The social movement literature has shown that a process known as “internal organizational structuration” (Kriesi 1999) improves the likelihood that an organization and its movement will have a longer lifespan and be better able to take advantage of timely opportunities.
What is “internal organizational structuration”?
It is made up of 4 parts: Formalization, Professionalization, Internal Differentiation, and Integration (ibid.)
Formalization is about the development of formal membership, leadership and process structures.
Professionalization means developing a paid staff who make organizing their career.
Internal Differentiation is about the division of labor and developing region-based chapters
Integration is about the centralization of decisions that can be used to coordinate the different chapters.
Each of these is considered a No-No by anti-authoritarian organizers and for good reason. Much of the anti-authoritarian organizing is what is know as “prefigurative”. That is, “building a new world in the shell of the old.”
Much of the “internal organizational structuration” is not seen as desirable for the organization of a decent society or collective. Professionalization, Internal Differentiation and Integration all seem to have traits that would lead to or are in themselves “coordinatorist” (see Michael Albert’s ParEcon), which seems to develop a different type of class structure.
Some view formalization as a burden to free flow of movement decisions and activity, and as a bureaucratic process that deadens the human interactions of organizers.
On the other hand, feminist and movement scholar Jo Freeman has written an excellent piece on how structurelessness can be oppressive in itself (The Tyranny of Structurelessness).
So on the one hand we have evidence showing that centralization, formalization, division of labor and professionalization works in outlasting groups that do not have these internal structures. On the other hand, these structures are not in themselves all that great.
So can decentralized organizations work?
Much of the literature has shown a strong correlation between this type of structure and success but that does not mean that the mechanism for success cannot be incorporated into decentralized structures.
Due to Jo Freeman’s article, many anti-authoritarian groups have created organizations with structures described above as Formalization.
Professionalization works to help generate efficient and prolific workers but this can also be generated by prefigerative organizations. For this to happen, strong formalization needs to take place where tasks are explicitly stated and divided (though not necessarily to the same people all the time).
Division of labor can be created in prefigurative groups as long as the ‘jobs’ created are rotated.
Creating chapters along geographic lines now too is a regular part of prefigurative organizations but the centralization of their oversight is certainly not. Nor should it be. The beauty of centralization is that each chapter takes its part in pushing the larger movement forward, but without overall coordination, forward movement is slow. However, consensus coordination should work, leaving each chapter with some autonomy and, potentially, blocking power over the entire group’s agenda but at the same time maintaining a shared objective and understanding with all other chapters.
Just because the social movement literature states that centralization correlates with success does not mean success is due to centralization. Decentralized groups CAN win, but will more easily do so if they adopt some amended approaches to “internal organizational structuralization”
