Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: A consensus question.

[Marci Malinowycz (marcim]

In Puget Ridge Cohousing, in West Seattle, our docs say that after two 
failed tries at consensus on a proposal, the decision is put to a vote; 
also, any member may bring up a proposal.

Thus, in this hypothetical situation, if cat-lovers grew to outnumber 
cat-haters, a vote could change the community's policy on cats. Not the 
ideal way to proceed, of course, since likely there would be 
repercussions to deal with in the health of the community.

In reality, we've used a vote only once, and for a very different 
scenario. And before we did, we exhausted every avenue (not to mention 
ourselves) trying to resolve it another way, so as not to resort to a 
vote; even those who might have won a vote wanted to find another way 
to find a proposal we could all agree to live with.

Meanwhile, there's another angle to explore: If the policy cannot be 
revisited, the alternative may be that some members ignore it. How do 
you ensure that everyone buys into it in reality? What happens if 
cat-lovers ignore the policy? What good is a legacy decision that is 
disregarded by some members? What are the consequences, penalties, 
whatever, when a consensed-upon policy is violated? How do various 
groups deal with that?

--  Marci Malinowycz
    SoDance [at] msn.com / marcim [at] microsoft.com
    Puget Ridge Cohousing, Seattle WA
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From: Stuart Staniford-Chen  <stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu>
Subject: A consensus question.
Date: Friday, March 15, 1996 12:02PM


This is motivated by a situation in my community, but I use a
hypothetical example to highlight the particular question I'm interested
in.

Suppose a group consenses to some policy - let's say that cats are
banned in the community.  Over a period of years, some community member's
hearts are softened towards cats, and some cat lovers move in.
Periodically, people raise the issue of allowing some cats, but there are
some very committed folks who oppose felinity and who will not or cannot
consent to having some cats.

In my community, as I think in many others, if the group cannot reach
consensus then the existing decision stays in force.  Thus in the cat
example, the community can reach a situation where the group has no
consensus about cats, yet it does have a community policy about cats.
This can potentially persist for years.

There seems to be an element of unfairness about this.  The cat haters
have considerably more power in the situation than the cat lovers.  I'll
call this the "existing decision bias."

My understanding of consensus is that it is supposed to be about equal
power for everybody.  I also feel strongly that the *major* advantage of
consensus is that no subgroup can afford to ignore the views of another
subgroup.  This discipline forces groups to to be creative in searching
for a solution that will include everyone, to compromise, to communicate
really well, to identify the core issues for them and not get hung up on
surface issues, etc.  This leads to good decisions and happy communities
(as long as people do acquire the necessary skills).

However, in the cat example, the cat haters do not *have* to compromise
whereas the cat lovers must.  Of course, we hope that cat haters will be
reasonable people who care about the mental health of cat lovers and
hence will be willing to work on the issue. However, this does not take
away the fact that the process is loaded, in some sense, by the existing
decision bias.  Even when this aspect of consensus is not invoked
specifically, it constantly colors the decisions that are made because
everybody knows that it *could* be invoked and adjusts their positions
accordingly.

On the other hand, I don't believe my community could function *without*
the existing decision bias.  At just about every meeting somebody comes
up with some idea that the group cannot consense to.  Because of the
existing decision bias, the proposer is just shit out of luck and they
either have to compromise their proposal substantially, or go away to
scheme up some other crazy idea.  We have all learned to accept that we
cannot do things in the group unless there is a good deal of support for
it.  If we did not have the bias, then any time some strong-willed
proposer was passionate about their proposal, they could hold the entire
group to ransom until opponents ran out of energy and gave in to the
proposal.  I think that would be very unhealthy.

I don't want to give the impression that this issue is a regular problem
in my group.  The great bulk of the time, we are all flexible and
careful, there is not too much passion on the issue, and we can agree
quite quickly on a generally acceptable policy.  However, we are
currently in a situation where reasonable people disagree strongly on the
right course of action for the group to take and so we continue with our
present course - which suits some people and not others.

I wondered how other groups had experienced this situation, and what
they might have learnt?

Stuart.

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Stuart Staniford-Chen           |        N St Cohousing, Davis, CA
stanifor [at] cohousing.org             |       Cohousing Network Webweaver