notes-politics-governanceSystems-govsChSubgroupsThatMakeDecisions

Table of Contents for Governance Systems Design

(Sub)-groups that make decisions

In this section i don't talk about decisions made by the entire group through the mechanism of the entire governance system, but rather, about sub-groups, or special assemblies of the entire group, which are only a part of the entire governance system ("organs") yet which make decisions of some sort.

These groups are often called "bodies", eg "a legislative body".

These groups often have legislative functions, but sometimes they have executive functions.

These groups often have names such as group, committee (especially small groups are called committees), assembly, congress, body.

Note however that "committee" has a technical meaning as a subset of a larger decision-making subgroup which meets separately but which is still subordinate to the larger group; that is the meaning that i'll use in this book.

Group size

The size of a group is an extremely important influence on group dynamics, and it plays a large role in constraining which formal meeting procedures are appropriate.

I divide group sizes into three categories; small, medium, large.

Small groups are those which can meet in one place and hold an ordinary conversation using informal social conventions without a moderator, in which no one must wait very long to speak, everyone feels that their point of view was heard, everyone can get a sense of what everyone else's point of view is, and the conversation can turn towards very deep or very technical issues without constantly changing topic or re-explaining everything from the top. Small groups are generally of size about 7 or less, although in some circumstances they can go up to about 10. Even within small groups, the quality and efficiency of conversation is drastically improved as the group size decreases, so that a conversation between 3 people is often much deeper yet also more efficient than a conversation between 7.

Medium groups are those which tend to use some formal procedure for their meetings, because they are too large for informal conversation to be effective; yet are still small enough to meet in one place and which are small enough that they COULD, for each topic being considered, give each member a chance to address the entire group multiple times. If it is desired for the group to realize this possibility, often a procedure in the British parliamentary tradition is used. Otherwise, typically there is a chairperson or smaller group who controls the agenda and guides presentations to the group, and perhaps some limited discussion, after which the group votes. A simpler, alternative definition of medium groups might be groups small enough such that they can meet in one place and each person can make themselves clearly heard to all of the others, by using only their own natural voice and without taking advantage of amplification, special acoustics which require the speaker to be in a certain place, or others repeating what they say. Medium groups tend to range in size from about 7 members to a couple hundred, although in some cases groups as large as approximately 500 use medium group procedures.

Large groups are all those groups which are too large to be "medium groups", that is, which cannot feasibly give every member a chance to speak multiple times on every issue, or which cannot even meet in one place.

I'll sometimes talk of 'small group procedures', 'medium group procedures' and 'large group of procedures' to denote procedures that i believe were designed for one of these group types; note however that often you find a group using a procedure designed for groups of different size, for example a small group using formal British-school parliamentary procedure; note also that my classification of procedures as to their target group size is only my opinion and is not something that is generally agreed upon.

Majority or supermajority?

Many groups require supermajority votes for various things. It is very common for supermajority votes to be required to:

Some arguments in favor of requiring supermajorities to amend bylaws etc are:

Some examples of failures along these lines are:

In addition some groups require supermajorities to pass ordinary resolutions, or to pass certain types of resolutions. Arguments in favor of this include:

Arguments against include:

Note that supermajority requirements can be dangerous when it is necessary that SOME proposal must pass, for example, when an annual budget must be renewed each year. I recommend that governance system with supermajority requirements for ordinary proposal have some sort of simple majority special case for these kinds of votes.

In addition to direct supermajority voting, some groups indirectly require supermajorities in certain circumstances as a consequence of other procedural rules:

Some groups use strict consensus instead of voting (any member can veto a proposal). This is formally equivalent to voting with a supermajority requirement of 100%. Some groups use both strict consensus and voting, and distinguish between an ordinary "no" vote, which does not veto, and a "veto" or "block", which does (these groups sometimes called vetoing "blocking"). Some groups have formal criteria limiting when a veto is considered legitimate; for example the Holacracy governance system allows "Objections" to proposals but prohibits Objections that are not motivated by "presently known facts or events, without regard to a prediction of what might happen in the future", except in special cases.

Note that a group is not using strict consensus when it passes many measures by 'unanimous consent', provided that, when there is an objection, a measure can still be passed by vote.

