I once quit a Men’s Group because the rules about the way we would engage each other seemed to become a shield rather than an enabler of connection and support. The group had been really important in my life for two years. Meeting every Monday, we used some process tools from the Mankind Project (MKP), but were not strict about the format, letting each week’s volunteer facilitator to guide us. We benefitted from many of the participants being skilled in facilitating specific processes that we might want to use to become unstuck with an issue in our lives. But over time, the MKP ideas and processes began to structure all meetings. Once that occurred, I noticed a couple of men participated in a different way. Previously we had been gathering as trusting friends wanting to both help each other and benefit from each other. The processes for our meetings were secondary to that. But now, some men were not expressing a brotherly sensitivity, but rather a desire to know the processes, do them correctly, and that we should all be committed to that. One man said he wasn’t with us to be friends but to do ‘the work’. At that time, I pondered whether to express a ‘withhold’, as they call it in the MKP, and probably dominate the rest of that meeting with exploring and releasing my feelings about his approach. Instead, I guessed that the group had shifted and people wanted more of the processes. I now wonder if that was a mistake. Both myself and the co-founder of the group quit soon after.
I mention it here, as it was one example of something that I’ve experienced over the years in a variety of ‘intentional’ settings. On the one hand, we try to meet together in ways that don’t reproduce the hierarchical dynamics and superficial interactions that have accompanied the human race being so destructive. On the other hand, an attachment to processes and rules can become a way to suppress or hide ourselves and each other – and therefore reproduce power dynamics. When that happens we can lose our authenticity, wholeness and effectiveness as both individuals and groups. How that happens and what to do about it is the subject of this essay. I chose to write about it because it is a massive issue for any of us who aim for something better than a retreat into traditionalisms or authoritarianism as we witness a crumbling of modernity.
I was so keen on the idea of new ways of being together in groups, that when we set up the Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF) in 2019, we focused more on facilitation processes for volunteers rather than action plans. We funded people to organise participant-led Open Space or Unconference events in various locations, and developed modes of relating we described as Deep Relating. This was influenced partly by my own ‘ecolibertarian’ philosophical framework, where I see empowering grassroots action as imperative for our time of ecological disruption and collapse. This year I am pleased to see the power of ‘Unconferencing’ demonstrated once again in the Bay Area, where an event I helped has subsequently led to initiatives in collapse readiness. However, there can be major limitations to some alternative processes for dialogue and decision-making, where an attachment to process can displace our authenticity, wholeness and effectiveness.
Which brings me to sociocracy, and its principles and practices for governance of communities and organisations. Sociocracy aims to enable equality and self-determination amongst participants in a community through consent-based decision-making and a decentralized structure of interlinked circles. These self-governing circles, each with an area of authority, send one member to a higher circle. Decisions are made when there are no intractable objections from any member of a circle, rather than relying on majority rule or consensus. I learned how to co-facilitate sociocratic meetings about 13 years ago. In one event in Greece we used it to facilitate the articulation of a declaration on cooperation for community exchange systems and currencies. The text of the resultant Drapanos Declaration is still available. I remember that during the process, one participant stormed out of the circle. As she stood up to leave, she said the whole process was patriarchal in disguise. The drama of that moment stayed with me over the years, leaving me with open questions: could there be drawbacks in how facilitators frame agendas and explore ways of arriving at consent from all present? Could such methods become a pretence of challenging typical power dynamics in society, rather than a real tool for that? Over the following years, I heard from activists and community leaders who told tales of sociocracy ruining their work and I began to see critiques appear in the academic literature. It was why I did not encourage sociocracy within the organisation I had founded on Deep Adaptation before leaving it in 2020.
This issue of how to organise our discussions and decision-making came to my attention recently in correspondence with some volunteers in the DA Forum about a disagreement we have. I will share an update on that disagreement next month, as there is ongoing progress in addressing group moderator team capacity, diversity, transparency and accountability. However, in the first weeks, some simple steps of information gathering were not taken, and concerns about time constraints were expressed. I began to wonder if volunteers with limited time might have been a bit too ‘bogged down’ in sociocratic processes to be able to assess needs and risks, make decisions, and provide the kind of tangible support that might have averted our disagreement in the first place. Therefore, in this essay I am sharing a summary of some of the limitations of sociocracy for communities that have radical agendas and which seek to serve a movement, rather than its most proximate participants.
After summarising six weaknesses of sociocracy, I will return to the question I pose in the title of this essay – i.e. what’s important if we don’t want to reproduce patriarchy and other forms of oppressive relating in our intentional communities.
1. Facilitator agenda-setting and soft power
Although sociocracy is designed to distribute authority and uphold the equivalence of all participants, facilitators often retain significant agenda-setting power, particularly in framing proposals for consent. This “framing effect” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981) can subtly shape the range of discussion and influence outcomes, especially when other participants defer to the facilitator’s perceived expertise or neutrality. As sociocracy often lacks checks on this soft power, facilitators may inadvertently (or strategically) steer decisions toward their preferred outcomes, undermining collective autonomy.
