Scaling small group governance for larger communities

From: jimruttshow8596
Forrest Landry’s work explores governance and decision-making models, particularly focusing on how small groups can effectively make decisions and how these models might scale for larger communities. His foundational “small group practice” was developed in the late 1990s and published around 2001 [05:53:00], [05:57:00].

The Need for New Governance Models

Existing governance processes are insufficient for addressing large-scale, complex problems that span generations and cultures, involve numerous actors, and operate in complex domains like ecosystems [00:03:17]. Issues such as ecological crises, global warming, pollution, and long-term sustainability require a level of human coordination and capacity not currently available [00:03:47]. Attempting to tackle new challenges with old organizational structures often leads to failure, necessitating a fresh approach to governance design [00:04:44].

Three Archetypes of Decision-Making

Forrest Landry identifies three fundamental archetypes of human governance and coordination:

1. Consensus [00:05:56]

   • Description: A horizontal communication process where everyone operates as peers, striving for a common understanding and uniform agreement on problems and solutions [00:06:41].
   • Strengths: Produces very high-quality choices [00:09:18] and fosters high coherence regarding group identity, values, and principles [01:58:00], [02:19:00]. When values are positively stated and not mutually exclusive, consensus allows for a comprehensive shared basis for choice [02:17:00]. It avoids disgruntled minorities because every member must agree, preventing situations where some do not sign on to core principles [00:03:03].
   • Weaknesses: Requires very high communicative bandwidth [00:09:20]. It can be too slow for large groups or situations requiring many quick decisions [00:09:25]. Consensus decisions are “sticky,” meaning a single objector can prevent a change, making constitutional changes (like altering power parameters) difficult to revise [00:38:58].

2. Meritocracy (Hierarchical/Executive) [00:05:56]

   • Description: A vertically oriented structure with unequal relationships, typically featuring a top-down approach where a single person (or an appointed team) is elected or delegated authority for specific choices and functions [00:06:56], [00:07:40], [00:40:01]. This defines who gets to decide what, when, usually by bylaws or delegation [00:08:21].
   • Strengths: Can respond very quickly to a large number of choices, is relatively simple, and robust for emergency situations [00:09:39].
   • Weaknesses: Highly vulnerable to corruption, often termed “agency risk” or the “principal-agent problem” [00:09:50], where individuals prioritize private interests over the group’s welfare [00:09:50], [00:10:04].

3. Democracy (Voting) [00:05:56]

   • Description: Lies between consensus and meritocracy, often involving subgroups with internal equality but hierarchical relationships between them [00:07:02]. It involves identifying choices, debating them, and then voting [00:08:48].
   • Weaknesses: Susceptible to hidden and covert forms of power (e.g., control over what appears on a ballot or wording of proposals) [00:11:02]. Voting often divides a group into two subgroups (a majority and a minority), limiting the overall effectiveness and resilience of the community due to political polarization [00:11:25], [00:11:46]. It can also act as a corrupting force on how ideas are discussed and framed [00:12:46].

The Integrated Small Group Practice

Landry’s design aims to overcome the weaknesses of each archetype by combining all three as mutual checks and balances [01:16:00].

• Consensus (Internal Focus): The group operates in a consensus mode when dealing with internal matters, such as membership, values, and self-identity [01:58:00]. This is where high coherence is essential, and it requires inward focus without external communication or transmission across the group’s boundary [01:46:00]. The group decides its internal organization and how it self-organizes into functional “organs” [02:06:00].
• Meritocracy (External Action): Once the group reaches consensus on an external task (e.g., farming), it transitions to a meritocratic mode. A leader (or a team) is chosen by consensus for a specific scope of authority and responsibility [02:37:00], [02:50:00]. This allows for efficient, focused external action and communication, such as managing a farm or engaging with external authorities [01:10:00], [02:49:00]. The elected leader can further delegate tasks within their defined scope [02:50:00], [04:00:00].
• Democracy (The “Red Button”): The sole function of democracy in this model is to act as a “red button” to transition the group back from a meritocratic (external) mode to a consensus (internal) mode [02:56:00], [03:34:00]. If the group feels there’s a misrepresentation or a problem with the meritocratic function, a vote of no confidence can be triggered [02:54:00]. This action completely collapses that specific meritocratic structure, forcing the group to return to consensus and start from scratch for that role [03:08:00]. This makes such a vote a high-stakes decision, deterring frivolous use [03:03:00].
• Democracy (The “Timeout” Button): Democracy also serves as a “relief valve” to suspend the consensus process temporarily when internal communication becomes unstable (e.g., tempers are high and the group isn’t converging) [03:44:00], [03:48:00]. A true majority (half plus one of the whole membership, not just a quorum) can vote to pause discussions on a specific issue for a set period, allowing the group to cool off [03:50:00], [03:52:00]. This can be critical for the group’s continued functioning [03:52:00].

