Institutional factors in the decline of Spanish workers’ mutualism. The case of Barcelona in the first third of the 20th century

Workers’ mutualism was highly influential in social and economic terms among Europeans in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The role of the movement is critical not only with regard to social welfare but also in terms of sociability. The mutualism in the Spanish province of Barcelona during the first third of the 20th century was dominated by traditional and democratic societies. This work aims to examine whether these societies met Agrawal’s (2008) enabling conditions for the sustainability of collective action groups, in order to estimate whether their institutional design was a burden or a bonus for their development. It has been observed that, despite fulfilling these conditions and being suitable for 19th century, the institutional design of these societies could not adapt to the social and economic changes in the 20th century. Data on the growth of their average size and on the reduction in the percentage of total budget spent on subsidies and social costs indicate the transition from traditional small societies to bigger and highly bureaucratized societies, which would eventually impose themselves on the competitive context set up by commercial insurance companies and, at a late date in the case of Spain, by the welfare state