An IN-SIGHTS reader reminded me of the work of Robert Michels, a sociologist best known for creating the Iron Law of Oligarchy:

All complex organizations—regardless of how democratic they start—inevitably develop into oligarchies, where power is concentrated in the hands of a few elite leaders. It asserts that bureaucratic, technical, and psychological factors force power to centralize, making true democratic control unsustainable.

British professor Hugo Drochon wrote about Michels’ work. Excerpts:

Michels viewed the mass as generally immobile and passive, in need of a leader to guide them and towards whom they felt gratitude. Indeed, throughout his book, Michels tried to show how the masses, even when organised within a party, were apathetic about the running of their own affairs – committees set-up to organise the day-to-day running of the party were systematically unattended – nor indeed, to Michels’ surprise, did they seem particularly interested in debating the finer points of revolutionary praxeology, preferring instead to go listen to their heroes speak.

In other words, every efficient organisation needs a hierarchical – and permanent – bureaucracy with a division of labour and a chain of command. This is both a technical – to ensure the smooth running of the party through a process of delegation – and a tactical necessity – democracy is too slow a decision-making process to react to political events.

It is that bureaucracy that will form the ruling oligarchy, such that the end result is that there is an inverse proportion between the size of an organisation and democracy: the larger and more complex an organisation is, the less democratic it will be: “where organisation is stronger, we find that there is a lesser degree of applied democracy”…

The second reason for the iron law of oligarchy: “oligarchy derives from the psychological transformations which the leading personalities in the parties undergo in the course of their lives”. What Michels meant by this is that the growing professionalisation of the party/labour union leads to the creation of a distinct class of bureaucrats, leaders and politicians who are separated from the rest of the party members they represent.

The party officials henceforth no longer belong to the same class as their former colleagues they claim to represent, meaning their interests will differ. Most importantly, their loyalties will no longer be directly with their past comrades, but now lie with the party itself, which provides them with a living… As such for them the survival of the party will always come first, over and above any demands from the regular members of the party, whether economic or ideological…

It does not take much effort to identify examples of the personalities described by Drochon.

After forming government in 2017, John Horgan’s BC NDP quickly set aside key principles it had long espoused. Maintaining power came first. Horgan appeared to envy the BC Liberals’ 16-year run in office and moved decisively toward the Campbell–Clark business friendly model.

Under David Eby, that instinct has continued. The government has shown it will override policies advanced by its own members when they conflict with executive priorities. Internal debate exists — until it becomes inconvenient.

Nowhere is this clearer than in housing policy. British Columbia faces a severe affordability crisis, yet the government quietly suspended its multi-billion-dollar Community Housing Fund — once billed as a cornerstone of its strategy to address homelessness and non-market housing shortages. The suspension was not highlighted, defended, or even clearly acknowledged in the most recent budget. Local governments and non-profit housing providers were left blindsided. Some proponents may be carrying significant sunk costs with no clear path forward.

And the party membership? There was no meaningful dissent. But when leadership tightly controls convention agendas, filters policy resolutions, and discourages accountability, silence cannot be mistaken for consent. A membership denied real leverage cannot easily demand accountabiity.

This is unfortunate, since H.G. Galloway of Temple University wrote:

The tendency toward oligarchy may be countered by organization and political forms conductive to democratic accountability of leadership. This includes the avoidance of what may be called the “star” (or celebrity) styles of leadership.