2. Lack of domain-specific expertise and accountability
Sociocracy emphasizes shared ownership and fluid roles but may underplay the need for dedicated expertise in areas with legal, ethical, or technical obligations, such as compliance, finance, or conflict-of-interest management. In the absence of clearly delegated and accountable expert roles, these responsibilities can fall through the cracks or be inadequately handled by generalist circles.
This critique echoes concerns in cooperative and non-profit governance literature about the “amateurisation” of essential functions (Cornforth, 2003). Where legal or fiduciary obligations exist, overemphasis on collective consent without informed delegation can lead to organisational risk or ethical compromise.
3. Performative participation and realist limitations
Sociocracy presumes that participants are motivated primarily or significantly for the collective mission. However, in practice, many may participate for instrumental reasons, such as social belonging, symbolic affiliation, professional development, or soft marketing. Therefore, they might not have a primary concern for the issues at hand in relation to organisational objectives in each and every meeting. If some participants “coast,” rarely raising objections or critically engaging, that creates conditions for facilitator dominance or groupthink.
This connects with a ‘realist critique’ from governance theory: sociocracy appears to rely on idealised assumptions about human behaviour, which downplays self-interest, strategic conformity, and subtle power dynamics (Chappell, 2008). Without mechanisms to detect and respond to passive consent or non-engaged participants, the system risks replicating some of the power imbalances it seeks to avoid.
For groups that are involved in agendas and activities which might have opponents, this realist critique is even more important. In the sociocracy literature, I didn’t find discussion of the potential for disruption by a ‘low-lying’ infiltrator, who might be working for a corporate sector or governmental body with an interest in preventing the group moving on certain issues, or connecting with other demographics. However, the fields of ‘socio technical security’ and ‘insider-threat management’ that exist in organisational analysis identify any process that allows potential veto by an individual as something to avoid. Given the decades of documented evidence, including court cases, to think that an environmental group or even a community group might not have opponents is naive in the extreme, and might even reflect a lack of primary focus on the cause of the group.
4. Bias toward present participants over intended beneficiaries
Sociocracy inherently privileges the voices of those who are physically or virtually present. If these people are not representative of all the types of people that the group intends to serve, then this bias is problematic. Deliberative processes can amplify the voices of the most available, resourceful, or articulate – leaving intended beneficiaries underrepresented or unheard. This can lead to stakeholder myopia: prioritizing the perspectives of participants over the needs of those the organisation is intending to serve.
Even if some participants are deeply committed to empathic reasoning, symbolic devices like an “empty chair” in a circle (meant to represent absent stakeholders) is little more than an empty gesture. Worse, to lump together all sentient creatures along with non-present ethnicities in the Majority World in one category of ‘non-presence’ could be regarded as logically and ethically ridiculous, reflecting an interest in self-image rather than reality.
5. Time burden and the reproduction of privilege
Connected to this issue of bias towards the views of participants in circles, the time-intensive nature of sociocratic processes creates a barrier to participation for many. Those with caregiving responsibilities, financial precarity, or inflexible work schedules are often excluded by default. As a result of this ‘inequality of capacities,’ sociocracy might even reinforce existing social privilege, as only those with discretionary time or institutional support can consistently engage (King and Griffin, 2024). The latter category of support, whether corporate, governmental or self-employment, also raises questions of distorting agendas, mentioned above.
This dynamic was previously documented in studies on participatory democracy and stakeholder engagement, where time availability acts as a form of participatory capital, shaping who can meaningfully participate in democratic processes. The topic continues to be a live one for academic study. It is something considered in depth by the NGO Low Impact, leading to them arguing for more work on the current needs of working people, and the development of commonly owned assets that serve such needs (as explained by Dave Derby in a previous article on this blog). In sum, unless there are some deliberate time-access strategies (e.g., stipends, asynchronous options), sociocracy may skew governance toward the already-empowered.
6. Overemphasis on process over outcomes
Sociocracy’s intricate procedures—consent rounds, circle meetings, feedback loops—can become ends in themselves. While designed to enhance inclusion and reflection, they can lead to a kind of ‘process fetishism’, where organizational energy is absorbed in procedural ‘fidelity’ rather than mission-aligned outcomes (Schaub, 2014). This is what I saw in my Men’s Group, as well in some other settings over the years. A related problem is that some people come to regard the means as the ends, and therefore people develop a sense of the ethical merit of the organisation’s existence, no matter what they are actually achieving in the world or even stopping from being achieved.
In some sociocratic organizations, the pursuit of structural perfection can displace a strategic focus, particularly in moments requiring rapid decision-making or bold action. This critique echoes broader concerns in the literature on deliberative systems, where laborious attention to procedural legitimacy can crowd out attention to efficacy, accountability, or external impact (Ryfe, 2005).
