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:

• amend rules of procedures and governing documents such as: bylaws, rules of debate, constitutions/charters/articles, etc
• suppress debate

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

• if a simple majority is all that is needed to change the rules, then any provision that the rules make for the purpose of protecting minorities can be bypassed
• if changing the rules is no more difficult than passing ordinary proposals, then there is no reason for proposers not to frame all of their proposals as rules amendments, which results in the governing documents becoming stuffed with substantive rather than procedural content

Some examples of failures along these lines are:

• the "nuclear option" in the US Senate [1]. The US Senate may change its rules by a simple majority vote. In an effort to protect the minority party, confirmation of the US President's nominations used to require a supermajority, but in 2013 the majority party eliminated this protection for most confirmations. (technically this wasn't amending the rules but rather changing the interpretation of existing rules [2])
• the voter initiative referendum (proposition) procedure in the US state of California [3]. A California constitutional amendment requires only a simple majority of voters (although it does require slightly more signatures to be placed on the ballot compared to proposed statues). This has resulting in all sorts of substantive legislation becoming incorporated into the California Constitution, including for example provisions that "gill nets and trammel nets may not be used to take any species of rockfish" [4], the establishment of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine[5], and allocation of revenues from a Motor Vehicle Fuel License Tax [6].

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

• supermajority voting promotes compromise between factions
• in systems with two-party dominion, supermajority voting allows only those resolutions with bipartisan support to be passed
• supermajority voting prevents expensive changes to the status quo for policies with marginal support
• supermajority voting prevents rules being imposed that a very large minority believes are unfair
• in simple majority voting with two-party domination, often the two parties each have nearly 50% of the vote. In this situation, an arbitrarily small change in the group's composition leads to a change in which party is in the majority, meaning that an arbitarily small change in the group's composition leads to a 180-degree shift in policy. This can lead to 'whiplash' in which a policy direction is pursued, then repealed, then pursued, then repealed, etc, as the parties rotate in power. With supermajority voting, there is a non-zero number that specifies the minimal change in a group's composition before a previously passed policy can be repealed. For example, with a 60% supermajority, at least 5% of the votes must switch sides in order to repeal a previously passed policy; and 10% must switch sides in order to pass a new policy 'opposite' to the previous one; for simple majority voting, these 5% and 10% bounds are instead both 0%.
• supermajority voting may provide pressure against two-party domination
• voting creates winners and losers; simple majority voting creates as many losers as winners, but supermajority voting either preserves the status quo, or creates less losers than winners

Arguments against include:

• supermajority procedures are a structural bias against change
• it takes longer to come to decisions
• if members are not full-time, the longer time spent in discussion per decision may lead to more time spent in discussion overall, which is expensive, prevents participation by those without the time to spare, and biases decision-making towards factions composed of members with the most time
• when the group cannot come to an agreement on what action to take on some issue, no action at all will be taken
• a minority can engage in 'brinkmanship' and demand disproportionate concessions to allow needed action to be taken
• attackers may find it easier than usual to exploit the group by way of planting agents who attempt to lengthen debate and prevent action to be taken
• if the supermajority threshold is particularly high, a strong majority which is frustrated by a minority may split from the group, or may feel that the group's decisions are not legitimate

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:

• in the US Senate, debate on many proposals can go on indefinitely unless there is a vote to close debate ('cloture'). The vote to close debate requires a supermajority. Therefore, a minority faction can simply continue to debate a disliked proposal indefinitely (this is called a "filibuster"). A further complexity of the US Senate rules, however, is that the rules themselves can be amended by a simple majority (the so-called nuclear option), making the supermajority requirement fragile. Some opine that even without amending the rules, the current Senate rules don't actually require a supermajority to close debate [7].

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]