This article proposes that competition among ideologies can be understood and modeled as an ecology of organizations. It presents a theory of ideological competition among organizations that predicts that competition is strongest among ideologically adjacent organizations—those too different ideologically to enjoy esprit de corps but similar enough to vie for the same base of support. Such competition, the article argues, involves contention over identity, favoring organizations that maintain a distinct ideological position. These ideas are investigated by reference to qualitative and quantitative data from Viennese newspapers over the period 1918 to 1938, a period of considerable social and political change in Vienna. The quantitative evidence is obtained by estimating ecological models of organizational failure and growth. There is also qualitative evidence that actors from various ideological perspectives engaged in strategic framing activity.
