Unraveling in Democratically Governed Groups

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Abstract
This essay presents a framework for the analysis of voting processes in interest group organizations. It explores the tension between majority rule and membership maintenance in a group. The major theoretical propositions are that myopic majority rule government can cause instability and a loss of members from the group. The risk of this instability, which is called unraveling, leads to behavioral and institutional solutions that impose nonmedian social choices on the group members. The theory is applied to the founding era of the American Federation of Labor, an important, long-lived organization. It is shown that the most important features of the AFL in this century are best explained by reference to the theory of social choice in voluntary organizations.

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