Grass Roots Organizations

Bibliographic Data

ID2302196
AuthorsPeter Gundelach (0000-0002-8346-6089, Aarhus University, corresponding author)
Year1979
Volume22
Issue2
Pages187-189
Publication date1979-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueActa Sociologica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-6993 • E-ISSN: 1502-3869
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/000169937902200206
OpenAlexW2112406784
LanguageEN
Citations received8

Grass roots organizations are a rather recent phenomenon. In the project they are defined as 'local political organizations which seek to influence conditions not related to the working situation of the participants and which have the activity of the participants as their primary resource'. Using this definition, examples of grass roots organizations have been emerging for many years, but the number of organizations has increased very much particularly during the last ten years. In West Germany, surveys indicate that grass roots organizations ('Biirgerinitiative') have more members than the political parties. The project is an attempt to characterize these political organizations. In this note I shall concentrate on the empirical part of the project.1 The most difficult problem of a project on grass roots organizations is that the number of organizations is unknown and that often the membership is equally unknown. The project has two parts: a general registration and some case studies. The registrations are being carried out in three communities. In each of these we are trying to find all the grass roots organizations in the area. As we don't know how many we should be looking for, we are unable to determine to what extent we are succeeding, but we are using several techniques in order to find as many organizations as possible. Most grass roots organizations direct themselves to the authorities in some matter or another. From this it follows that if we place a registration mechanism at the authorities we may be able to find most of the organizations. This is what we did.2 We get reports from the authorities when they receive an application from an organization. With this information we go to the organizations. In addition to the information we get from the authorities we also get information on grass roots organizations from local newspapers, and from other groups, etc. The organizations are the data-unit of the project. We try to establish a knowledge of their goals, resources, structure and functioning. To establish relation

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