Note that strict consensus does not scale, in the sense that, in the limit as the number of group members goes to infinity, the chance that a proposal will be opposed by at least one member for one reason or another goes to 1. For this reason, some groups replace strict consensus with high supermajority thresholds; for example, some of the U.S. Occupy protest groups had thresholds of 75% [8][9] or 90% [10]. These high thresholds are sometimes called "consensus" but also called "modified consensus", "rough consensus", "soft consensus", "approximate consensus", etc.

There are other groups in which the final vote is not by strict consensus, but any member can put a "hold" on proposals, which have the effect of delaying them. The hold can be killed by a vote of some sort. The US Senate is an example [11].

Some groups use supermajorities not just for passing proposals, but also for some or all elections. In this case, it's possible for a vote to fail to elect any candidate; usually this causes continued voting until some candidate achieves the required supermajority. Sometimes, in order to ensure convergence, the voters are essentially imprisoned until a candidate is elected; the most famous example is the Catholic Church's election of a Pope [12].

What supermajority thresholds do groups tend to use? The most common choice is 2/3 (a little over 66%), which is found in, for example, Robert's Rules, the US Constitution, and elections in the Catholic Church. The next most common choice is 3/5, which is found in, for example, the US Senate, the UN Security Countil, the South Korean National Assembly, the EU Commission. This is not because 2/3 is mathematically optimal, but probably just because it's the simplest fraction which is greater than 1/2. In practice, especially in larger or more polarized groups, it seems that 2/3 agreement turns out to very difficult to achieve, and some groups have chosen lower thresholds, such as the US Senate which uses 3/5. Some groups have chosen even higher numbers, such as 3/4 or 9/10, but as noted above, these numbers are so difficult to achieve that they are sometimes regarded as forms of approximate consensus.

My advice for picking a supermajority threshold is to seriously consider 3/5 rather than 2/3s, unless you are comfortable with the threshold being met rarely; don't go above 2/3s unless you want the threshold to be met only when the measure has overwhelming support; don't use 90% except if you want only completely uncontroversial measures to pass; and don't ever use strict consensus except in very small groups of fixed size (approximately 7 people or less; note that you can maybe get away with strict consensus in slightly larger groups when the group has a very strong motivation to come to consensus, such as U.S. juries of 12 people, who are nearly imprisoned until they agree, although this has its own problems).

Because almost all groups need to make decisions on controversial measures sometimes, for ordinary proposals at least (and perhaps for everything), I recommend either a simple majority or 3/5. I don't recommend 2/3 and strongly caution against anything higher than 2/3. A 90% threshold, for example, can render making decisions "pretty much impossible" (Justin Jeffre, quoted in The Occupy Movement and the “Poetics of the Oppressed” by Ursula McTaggart?), and some experienced activists believed that high supermajority thresholds led to the Occupy Cincinnati movement's downfall (The Occupy Movement and the “Poetics of the Oppressed” by Ursula McTaggart?). I also feel, although it is just my opinion, that groups are likely to underestimate the difficulty of reaching 3/4 and 2/3.

Absolute or relative voting thresholds?

A voting threshold can be absolute, for example, a certain fraction out of all members qualified to vote must vote in favor, or relative, that is, a certain fraction out of those voting must vote in favor.

For relative voting, 'abstain's are typically not counted as 'votes' and so are not added to the denominator when computing the vote tally.

Often the threshold needed to pass ordinary proposals is relative but the threshold for especially weighty proposals, such as proposals to amend the bylaws, is absolute (or sometimes the weighty proposals are still relative provided they were announced with plenty of warning, but absolute if they were not announced sufficiently ahead of time). This is similar to a quorum in that it is a device to prevent undermining those who are not present for a particular vote.

main

can legislative body make its own new proposals, or only vote on others'? similarly, can it amend things (see Constitution of Year VII, fast-track negotiating authority) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_initiative_%28legislative%29

legislative body's frequency of meeting

legislative body's control over its own procedures (also, can it amend its charter? "Secondly, they sought a way to amend the constitution. Very few cantons even had a way to amend or modify the constitutions, and none of them allowed citizen's initiatives to be added." -- [13])

legislative body's control over summoning itself

legislative body's members immunity, esp. for speeches

'design by committee' consensus can lead to conservatism (in the sense of change-fearing; privilaging the status-quo) committe leads to compromises in goverments, consensus decision-making is conservative; this is different from being laissez-faire; eg brezhev had to serve internal consensus but was externally repressive; a change-fearing system

global maxima and local minima; incremental problem-solving vs radical big-picture problem-solving: In incremental problem-solving, you try to find a feasible solution which is satisfactory. This may involve:

