Collective Governance? - Exploring the Conceptual Landscape

There are many ways to conceptualise the various practices involved in participating in collective governance (including questions about whether or not governance is a useful framing for collective practices at all). These approaches often rely on additional foundational concepts that are not explicitly outlined.

In this context, I am - in turn - relying on specific uses of some foundational concepts. Most notably, I am using the concept of governance in its broad form to refure to the set of (formal or informal) structures systems and processes by which a group of people hold each other to account. In the context of collective practices, the intention is to draw attention to when and how we can co-create the structures that guide how we collectively steward our shared resources, navigate conflict well together, and so on.

First, it is important to acknowledge that the concept of governance is entangled with the dominance of centralised governance practices - against which resistance is often articulated as a process of becoming ungovernable. I'm yet to find good resources that explore the intersection between attempts to co-create collective governance practices and the need to decolonise our expectations of governance as part of collective efforts to become ungovernable - recommendations encouraged! What I haved learned so far is that the link between our uses of explicit governance tools and the process of becoming ungovernable is that it matters how we use these tools. In addition to being explicit that we're using specific tools to be more intentional in how we relate, we also need to be careful to not use them to hold power over others.

While the initial motivation for this resource collection was on exploring the use of participatory decision-making within intentional collaborative practices, I am in the process of broadening the scope to consider the conceptual landscape relevent to understanding the various practical approaches to participating in collective pratices and when/how these are relevant to practicing commoning.

Decentralised decision-making processes

Decentralising the ways that decision-making are distributed among those involved in a collective problem.

How well decision-making is distributed (or not) contributes to the creation, reinforcement, and reproduction of communication expectations and other cultural norms within the group.The contrasts drawn between centralised and decentralised governance structures are well known but rarely as clear in practice. The contexts for governance practices also matter; for example community-organisation governance and self-governing groups may have very different governance considerations. In addition, even in explicit decentralised systems different structures can emerge (e.g., (e.g., adchocracies, doocracies, holocrocies, bureaucracies, democracies, sociocracy, and teal orginisations, etc.,)

Regardless of whether a given approach to governance is emerging intentionally or not, there is value in identifying and articulating how participation is being structured along the way.

Participatory democracy

One of the most well known practices associated with the concept of participatory governance is in the context of attempts to reform existing public governance practices by state governments in ways that cultivate more equitable participation in existing democratic processes. For examples of this use of the participatory governance concept, see:

• Pia Andrews on Participatory public governance: why we need it, what it is, and how to do it (in that order)
• Jennifer Rietbergen-McCracken on Participatory policy making
• The Activists’ Handbook: A step-by-step guide to participatory democracy, book by Aidan Ricketts - see a book review by Naomi Blackburn

Decentralised organsing

Meanwhile, attempts to create alternatives to centralised forms of participatory decision-making include decentralised organising.

Before exploring decentralised organising, it is important to note that decentralisation does not, in and of itself, ensure participatory governance. For example, efforts to decentralise state governance contributed to privatising resource management. This approach reduced centralised control by the state by handing decision-making power to priviate companies - participation in the governance of those resources is therefore still not open those most impacted by these decisions. Additionally, it is important to recognise that open decentralised governance practices difficult to maintain, with decision-making often becoming centralized among a small proportion of users in ways that can lead to power asymmetries (Mannell & Smith 2023).

However, decentralised decision-making practices are an important form for participatory governance, and stratergies are emerging to mitigate the accumulation of power, including implementing distributed decision-making practices for self-governing groups.

• Approaches to Organising: Decentralised, Directed Network and Strike Circles Models By Robyn Gulliver
• Decentralisation - the starfish and the spider by Joel Dignam
• A Handbook of Handbooks for Decentralised Organising, curated by Richard Bartlett
• Patterns for decentralisation - presentation at Intersection18 conference by Natalia Lombardo and Richard Bartlett from The Hum.
• Spokescouncil allowing all members of a large group to actively participate within a system of delegate meetings that run of layers of consensus.

Distributed leadership

One way to help mitigate the accumulation of power within decentralised organising has been to actively build capacity for distributed leadership (rather than either relying on positional-leadership or assuming that no leaders are required). There are many versions of this concept of distributed leadership. Of these, the circle of leadership that Alanna Irving outlined in the book Better Work Together helps to emphasise the value of distributing leadership both within groups as well, as across the development of any given project.

Cultivating distributed leadership practices provides a way of being explicit about distributing the power that accumulates with leaders. The power associated with leadership is often conflated with the positional power provided by formal leadership hierarchies, and so the impact of accumulated decision-making power is often obscured in efforts to organising non-hierarchically.

• How to grow distributed leadership, Alanna Irving's 2018 NENA Conference Presentation.
• Decentralized team structures and participatory decision-making - Susan Basterfield on the Making Things That Matter Podcast, Episode #10)
• Better Work Together: How the Power of Community Can Transform Your Business, edited by Anthony Cabraal and Susan Basterfield, 2018 from the Enspiral Foundation.

Commoning

Moved to it's one article, see: Practising Commoning.

Sociotechnical dynamics of participatory decision-making

Regardless of our governance structures, how we participate in these decision-making practices are also structured by the complex interplay of the social and techncial contexts in which we relate to each other within that group and within our broader contexts. The term sociotechnical is sometimes used to highlight the complexity of this context, within which it is impossible to disentangle the social from the technical elements of how a community make decisions.

This concept helps us recognise that the techniques and tools we use to make decisions reflect the broader sociotechnical dynamics we are part of at different scales (families, communities, collectives, cooperatives, organisations, states, nations…).

Across these contexts, it can be useful to consider the difference between access, interaction, and participation: while access and interaction are both important conditions for participating in decision-making practices, full participation is structurally different from both of these conditions (Carpentier 2011). This distinction draws attention to the way that who can participate in governance practices (and how) depends on existing and emerging decision-making structures. For example, take a worker cooperative, where access, is about being able to participate in the work and renumiration the cooperative organises; interaction involves engaging in socio-communicative relationships within the cooperative that organise the day-to-day of working together; while participation emerges by contributing to the implict and explicit decision-making processes through which the cooperative is governed. Depending on the power-dynamics involved, participation in decision-making can range from minimal (e.g., where power or processes structures can create different degrees to which participants contribute to decision-making processes, such as when a portion of people are empowered to make some decisions on behalf of the group) to maximal (where contributions to decision-making processes are structured by egalitarian power relationships).

• Theorizing Participatory Intensities: A Conversation about Participation and Politics Henery Jenkins and Nico Carpentier, 2013 in Convergence 19 (3): 265–86. .
  • Image: screenshot of Figure 1: Access, interaction, and participation - The AIP model, from the paper, depicting three tables, one for access (presence), one for interaction (socio-communicating relationships), and one for participation (co-deciding). Each table has two rows (production, reception), and four columns (technology, content, people, organisations). Each cell includes text summarising distinctions made in the paper.

Further resources

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tags: collaborative-practices participatory-governance key-concepts

Date created: 2021
Latest updates: 2024
Version: DRAFT IN PROGRESS V3.1

Attribution: created by E. T. Smith on unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people.

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