The transition between modes is critical: consensus bootstraps meritocratic action, and democracy can pull it back to consensus [04:06:00]. Information flow is also crucial for responsible decision-making; the consensus process can establish reporting requirements for meritocracies [04:41:00].

Challenges of Scaling Governance

Landry’s small group practice is optimal for groups between 6 and 16 members [01:54:00], [05:28:00]. For groups smaller than six, the formality of the model is often unnecessary [05:28:00]. However, scaling this model directly to larger groups (e.g., above 16 or 30 people) presents significant challenges [05:08:00], [05:39:00].

• Complexity: As group size increases, the number of communication paths and diverse life experiences grows exponentially, making consensus difficult to maintain and increasing the risk of emotional dynamics derailing conversations [05:20:00].
• Occult Corruption: In larger meritocratic structures, it becomes easier for leaders to hide personal benefits or strategic advantages, leading to “principal-agent problems” that are not easily visible to the group [05:17:00].
• Dunbar’s Number: The ability to maintain track of complex relationships and individual understandings diminishes significantly beyond certain group sizes, often cited around 150 people (Dunbar’s number) [05:52:00], [01:02:53].

Landry’s later work suggests that the small group model cannot be directly scaled up by simply layering groups, due to “intersexual dynamics” and “exponential evolutionary power” [05:58:00]. There’s an “uncanny valley” or “no-man’s land” between small group governance (up to ~16 people) and the next viable scale, which he suggests begins at around 200 people [01:02:08], [01:02:29]. Attempts to bridge this gap through accretion or layering result in instability because the underlying evolutionary mathematics and human biases favor hierarchical structures and generate pressures that climb to infinity [01:00:27], [01:00:48], [01:28:50].

A New Vision for Large-Scale Governance

To address problems facing civilization at scale, a fundamentally new approach to governance is required, going beyond traditional institutional forms (markets, representative systems, voting systems) [01:01:10], [01:04:11]. These existing systems are either too slow (markets lack global awareness across time and space) or lack the necessary bandwidth (hierarchical institutions) to address complex, long-term issues like existential risk or global sustainability [01:04:41], [01:05:51].

Landry proposes thinking about large-scale governance by going back to first principles of evolution and communication [01:06:35]. The challenge is to create collective wisdom or collective intelligence that implements consensus, meritocracy, and democracy in a “holographic way” [01:07:01].

This new model must:

• Be Non-Representational: Avoid the principal-agent problem by involving the whole community in choice-making processes without overloading individuals [01:09:45].
• Prioritize Culture: Begin with healthy human dynamics and local ecology. From a strong culture, awareness of values can emerge, leading to a shared vision, and finally, a strategy grounded in the community [01:11:14].
• Balance Change and Changelessness: Mediate between the adaptive capacity of evolution (change) and the stability of sustainability (changelessness) with a higher-level “group consciousness” or “wisdom” [01:08:08], [01:09:03].
• Bridge the Wisdom Gap: Humanity, as the “dumbest species capable of developing the tech we currently have,” faces a critical gap between its technological intelligence and the wisdom needed to handle its impact on cultures and ecosystems [01:19:52]. This gap cannot be filled by natural evolutionary processes alone [01:20:44].
• Ensure Trust and Visibility: The governance process must be transparent enough for individuals to trust that their contributions of time, effort, and resources are wisely invested for the collective long-term well-being of the species and planet, rather than being diverted for private benefit [01:23:54].

The goal is to enable “conscious sustainable evolution” where groups can genuinely thrive by balancing humanity’s relationship with technology and nature [01:22:55], [01:19:07]. This is considered “the most difficult engineering or philosophical problem” humanity has ever faced [01:37:00]. Solutions at this scale will be of an “entirely different order” than existing institutional or tribal designs [01:36:11].