This is a canonical book in sociology, but many of it's arguments have been refuted or called into question by later research. I'm still trying to figure out why it holds so much weight - perhaps because it makes big claims that match with our common sense. It "feels" right to say that large groups are hard or impossible to organize and small groups are easier to organize, which is (an overly simplified version of) what he argues.

The basic idea is that large groups attempting to organize collective action suffer from the "free loader" problem. People will benefit from some public good whether or not they join the collective effort to gain or keep that good, and if they operate in their own self interest (Olson argues that mostly will) they have no motivation to join up. He argues that smaller groups can be more effective in this regard because there are social costs to not contributing to the collective effort. For Olson, large organizations like labor unions can only survive with some kind of compulsory participation.

I read this as part of my research on federation, and he does say that federations offer a kind of middle way. Small union locals can organize on the ground while also benefiting from the resources of a national union.

Olson's blanket arguments about size have mostly been refuted, but I was interested in his framing of federations as a middle way, an argument I'm trying to make about federated social media. Federated networks can allow for small groups to organize while also allowing those groups to negotiate connections to other groups.