(Originally posted in Greater Democracy)

Greater Democracy was formed, in part, to explore the roots, goals, and intentions of democratic governance. I love democracy, from Jefferson, to Wilson, to others who have fought for and written about democracy that I don’t yet know about.

Yet democracy is a fairly broad concept, a government by the people. How do the people decide to govern themselves? To they require consensus? Do they elect people to represent them in a governing body? To they use Robert’s rules of order to suspend Robert’s rules of order? Democracy can take many shapes.

And where does Democracy take place? We think about Democracy for governing the country, but to what extent should families, small social groups, or even an online community be governed democratically.

Years ago, I was part of a group that was committed to social action, but would only act when they had consensus. The group ended up being ineffectual. One person could block consensus, or they would debate long enough for the opportunity to pass.

In online groups, I’ve acted unilaterally to block spammers. I’ve been criticized for this as being undemocratic. Yet in many ways, I was acting as a representative of the group in the moment and we have addressed the issues afterwards. I’ve known site administrators for group blogs that have had to make changes to the site because of technical issues who have been accused of acting undemocratically for addressing the problem and then discussing it afterwards.

I believe in representative democracy, which includes the right of site administrators or group moderators to act unilaterally provided that there are adequate chances for informed discourse to determine if the unilateral action is in fact what the community as a whole supports. I believe we need to look at how we promote this understanding in different online groups we are part of.

The problem that we face with representative democracy is that too often, we don’t have a true chance to determine if the actions of our representatives are in fact acting in the way that the community supports. In Connecticut, approximately 30% of the state legislative races go unopposed. In online communities, too often, the leader of a group acts unilaterally and there isn’t a chance for discussion about what the group really wants.

Greater Democracy was formed in part to look critically at what might work much better, especially in the interest of facilitating more and better citizen participation. I hope this helps all of us think a little more about what democracy can and should look like in all aspects of our life.