Cohesion
COMPLETE stability within any interest group is a fiction, albeit one that has technical usefulness in the management of the group. Large or small, national or local, all groups experience continual altercations over policies, involving both ends and means. These disputes both produce, and are reflected in, struggles for leadership.
The nature of these internal political situations and their effects upon the group's success are a function of two interdependent factors, the leadership skills present and the make-up of the membership itself. The attitudes present in the membership define the tasks of the leaders, and the internal political life of the group is made up of a continuous effort to maintain leaders and followers in some measure of harmonious relationship. Such problems are not, of course, necessarily generated from within the group, though they may be. External events, stemming from the activities of other groups or from more impersonal sources, may be the major initiating influences. But these derive their effect from the character of the political situation within the group. As Ross says of the labor union: "The economic environment is important to the unions at the second remove: Because it generates political pressures which have to be reckoned with by the union leader. The effect of any given change depends upon how it fits into the general constellation of pressures."1
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