Beyond democratic degeneration, horizontal and liberated organization? The agonistic approach of a Belgian food co-op
研究比利时一家民主治理的食品合作社，发现横向管理虽不能必然防止民主退化，但能促进成员政治化与组织多元化，并基于此提出对抗性视角的退化阶段理论。
This research focuses on democratic organizations and the risk of degeneration. The author studies how horizontal management may maintain a democratic organization’s stability through the examination of a Belgium food cooperative with democratic governance. The article reaches two main conclusions. First, it concludes with a simple empirical finding: horizontal organization does not necessarily prevent degeneration. However, it stresses that implementing horizontal management in democratic organizations allows for daily members’ politicization and then the organization’s pluralization. Second, it proposes a theoretical contribution for a better understanding of democratic degeneration. In a horizontally organized structure, the degeneration process differs from what is typically noted in the literature, as it is triggered by the politicization of the members. Therefore, an agonistic reinterpretation of the traditional degenerative stages is proposed: (1) fusion, (2) pluralization, (3) conflictualization, and (4) centralization.