Organizational Life Aboard the Moving Bandwagons: A Network Analysis of Dropouts from a Swedish Temperance Organization, 1896-1937

Abstract

One consistent finding in research on social movement organizations is that new members are recruited along established lines of interaction. Drawing on these findings, I argue that an individual's decision to leave a social movement organization is the result of similar influences. Using information about membership turnover over time in a local Swedish temperance organization, I test whether the dropout propensity of existing members is related to prior members' dropout decisions. I find that existing members' dropout propensity increases when their socially relevant others drop out of the organization. Thus, the results suggest that the decision processes concerning leaving and joining an organization are mirror images. This should have implications for any analysis of social movement organizations because only when this duality of interpersonal influences is considered can we fully understand the social dynamics of social movement organizations.