Forest Gregg
i read @ntnsndr's new book /Governable Spaces/. it's core observation that most of online, associational life is authoritarian in governance is very smart, but i wish that he had spent more time arguing why we should prefer more democracy.
more here:
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg Thanks so much for reviewing this! Yes, I do think I could have worked to make that case a bit more. I own up to that failure a little in the intro. And there's some on "play" at the end of chapter 3.
I do think democracy can be joyful sometimes, but I don't think it needs to be all the time. A recent project of mine has been to argue for right-sizing the expectations it places on us.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg For instance, I'm glad not to be involved at all in the democracy of my credit union. I don't have financial skills and don't really want to gain them. But I am grateful it has democratic structures should we need them.
There are other democratic orgs I have chosen to be more actively involved in—some because they are fun, others because they are important, usually a mix of both.
We don't ask authoritarianism to be fun all the time. Democracy shouldn't have to be either.
Forest Gregg
@ntnsndr or do we develop some of the habits and skills just by being passive members of democratic institutions? that seems plausible.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg I think it is about having a balanced topology of options.
In many cases, orgs would be operating reasonably accountably to us, and we can mostly ignore them. Highly interested members engage, but most others don't. But the option is always there, in the case of crisis, for more members to exercise their rights.
To exercise those rights well, it helps to be practicing democracy more actively elsewhere.
Forest Gregg
@ntnsndr that makes sense that we don't always have to participate in democratic processes even when have the option, but i think that undercuts the tocquevillian argument i think you are making.
don't we actually have to participate in group decision making in order to learn the skills and habits that will support larger democracy?
you are right that i place to much emphasis on "fun", but i do think there needs to be other benefits of democracy besides a richer set of options in a crisis.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg In other cases, orgs are designed around higher-touch self-governance, perhaps because the governance is designed to be fun or because most members are very interested in its decisions.
For me, my Mastodon instance Social.coop is one of the latter. I engage heavily in governance there because of both the fun and the sensitivity I have to its decision-making.
And of course there should be a wide spectrum in between. Presumably most orgs should be relatively low-touch for most members.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg There are also mechanisms like jury-based governance and delegative voting (like "liquid democracy") that seek to enable both modalities in a single org across periods of time or across the membership.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg Through this kind of topology, it is possible to get the best of all worlds:
- The daily "schools of democracy" in high-touch governance experiments
- The passive participation but option for engagement in low-touch orgs
- The ability to experience accountability across lots of orgs while reducing one's participation demands to what feels fun and/or important
Forest Gregg
@ntnsndr it sounds like high-engagement is necessary to teach us to be democrats. so, if the we want online associational life to support democracy we need to think about not just how to build democratic projects but build some democratic projects that are very compelling and engaging?
Forest Gregg
@ntnsndr or is the idea if almost every project is democratic, that people will find some project that they find engaging even if most people in that project are passive?
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg I think what I'm saying is "high-engagement is necessary to teach us to be democrats" in *some organizations*, *some of the time*.
But yeah, every organization should have to design its governance to engage the people who most need to participate in it. That's not a tall order. That's what corporations and nonprofits and governments have to do today.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg The difference is more about changing who the orgs are accountable. But when that happens, of course, it changes the *how* in all kinds of fun ways.
E.g., the annual meeting of a rural electric co-op is very different from that of a publicly traded accounting firm.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg chapter 4 explores strategies for communities to develop these kinds of practices. Chapter 5 explores strategies for policies and infrastructures to make these kinds of practices easier or obligatory. Those are the main pathways I see.
Forest Gregg
@ntnsndr how do you think that such a democratic landscape comes to pass? i was imagining that the direction you were going was to make democratic arrangements more attractive than implicit feudalism to consumers, and hopefully reaching a point where the default was democratic, but now i’m not sure.
Nathan Schneider
@fgregg sure thing! It means so much that you engaged with the book.
Forest Gregg
@ntnsndr thanks! i appreciate the opportunity to better understand your thinking.
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