Iron Law of Oligarchy

The Iron Law of Oligarchy is an idea in sociology that suggests all democratic organisations eventually turn into oligarchies. Developed by Syndicalist Robert Michels and is often used as one of the strongest arguments against democracy, especially representative democracy.

Overview

According to the theory all organizations eventually come to be run by a "leadership class", who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being "servants of the masses", Michels argues this "leadership class," rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank and file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes.

It is argued that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.

The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law," democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.

Evidence

Political Parties

Two of the most well studied examples include the German Social Democratic Party and the German Green Party.

Wikipedia

One study in 2016 of he evolution of Wikipedia's network of norms over time found that it is consistent with the iron law of oligarchy. Their quantitative analysis is based on data-mining over a decade of article and user information. It shows the emergence of an oligarchy derived from competencies in five significant "clusters": administration, article quality, collaboration, formatting, and content policy. The study noted, "The encyclopedia’s core norms address universal principles, such as neutrality, verifiability, civility, and consensus. The ambiguity and interpretability of these abstract concepts may drive them to decouple from each other over time." This view conflicts with the view proposed by some that Wikipedia is democratic and self-improving, but the lack of formal hierarchies in Wikipedia and commitment to certain ideals prevent a fixed hierarchy and keeps Wikipedia open-source.

Breaking the Law

It is possible to break the law and preserve democratic institutions from becoming oligarchical. Adolf Gasser argued that if you met five conditions, you could break the iron law of oligarchy and preserve democratic institutions:

1. Society has to be built up from bottom to top. As a consequence, society is built up by people, who are free and have the power to defend themselves with weapons.
2. These free people join or form local communities. These local communities are independent, which includes financial independence, and they are free to determine their own rules.
3. Local communities join together into a higher unit e.g. a canton.
4. There is no hierarchical bureaucracy.
5. There is competition between these local communities e.g. on services delivered or on taxes.

This approach strongly resembles the model of confederation proposed by libertarian socialists. In Seymour Martin Lipset's study of the International Typographical Union in 1956, found that two factors in the union allowed for it to break the iron law of oligarchy: