Organizational growth and ecological constraints: The growth of social movements in Sweden, 1881 to 1940

Based on the theoretical framework of organizational ecology, it is suggest ed that social movement organizations are inert structures that rarely exce ed their initial size. The ecological concept of organizational growth is t ested using membership data for Sweden from 1881 to 1940 for virtually all local social movement organizations (29,193 organizations) in three major s ocial movements: the temperance, free church, and trade union movements. Fi ndings show that the organizations in two of the movements have average gro wth trajectories approximating zero. The ecological argument is then expand ed to include information on the movements' organizational niches and intra - and intermovement density development. After controlling for the local or ganization's initial size, findings reveal that the remaining variation in aggregate membership is more likely to depend on population and niche dynam ics (which organizational ecologists focus on) than on the capacity, of the movements local organizations to expand. These findings are consistent for all three Swedish movements. The ecological argument and the findings pres ented here are contrary to almost all research on social movements, which t akes for granted that social movement organizations are necessarily capable of individual growth.