Particularly when consensus or supermajority decision-making is done, incremental discussion makes decision-making go faster. However, its weaknesses are that (a) the organization may be more likely to get stuck in local minima, (b) the organization may be less likely to change its basic goals over time.

agenda control, cyclic prefs

subjective role of chair vs objective rules need for appeal from decision of the chair

complexity of rules -> trouble "From Labor Notes May issue, Stewards Corner, Leading Membership Meetings by Mike Parker and Martha Gruelle:

IGNORE ROBERT’S? RULES - Most union bylaws say that meetings will be run according to Robert’s Rules of Order Revised. The power of tradition is strong: this procedure is almost never questioned even though so many people find it intimidating and so few understand it."

Ideally, unions that want to be democratic should start by discarding Robert’s Rules, because Robert’s is not democratic. It was designed for bodies, like legistaures, made up of professional meeting-goers. It is certainly not designed to encourage participation from people who have come to their first union meeting.

For example, under Robert’s every discussion must start with a motion, rather than starting with a problem and then, through discussion and cooperation, coming up with a plan of action.

Robert’s is so complicated that it violates the most important democratic reason for having rules; to level the playing field by ensuring that everyone can know how to participate. Robert’s is used frequently in the opposite way: to intimidate members, make them feel foolish, and rule them out of order.

In addition, Robert’s is designed with a bias toward the status quo. The requirements for a two-thirds majority to pass certain motions, like changing the agenda or moving to vote, don’t just add to the complications. They also make it relatively easy for a minority to block or delay decisions and action.

In general the best policy is to do openly what almost everybody does in practice: simply ignore Robert’s Rules, do what tradition calls for in your union, and mix it with common sense and fairness. Most people dislike procedural wrangles and are very supportive of proposals made to handle things in a fair, common-sense way. " -- [15]

e has power over a meeting who:

committees have more power when they:

possibly: committees need to debate in order to dissent; in the history i read regarding the Constituion of Year VII system, only the tribunate seemed to be noted to dissent a lot; not the Legistlative Body, which was not

group polarization effect

todo: include the stuff from http://communitywiki.org/en/GroupDynamics

todo: if members see participation in the group as a temporary service, an odious requirement, or otherwise a 'side activity' that is not their 'main job', then they will tend to (a) comply with whatever the chair tells them the procedure is that they are supposed to be following (as opposed to independently determining what the procedure is and what their rights under it are, and asserting these; or supporting another 'troublemaker' member who does this), and (b) oppose motions that would require significantly extending the time committment they are making to the group (for instance, if they are compelled to continue attending the group's meetings until the group's business is finished, then a motion to extend the amount of time considering one particular item of business so that a more nuanced understanding of it can be developed might be opposed if the time extension would be substantial).

todo: judgement from outside, nobody got fired for buying ibm, risk aversion on the part of regulators

todo: committee scopes tend not to decrease because memberships provide importance/power to committee members. This leads to opposition to organization reducing its activity or authority in ways that would leave some particular standing committee less to do, or to consolidation of organizational activites overseen by different committees.

committees are good for geetting buyin, not for making optimal decisions. they have issues such as theeir tendency not to want to give up jurisdiction, due to the importance their jurisdiction gives to their members.

if there are many specialized topics that require expertise, rather than having a large committee with many members with authority over all of them, and expecting everyone to defer to the few members with actual expertise, better to carve up the topics and give authority over each one to one or a few membeers

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if committee chairs are selected by majority vote of the larger group, then:

alternatives to majority selection of committee chairs include:

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Links:

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vote thresholds required for a constitutional amendment to be put on the ballot in US States:

a majority of US states have thresholds less than 2/3s; 19 states have thresholds of 2/3s, and 4 have a threshold of 2/3s but must pass twice; and only one US state (Delaware) has a threshold of 75%; from Table 4 on page 361 of [16]

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