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Conclusions?
How we meet really does matter. Whether that’s in support groups, activist groups, intentional communities or organisations. If we want to develop exciting alternatives to reactionary traditionalisms, and authoritarianism, in this era of disruption, metacrisis and collapse, then we need to give serious attention to our ways of working together.
These six weaknesses I have identified in sociocracy also exist to varying degrees in any participatory process. That is because any agenda-setting power of individuals and groups exists within a context of systems of capital and culture. Those systems shape who has the relevant education, confidence, experience, and time, to engage for potential influence, as well as who gets funded and paid to convene people, and whose decisions might then have an impact on others. The critical sociological perspective on such power processes is a huge field of inquiry, education and struggle, and was a key focus of my doctoral studies. However, you don’t need to be a scholar to get this issue – most people intuitively understand these dynamics when they participate in processes. The issue is whether their concerns are voiced and addressed.
My concern is that the limitations of sociocracy mean that it is unlikely to help us avoid the way activist movements, political movements and NGOs ‘run-out-of-steam’ or become co-opted. I outlined 13 of these risks when leaving the Deep Adaptation Forum in 2020. In particular, sociocracy offers little against the risks I termed as: compromised agility, navel gazing, vested interests, ossification, or infiltration. Although the ideas that “we are experimenting” and “we are learning” are positive ones, there is ample learning over many decades about what goes wrong in groups and networks in civil society. The focus on “we are learning” is more appealing to privileged volunteers and staff than the intended beneficiaries of socially-driven organisations, or those in high-intensity situations of suffering. I mention that not to criticise the prioritising of learning, but to warn against using “learning” as the excuse for a lack of attention to past experience or delivering for intended beneficiaries.
After reviewing some of the limitations with sociocracy, I don’t yet conclude that it is an intractably flawed approach, for either radical groups or for others. That’s because I am open to the idea there might be some ‘tweaks’ possible to the system of circles and consentment. However, I’m not experienced enough in the method, nor have time for researching it now. Therefore, I will remain ‘doubtfully hopeful’ while cautioning against its uncritical use in groups with potentially radical agendas. To help that process along, I plugged my six issues with sociocracy into ChatGPT and asked for tweaks to address them. You can see the result here.
The biggest point I wish to make, and why I started this essay with a story from the Men’s Group, is that any rules about processes can never replace the importance of why we show up in such gatherings in the first place. A focus on process can obscure the intention and consciousness of participants. Looking back on the Men’s Group, I think the two guys who were particularly keen on MKP processes might have been the least emotionally ‘secure’ in themselves. They didn’t feel at ease to meet in vulnerability and friendship without some psychological handrails. The rules offered a way to feel safe. But leaning on such rule-rails is not without consequences. That is because any craving from an individual to order what’s around them to fit their inner world becomes an imposition on others. Such insecurity is the inner origin of patriarchy, or, indeed, of any system of oppressing the uncategorisable wildness of all life. That means we can be wary of anyone who wants us put in boxes – even if they promise us mutual liberation by doing so!
So, to return to the question I posed in the title… If we won’t escape Patriarchy with rules about how we meet, then how can we?
Answer: by not seeking validation for ourselves through our participation in a group.
Yes, that’s all.
The seeking of validation comes in many forms – whether it’s being regarded as a loved friend, or as a professional who is worthy of new clients and referrals, or as a devout activist or believer, or even as someone accepted as authentic rather than the infiltrator/spy that they secretly are. If validation-needs are driving our participation, then whatever dominant and dominating system we are part of risks manifesting through us into the group we are participating in. This is ancient wisdom, and obvious to all of us – intention matters, and procedures and dogmas don’t make our intention any less important.
Only once we know we are participating without a primarily personal agenda can we look at our models of governance as tools in context, not as masters and ends in themselves.
This matter of how we help each other show up and engage for the common good in this awkward new era will be one of the conversation topics in the Metacrisis Meetings series. I hope to meet some of you there!
Thx, Jem
Refs:
Chappell, Z. (2008) Deliberation disputed: A critique of deliberative democracy, London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom), ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2008. U615287.
Cornforth, C. (2003). The Governance of Public and Non-profit Organizations. Routledge.
King, D., Griffin, M. Governing for the Common Good: The Possibilities of Sociocracy in Nonprofit Organizations. Voluntas 35, 1046–1057 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-023-00627-2
Ryfe, David M. (2005). Does Deliberative Democracy Work? Annual Review of Political Science, 8(1), 49–71. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.8.032904.154633
Schaub, L. (2014) Reflections on Sociocracy, in Communities;Issue 165, (Winter 2014) 80,77-79.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211 (4481), 453-458.
…Or me ask for my PhD on the sociology of power in international civil society and the formation of corporate responsibility discourse (Bendell, 2003).
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