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[top-politics] Re: Definition of TOP - Systematization
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At 05:46 PM 11/2/2006, Serge wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > Yes. However, if a reasonable solution is not there at a small scale, > it becomes, for reasons I won’t explain in detail, difficult to > implement good solutions once the scale has become too large.
Agreed, and by listing filtering possibilities, mentionning these reasonnable solutions to be applied from the start were what I had in mind. Coupled with the personal bond between proxy and client, I believe this could actually already go a long way.
Setting up a proxy list and creating a general understanding that members may participate by proxy and that proxies are delegable, revocable at any time, and of no effect if the member participates directly, I believe, does it. This leaves power entirely in the hands of the members, with actual operating power being in the hands of those who participate. The proxy system allows the members to essentially undistort the bias creating by the “bias of the active,” which is probably the most common unrecognized problems in organizations.
A majority of people who are active will think that things are peachy-keen, even as a majority of actual members are becoming disillusioned and are becoming inactive, even if they do not actually leave in a formal sense. The majority of the active will, of course, vote to keep things the way they are, since this leaves them in control. They usually think that they know what’s best, since they are active and the others are not.
But the minority of the active is also qualified, it knows what is going on. Organizations ultimately depend on their members at the base level for support. Nonprofits often wonder why it is becoming increasingly difficult to muster donations and volunteers. It is that the majority of the active have drifted away from the true consensus of the members…. And there is no means in place to measure that consensus and to respect it. The majority often thinks that it is the consensus, and that disagreement is only by a few malcontents. But those malcontents, if you could include and consider all the members who became inactive because they were “swimming against the tide,” might actually represent the majority.
If you have DP in place, the true majority can become apparent, and can act to rebalance the organization.
It does no harm. It doesn’t cost anything. Managing a proxy list and using it to expand such things as votes and lists of those present at meetings is extremely simple. It can be done without computers and software, but it does get easier with the latter; it’s important, though, to understand that this is not a computer thing. It is a human relationship thing. It’s not going to work if people don’t talk or otherwise communicate directly with each other.
DP adds a kind of general expectation that people will talk.
Organizations traditionally try to get members to come to meetings to do this. The Parent Council tries to get parents to come. They get a few percent. They have no idea whether or not this is an influential few percent or just a few random parents who managed to show up that night. The Parent Council I have in mind has elected class representatives, in theory. These are selected at a meeting where a few parents show up, maybe even a majority of parents in a class. They try to get these Class Reps to show up at Parent Council meetings. Less than half do.
With DP, we would know exactly who was represented and who was not at any meeting, and the organization could act to attempt to bring the rest out in from the cold. Not by trying to browbeat them into coming, but by simply encouraging them to name a proxy to represent them if they cannot come. The idea would be that the proxy would tell them if anything important came up.
Parent Council with DP might have fewer parents at meetings, but be far more representative and influential.
This was a private school and always was having fundraising difficulties. The theoretician behind the school movement, writing about eighty years ago, wrote that his movement would have failed if it were necessary to charge tuition. Yet these schools are only supported by tuition (in the U.S.). To set them up as donation-supported would require a unified parent community. They don’t have that, they have a few parents who are very active and think of this as “our” school, and many more who think of it as a private school that “they” run which, perhaps they like it. Or perhaps they are just running on inertia.
We are talking about far more than a voting method! We are talking about connecting a community. Voting is a detail….
Then again, you seem to have a lot more experience with DP and the way assemblies work, so could you maybe list the most critical few solutions you view as needed for deliberations to occur in an efficient way?
First of all, Robert’s Rules were the codification of centuries of experience with how democratic assemblies work, balancing efficiency with democratic control. Robert’s Rules presume equality of members and majority rule, but incorporate protections against premature suppression of minority opinion. (It takes a supermajority, for example, to close debate and proceed to vote on a motion, under Robert’s Rules. There is a way around this, but it is rarely used. It will be used if the majority really believes that it is being unjustly blocked by a large minority faction. And if this is happening, the organization is already in big trouble….)
So I suggest that anyone who wants to run an assembly, or to design systems supporting that, understand how Robert’s Rules work. Otherwise you are inventing the wheel. And new wheel inventions are often more defective than what they would replace….
Also, I’ve seen many times, people will object to this or that provision in the Rules that they don’t like. But in just about every case I’ve seen, this is based on misunderstandings about the rules, or abuse of the Rules in situations where there was a poor moderator and an absence of people who understand the rules. It only takes one person in a meeting who knows the rules and who really prefers to see full democratic process, over, perhaps, winning on some issue. If everyone is partisan, and one faction does not know the rules, it can break down. Which is why, sometimes, meetings appoint a parliamentarian, whose job is to offer impartial advice about process.
Robert’s Rules do not impose themselves on meetings. They are subject to revision by majority vote of the members. There are misunderstandings about this: the rules cannot usually be changed except by a two-thirds majority of a quorum, after notice to all the members, but this is only a protection of the rights of the majority. An absolute majority of members, under the Rules, may change the Rules at any time without notice.
I’ve often seen, for example, objection to the Rules based on the idea that we should have consensus rather than majority decision. But this is just a decision-making rule, and the default could be changed to require a two-thirds vote, or consensus, whatever. But it’s a bad idea. What I’ve seen is that invariably it eventually becomes minority rule, whenever a minority is favored by or favors the status quo.
RR was designed for face-to-face meetings. Proxy voting is an option that has always been there, by common law, where property rights are involved.
On-line meetings require some special considerations. Time must be given for members to respond to motions or other process, such as votes. This can seem glacial to some members. However, in the other direction, the rule that only one question can be on the floor at once, standard RR, can be relaxed. So while the consideration of each motion can take much longer, many more motions can be considered simultaneously. Overall, I expect an improvement in efficiency.
(Delegable Proxy may allow quorum requirements to be much higher than otherwise possible, and it’s possible that the time for motion process may be shortened, especially if, after a motion has been decided, it can be reconsidered if lower-level votes show up that would reverse the result. So if motions can pass provisionally, the process can become much faster. Continuous voting, particularly if a decision threshhold must be maintained for some time and not merely reached, could help this. But I’d beware of making it complicated.)
Many mailing lists are effectively Free Associations, with a few variations. Often those variations make no practical difference. Until they do. Which can be quite painful. I’ve seen rogue moderators who simply exclude whatever threatens their dominance, but the list in general remains quite unaware of it. If a list majority prefers the moderator to do this, fine. But sometimes a list majority would strongy disapprove, if they but knew. Delegable Proxy, again, provides a way around the moderator, without introducing complicated process. It is very convenient to have moderators who are trustees, able to make decisions without further ado, but for the process to be democratic, there must be process for appeal.
At this point we are happy to see any implementations of the FA and DP concepts, separately or together. They are severable. But we think that if they are implemented together, they will give maximum opportunity for an organization to generate consensus across its entire field of interest. FA/DP allows a broad and genuine unity to appear, without the very tedious process involved in finding this in organizations of more than a few members.
http://beyondpolitics.org/wiki
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