[1] Modern usage of the term has focused on the extent to which election procedures ensure that the executives of a union most accurately represent the interests of the members.
In 1911, a German sociologist, Robert Michels propounded a view that all democratic organisations were prone to become oligarchies because of the growth and size of modern organisations, the need for specialisation of officials, and the necessity that this division of labour would lead the rank and file to struggle to understand the activities of their leaders.
Nevertheless, his ideas were popularized after the Second World War in particular by Seymour Martin Lipset, Trow, and James Samuel Coleman in a book entitled, Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (1957).
This book argued that the ITU was an exception to Michels' general law, and that the conditions necessary to ensure democracy were that an opposition to the union's leadership could form.
Principles include: While there are some superficial similarities to the so-called organizing model of union activity, advocates of union democracy are swift to point out that many of the alleged exemplars of the organizing model do not, in their internal structure, meet the requirements listed above.