Defining intermediary structures

The concept intermediary structures was first used in the work of the well-known Norwegian political scientist Stein Rokkan (1921-1979), one of the figureheads of comparative international political science. By intermediary structures he meant the multiplicity of free organisations and structures between the citizen and the government to which he ascribed an important stabilising role at the political level in society. The concept is therefore often employed in connection with Lijphart's concept of consociational democracy. (1).

However, Rokkan never clearly defined the concept or applied it. Other researchers also have mostly described the organisations at issue here (civil society associations...) as belonging to a residual category. They are not government bodies, nor families, nor do they aim at any financial gain, etc. Again and again, the concept was presented as covering a wide variety of organisations, in terms of objectives, structure, target group, activities, etc. However, an unambiguous categorisation has never been formulated.

All this highlights the fact that formulating a working definition and - connected with that – arriving at clear selection criteria for the ODIS database and data collection constitute a tricky problem. It again became necessary, at least to some extent, to turn to negative demarcations.

The ODIS team initially formulated the following working definition:

A private organisation that fulfills an active, mediating function between the individual and the government and thereby represents and defends specific interests and needs, that strives for a certain continuity in its operation, whose importance transcends the local level and whose own objective and that of its umbrella organisation is not merely recreational or commercial.

The concept was conceived as broader than the term pillarised organisation. Intermediary structures can but do not have to belong to ideological networks. It also doesn't seem useful to include only those organisations that evince a (coherent) social project or an ideology, let alone an exclusive bond with a political party. By adopting a more open approach, the extensive field of (originally) neutral or 'mixed' organisations can be surveyed.

Neither should the concept of intermediary structures be equated with the concept of social movements. Various criteria, which are often used in the many definitions of the term social movement, seem to be of little use in defining the concept of intermediary structures. The autonomy of the organisation, for example, seems to us a very intangible and very relative criterion. The criterion of emancipation is not central to the concept of intermediary structures. The effective mass character of the rank-and-file as an instrument in defending interests, cannot easily be included as a criterion. Again the problem of demarcation arises.

The problem of definition was given priority at the first ODIS workshop on Monday 15 May 2000 in the Royal Library in Brussels.

The testing of the working definition revealed that this must be formulated in a more general and autonomous way, that is to say, free of functional considerations. The separation between organisations with a local and a supra-local importance, and the evaluation of their activities or objectives (commercial, recreational) can hardly be excluded as a restrictive limiting factor. It was also pointed out that the boundary between private and public organisations is real, but despite this, many shadowy areas are still evident. Moreover, in this respect the chronological factor (shifts in the direction of the organisations concerned) must be taken into account. In collecting data the organisations must be approached and interpreted in their specific historical context. On the basis of this test, the working definition was readjusted as follows:

An intermediary structure is a private organisation that fulfills a mediating function between the individual and government authorities, thereby creating a certain continuity.

Notes

(1) Arend Lijphart (ed.), Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium: the Dynamics of a Culturally Divided Society. Berkeley, University of California, 1981; Arend Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries. New Haven, Yale UP, 1984; Kenneth D. McRae, Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies. Waterloo (U.S.), Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1986.