# Participating in 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).

My initial motivation for collecting these resources was to explore the role of participatory decision-making within intentional collaborative practices. More recently, I've broadened scope to consider the conceptual landscape relevent to understanding a range of [practical approaches to participating in collective pratices](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/r1Hq9tRQF) and when/how these are relevant to [practicing commoning](https://commonslibrary.org/practising-commoning/).

This resource focuses on the concepts associate with collective governance practices, there is also an emerging list of [Examples of Collective Governance and Distributed Leadership Practices](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/r1Hq9tRQF) .

## Being careful with concepts
I believe it's important [to be careful about the concept we use as tool in organising for better futures](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/concepts).

When using the term [governance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance) in the context of collective practices, I am intending to refer to the set of (formal or informal) processes by which people structure how they relate to each other and their shared environments and when and how they coordinate their actions and the deployment of resources within these contexts.

In the context of collective practices, this concept of structures of accountability can be help draw attention to when and how we can co-create our ways of relating while collectively stewarding our shared resources, navigating conflict well together, and so on. Used in this way can help us to [create tools that help us to self-determine our governance structures](https://commonslibrary.org/future-of-governance-toolkit/). However, 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](https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/praxis1313/nikita-shepard-becoming-ungovernable-a-reassessment/).

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 not touse them to hold power over others.

## Why care about governance structures?

If we're not actively resisting the default norms of the oppressive governance structures we've inherited we are likely to reproduce them.

The default norms I've inheited include governance structures that are difficult to participate in and have allowed a small group of people to accrue power at the expense of other.

This is not just relevant to the public sphere: when we participate in collective practices the ways we collaborate contribute to the creation, reinforcement, and reproduction of communication expectations and other cultural norms.

So, in addition to resisting the impacts of oppressive governance structures, we need to be learning how to participate in collective practices that create alternatives.

How explict we are about the structures we adopt and/or create to coordinate how we act together in our collectives often depends on the capacity for participation.

However, regardless of whether a our collective approaches to governance are emerging intentionally or not, there is value in identifying and articulating how participation is being structured along the way.

## What does it mean to participate in governance practices?

There are many different terms for how people choose to structure the ways in which they make decisions and conduct themselves in relation to each other.

Below are some of my notes for the terms, concepts, and sets of association that have caught my interest as I learn more about the challenges and oppourtinties for *participating in governance practices* in the context of my efforts to contribute to small collectives.

### Terminology
The suffix [-cracy](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-cracy#English) is often used in terms associated with forms of governance (and power-structures more generally).

For example, one way to explore varying degrees of capacity for participating in governance practices is the differences between types of govenrance structures that emerge intentionally and unintentionally across different scales, including the often gradual emergence of [bureaucracies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy), [adchocracies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy), or [doocracies](https://communitywiki.org/wiki/DoOcracy), and the explicit efforts to cultivate alternatives, such as the [holocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy) and [sociocracy](https://www.sociocracyforall.org/start-here/) structures)

### Participating in Public Governance
While outside the scope of my current interest, it is important to note that participatory governance is often taked about within the context of large scale public governance practices.

> " Public governance has three characteristics:
> * It is related to a collective issue about which actors aim for collective action.
> * It is about the interaction between different actors. These actors have different boundaries between their interests and responsibilities are blurred.
> * These actors have different resources related to the collective issue. The exchange of resources is necessary to deal with the collective issue." [ANZSOG](https://anzsog.edu.au/research-insights-and-resources/research/developing-collective-governance-capacity/)

There are efforts to build [collective capacity for participating in public governance practices](https://anzsog.edu.au/research-insights-and-resources/research/developing-collective-governance-capacity/), includeing attempts to reform state government practices in ways that cultivate more equitable participation in so-called [democracies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy).

For more 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)*](https://www.themandarin.com.au/118165-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](https://commonslibrary.org/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](https://commonslibrary.org/review-the-activists-handbook/)

### Decentralised organising

The notion of participatory governance is also relevant to emergent [decentralised organising](https://commonslibrary.org/approaches-to-organising-decentralised-directed-network-and-strike-circles-models/) at all scales.

However, 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 are 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](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20563051221122448)).

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

- [A living library of participatory governance use cases](https://commonslibrary.org/future-of-governance-toolkit/), by reState
- [Approaches to Organising: Decentralised, Directed Network and Strike Circles Models](https://commonslibrary.org/approaches-to-organising-decentralised-directed-network-and-strike-circles-models/) By Robyn Gulliver
- A [Handbook of Handbooks for Decentralised Organising](https://hackmd.io/@yHk1snI9T9SNpiFu2o17oA/Skh_dXNbE?type=view), curated by Richard Bartlett
- [*Patterns for decentralisation*](https://youtu.be/ttxt1iyzciY) - presentation at Intersection18 conference by Natalia Lombardo and Richard Bartlett from [The Hum](https://www.thehum.org/about).
- [Spokescouncil](https://seedsforchange.org.uk/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 ways to conceptulise distributed leadership. Some of these have been useful in social movement contexts, such the notion [*Leaderful organising*](https://commonslibrary.org/leaderful-organizing/), others have emerged in cooperative workplaces contexts and experiments in collectively-led projects. For example, the *circle of leadership* that Alanna Irving outlined in the book [*Better Work Together*](https://betterworktogether.co/) 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.

- [Launching a leadership revolution](https://commonslibrary.org/launching-a-leadership-revolution/)
- [*How to grow distributed leadership*](https://youtu.be/o0Hu5ntP61U), 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)](https://andrewskotzko.com/susan-basterfield-decentralized-team-structures-and-participatory-decision-making/)
- [*Better Work Together: How the Power of Community Can Transform Your Business*](https://www.betterworktogether.co), edited by Anthony Cabraal and Susan Basterfield, 2018 from the [Enspiral Foundation](https://www.enspiral.com/).
- [Andrea Eriksson et al,, 2025 “Forms of Distributed Leadership – a Case Study of Six Workplaces in Eldercare.""](https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-025-12417-1)

### Sociotechnical dynamics of participatory decision-making
How we participate in decision-making practices are 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)](https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=546230). 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](https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856513482090)* 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.

### Commoning
Moved to it's one article, see: [Practising Commoning](https://commonslibrary.org/practising-commoning/).

---
###### 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](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/Bio) on unceded lands of the [Wurundjeri people](https://www.wurundjeri.com.au/).

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /></a> [CC BY-NC-SA](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)