-going debate within academia on the decline of activity in the classical membership-based organizations, and that an active membership is key in the internal
governance processes within these organizations. It is often said that those organizations have become becalmed, that they have grown complacent and that the emotional fervor of the movement is subdued (Skocpol, 2003; Zald & Ash, 1966). This argument is often linked with the Michels ([1911], 1962) observation that membership-based organizations over time tend to develop into oligarchies where the leaders tend to focus more on the survival of the organization than on the fulfillment of the original goals. This process captures the transformation of formerly democratic and participatory organizations into hierarchic authority structures with a self-supplementing leadership.