User:Moreschi/Consensus, not democracy

Occasionally, the complaint arises that Wikipedia is not a democracy, most typically from editors suggesting that the Arbitration Committee should be more like the Supreme Court, or Congress, or that the life-long tenure of admins (forcible removal of tools apart), is contrary to democratic principles. Specifically, I wish to respond to this, and also to raise some broader points about democracy, consensus, and Wikipedia governance.

In brief, my contention is that Wikipedia's governance contains a subtle but very real system of checks and balances, and that given a vibrant civic culture, more formal democratic-style processes would probably be worse than useless.

Democracy and Consensus

Robert Conquest, in The Dragons of Expectation and Reflections on a Ravaged Century, summarises the main issue. Western culture has become, in short, overly hung up on democracy: it is, in Conquest's words, a "word-whale". Democracy has become the standard by which the "free world" measures itself against the non-free, and by which it justifies its moral legitimacy. In fact, democracy is underpinned by key and much more vital concepts: those of civic culture, and of the principle of consent.

Civic culture can be defined by the following features:

• A general recognition that that which is not specifically prohibited is permitted, and prohibitions are only made when actual harm has been shown to result.
• A general recognition that peaceful acceptance of dissenting viewpoints is desirable:
• A geneneral recognition that such dissension from established norms should be tempered by a degree of voluntary, rational restraint:
• That the ordinary man has some protection from the power of the executive:
• That at the some level - though not necessarily through formal voting in regular elections - the community must assent to the decisions of the executive. For this, the executive must not have sufficent power that autocracy develops, but must have sufficent power to override, when necessary, the dissensions of the few who do not go along with the general consensus.

It's a delicate balance to strike, and few political cultures manage it. Ancient Athens, for all its direct democracy, left the minority with little or no redress or protection against the tyranny of the majority. The Roman Republic, a much less democratic system, perhaps came somewhat closer, although meaningful consent was limited to the aristocracy. A similar situation may be observed in feudal England: the King was never strong enough to impose his will on his subjects without the consent of the his nobility, and the attempts by John, Edward II, Richard II, the Yorkist dynasty, and later Charles I to implement continental-style autocracy failed miserably: Henry VIII perhaps came closest only by exceptional force of will. Nor were the aristocracy themselves, in either instance, independant of those below them in the pecking order: the feudal system and the client-patron relationship obligated the upholding of certain responsibilities.

In the modern world, there are various places that strike a reasonable balance: America, the UK, Switzerland, the Scandinanvian nations, Turkey, Lebanon and India spring to mind, and doubtless many others which I apologise for omitting. On the other hand, for all that the European Union is avowedly democratic, few would even try to claim there is much pretence at consensuality. The EU is a mild example: we can all think of far worse examples of how democracy can lead directly to the demise of consensuality, Hitler's widespread support in November 1932 being the most obvious.

Applied to Wikipedia

Wikipedia, I think, fulfils the criteria for a civic culture fairly well.

• Innovation is permitted and encouraged, and indeed the basic principles of wiki software contribute to this:
• The establishment is highly indulgent - perhaps sometimes too indulgent - of dissenting viewpoints that sharply contrast with majority norms:
• It is recognized that dissent should be accompanied by restraint:
• The arbitration committee is a valuable check on the power of the admin corps, and the tradition that arbcom does not enforce its own rulings means that it is mutually reliant on the admin corps. ArbCom, in its role of reviewing community bans, also acts as a brake on the power of the mob:
• The requests for comment process points to a good level of consensuality, even on important issues of governance.

On the basic level of regular editing of the encyclopedia, over 90 percent of the time the numbers participating are small enough, and the participants rational enough, that reasoned discussion yields workable consensus. This only breaks down in cases of unfeasibly large numbers simultaneously editing (very rare), or one or more of the participants either acting in bad faith or being irrational. Such "tribal" consensuality works perfectly well and will doubtless continue to do so for a long time yet, and attitudes are changing (and mechanisms adapting), to deal with the trolls and the irrational. On the level of governance, the principles of consensuality have held true, and in what is ultimately a project (not a society), that is all that is needed.