Page 21 - C.A.L.L. #23 - Spring 2004

Diffused Power Decision Making

Majority Vote, Democratic Decision-Making: Kibbutzim and most large ecovillages around the globe use forms of
voting, often modified to give a vote to each household or ‘share’ rather than to each person, or perhaps setting

other than 50% + 1 as the support needed for decisions. In some intentional communities, matters are referred to
all interested members who discuss and then vote, with different percentages required for different sorts of
decisions, and sometimes by people with different sorts of membership. Intentional communities such as
Damanhur, Kibbutz Kadarim, Twin Oaks and ZEGG have forms of ‘representational’ democracy wherein

members select a subgroup who then make decisions. Such decisions can, in many cases, be challenged by
members and become subject to consensus.

Democratic voting systems are easy to understand and are capable of making decisions reasonably fast, but have
the problem that with majority rule, while there are winners, there are also almost always losers. Intentional
communities which use voting generally temper this with a degree of consensus-building, to reduce the problem of
having losers.

Consensus Decision-Making: Proposals are introduced, discussed, and eventually
decided upon by the group but without voting as such. Typically, a proposal will,

if necessary, be modified and remodified to meet peoples concerns, perhaps
deferred, and when it is time to decide, people either consent to the proposal,
‘stand aside’, or ‘block’ it. To stand aside means a person does not agree but is
willing to let the matter proceed, while blocking means stopping a proposal.

Some naive critics assume consensus simply means that each member can veto
any decision. This is simply untrue. Any decision-making system where each

member has a simple veto vote is a form of majority rule where a 100% vote is
needed on every issue. With consensus decision-making, however, people work
diligently toward getting complete agreement on an issue or, failing that, at least
to a position where those who are not in favour are willing to allow the others to

carry on, and will ‘stand aside’, or at least not ‘block’ the proposal. If the group cannot achieve this then the
proposal fails but it is a far more complex than someone simply exercising a veto vote.

In practice, consensus decision-making can take up a great deal of collective time in discussing and modifying a
proposal to try to meet the concerns of all participants. Generally, however, once a decision is made, the group will
rapidly implement it because there will be no foot-dragging by members who might have been losers had they
followed simple voting. The better the group has been trained in consensus decision-making, and the better the

members know and trust each other, the faster they can reach consensus. Good consensus decision-making can
become fast and efficient.

An edited extract especially for C.A.L.L., from Bill Metcalf’s latest book, The Findhorn Book of Community
Living, Forres, UK: Findhorn Press, 2004, pp. 92-6. Bill is a past president of I.C.S.A. (International Communities
Study Association).

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