The Four Logics within Organisational Ecologies: The Example of Organised Labour

Over the past few decades, most research on organized interests has employed the four-logics-model introduced by Schmitter and Streeck in the early 1980s and subsequently refined and further elaborated by other authors. This paper argues that there is no need for completely novel analytical tools. Rather, it is the perspective which might need to be changed by taking account, in particular, of recent modifications in the political economy within which organized interests operate. Although the early concept acknowledges the importance of the internal (membership) and the external (influence) environment of interest groups, it essentially is and actor-centred model aimed at emphasizing the organizational properties of business and of other associations. The political, economic and social environment has been relatively stable over the period of the Trente Glorieuse which has been the main focus of the previous phase of interest group research. Today, it appears to have substantially changed. The paper, accordingly, turns to more recent sociological approaches asking for the significance of organizational ecologies that embrace both individual organizations and populations of organizations. In particular, it tries to elaborate on what is called organizational communities or, in other words, the inter-organizational networks within which both individual organizations and groups or populations of organizations compete for influence, recognition and resources. It is the shape and the configuration of these communities that, more than ever, constrain the strategic choices of interest groups to opt for autonomy and self-determination. The paper shall pick organized labour and trade unions as examples where this may be particularly conspicuous.