Past mass membership was more institutional inertia than free choice.

Evidence

Did people in the past truly join unions, parties, and religious associations voluntarily, in the same way that a Houellebecq protagonist picks an exotic vacation package from a catalogue? As casually as one signs up for a gym membership? Or did they do so simply because it was customary—in their milieu, their family, their workplace—and because their fathers and grandmothers had done so before them? A matter of free choice or institutional inertia? — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 244

Categorization

• XREF: This questioning of ‘voluntary’ association challenges the reader’s working assumption that rebuilding voluntary organizations is the fix — if membership was customary rather than chosen, the escape route may be miscalibrated. — connects to: Mass membership coexisted with fading desire to actually return home — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 503; Mature institutions survive their founding purpose because members prefer sunk costs over new formation — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 119