Posted by Dr. Bob on October 14, 2005, at 2:09:44
In reply to Re: delegating out some of the tasks » ClearSkies, posted by Dinah on October 13, 2005, at 19:59:36
> > > I also hope that as this moves to a more democratic state that there will always be a specified "leader" running everything... Otherwise, I think it will end badly.
> >
> > Badly in what way?
>
> (1) Of the group of deputies, one will probably stand out and take the lead... if there is no control of what person takes that role then you can have problems. It's too easy to try and implement a personal agenda and push for something that would end up contrary to the best interests of the group.
>
> (2) If it becomes democratic with no "official" leader, then I can see it turn into a government-like structure where every decision takes forever to decide and implement.
>
> (3) I'm also worried about the deputies ending up being too rigid with the rules and policies... about bad judgments being used and no direct leader ... there to reverse the decision.I do think it would be problematic if there wasn't someone in charge. And one of the jobs of the person in charge would be to keep the above from happening. And not to implement a personal agenda or be too rigid themselves.
> Now when I talk a specific person as the "leader", I don't necessarily mean someone who has veto power and/or has the ability to make any decision they want (i.e. your role right now). The ideal would be to have a group administering the board with a leader taking on more of a managerial role to make sure things run smoothly for the group.
Like a CEO reports to a board of directors?
> Every successful online community (or even in real life) has a leader. It's too easy for things to go sour when people from a community run things by themselves.
>
> thusoBut electing someone from the community wouldn't count as "by themselves", right?
I've started thinking of large groups as political systems. Here's an overview I found recently:
> Political Systems
>
> ISSUES OF CLASSIFICATION
>
> Confronted by the vast array of political forms, political scientists have attempted to classify and categorize, to develop typologies and models, or in some other way to bring analytic order to the bewildering variety of data. Many different schemes have been developed. There is, for example, the classical distinction between governments in terms of the number of rulers--government by one man (monarchy or tyranny), government by the few (aristocracy or oligarchy), and government by the many (democracy)... There are classifications that group systems according to basic principles of political authority or the forms of legitimacy (charismatic, traditional, rational-legal, and others)...
>
> The most influential of such classifying schemes is undoubtedly the attempt of Plato and Aristotle to define the basic forms of government in terms of the number of power holders and their use or abuse of power. Plato held that there was a natural succession of the forms of government: an aristocracy (the ideal form of government by the few) that abuses its power develops into a timocracy (in which the rule of the best men, who value wisdom as the highest political good, is succeeded by the rule of men who are primarily concerned with honour and martial virtue), which through greed develops into an oligarchy (the perverted form of government by the few), which in turn is succeeded by a democracy (rule by the many); through excess, the democracy becomes an anarchy (a lawless government), to which a tyrant is inevitably the successor... Although disputing the character of this implacable succession of the forms of government, Aristotle also based his classification on the number of rulers and distinguished between good and bad forms of government. In his typology it was the rulers' concern for the common good that distinguished the ideal from perverted forms of government. The ideal forms in the Aristotelian scheme are monarchy, aristocracy, and polity (a term conveying some of the meaning of the modern concept of "constitutional democracy"); when perverted by the selfish abuse of power, they are transformed respectively into tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy (or the mob rule of lawless democracy)...
>
> Another very influential classifying scheme was the distinction between monarchies and republics. In the writings of Machiavelli and others, the tripartism of classical typologies was replaced by the dichotomy of princely and republican rule. Sovereignty in the monarchy or the principality is in the hands of a single ruler; in republics, sovereignty is vested in a plurality or collectivity of power holders. Reducing aristocracy and democracy to the single category of republican rule, Machiavelli also laid the basis in his analysis of the exercise of princely power for a further distinction between despotic and nondespotic forms of government...
>
> Modern classifying systems.
>
> The usefulness of all the traditional classifications has been undermined by the momentous changes in the political organization of the modern world... Another classification, which distinguishes between "legitimate" and "revolutionary" governments, was suggested by Mosca's contemporary Guglielmo Ferrero. Using a sociopsychological approach to the relations between rulers and ruled, Ferrero held that a legitimate government is one whose citizens voluntarily accept its rule and freely give it their loyalty; in revolutionary systems, the government fears the people and is feared by them. Legitimacy and leadership are also the basis of a typology developed by the German sociologist Max Weber. In Weber's scheme there are three basic types of rule: charismatic, in which the authority or legitimacy of the ruler rests upon some genuine sense of calling and in which the followers submit because of their faith or conviction in the ruler's exemplary character; traditional, in which, as in hereditary monarchy, leadership authority is historically or traditionally accepted; and rational-legal, in which leadership authority is the outgrowth of a legal order that has been effectively rationalized and where there is a prevailing belief in the legality of normative rules or commands...
>
> A serviceable classification of political systems must penetrate beneath formal appearances to underlying realities; these realities, however, do not consist only of the facts of social and economic organization. Important differences often exist between political systems having very similar socioeconomic structures. That is why some recent sociological classifications and schemes of analysis fail as tools of political inquiry: they cannot effectively distinguish between certain societies whose political orders are full of contrasts. The political system itself must be the primary focus of inquiry and the phenomena of politics the principal facts of investigation. Such an approach may involve many different kinds of analysis, but it must begin with an examination of the ways in which power is acquired and transferred, exercised, and controlled...
>
> Copyright (c) 1996 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights Reservedhttp://www.search.eb.com/elections/macro/5005/17/2.html
So I guess we'd be trying to move from a monarchy to a republic? Or from traditional to rational-legal?
----
> I always told my therapist that when he announced an intention to abandon me, even if it didn't go into effect immediately, that that announcement *was* the abandonment, and all else that followed was merely followthrough.
I'm sorry you feel abandoned. But did it need to be announced that I'm not going to be here forever? Better, I think, to try to plan some sort of succession...
> The thing about Babble is that posters have always come and gone.
>
> But Dr. Bob was a constant. He was *the* constant that made the inevitable loss of friends on the board bearable. Because no matter how much everything changed on Babble, and it does - frequently, Babble was always Babble because Dr. Bob was always here, always had been here, and would be here as long as Babble was around.
>
> DinahDoes Babble need to be so dependent on me? Might there not come a time -- sometime, I'm not saying right away! -- when the "culture" might be established enough to persist, more or less, without me?
Bob
poster:Dr. Bob
thread:564410
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20051013/msgs/566723.html