Sociocracy

What sociocracy is

Sociocracy is a method by which a group governs itself so that every member has an equal voice in the decisions that affect them, without the group becoming slow or stuck. It rests on a few simple elements. The work is divided among circles, each responsible for its own area. Policy decisions are made by consent. Circles are joined by double links, so that information flows up and down. People are chosen for roles in open elections. Together these elements form a structure that steers itself through feedback, much like a living system.

The word comes from the Latin socius, companion, and the Greek word for rule. The French philosopher Auguste Comte coined it in 1851. The method that goes by the name today is younger, and it comes from the Netherlands.

From a school in Bilthoven to an engineering firm

In 1926 the educator Kees Boeke and his wife Beatrice Boeke-Cadbury founded a school in Bilthoven, the Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap, which they ran as a self-governing community of pupils and teachers. Decisions were sought in common, following the practice of the Quakers, and everyone's voice counted. In 1945 Boeke set out his ideas in a booklet, Sociocracy: Democracy as It Might Be.

One of the pupils was Gerard Endenburg, born in Rotterdam in 1933. After training as an electrical engineer he took over the management of his family's company, Endenburg Elektrotechniek, in the late 1960s. There he began, from the 1970s, to develop Boeke's ideas into a method for an organisation that has to make decisions under time pressure: the sociocratic circle-organisation method. His decisive change concerned the decision rule. Unanimity works in a small, close community, but in a company it can block everything. Endenburg replaced it with consent and drew on cybernetics, the science of control through feedback.

How it works

Circles. A circle is a group of people who share an area of work, for example finance, the garden or the guest house. Within the limits set by the wider organisation, it decides its own policy, distributes its tasks and checks its own results. Circles are semi-autonomous: free within their domain and bound to the whole.

Consent instead of consensus. Consensus seeks agreement. Consent asks a narrower question: is there a reasoned objection? An objection is not a preference but a reason why a proposal would harm the shared aim or prevent a member from doing their part. Objections are not overruled but used to improve the proposal until none remains. Because every decision carries a date on which it will be reviewed, a group does not have to find the perfect solution. It is enough that a solution is acceptable for now and safe enough to try.

Double linking. Each circle is connected to the next higher circle by two people. The leader is chosen by the higher circle and carries its aims into the circle; the delegate is elected by the circle itself and carries its view upwards. Both take full part in the decisions of the higher circle. In this way a hierarchy remains, but it becomes circular: information and influence flow in both directions.

Elections without candidates. Nobody stands for a role. The circle first agrees on what the role requires and for how long it is filled. Each member then names, in writing, the person they consider best suited, possibly themselves. The nominations are read out with reasons, and members may change their choice after hearing the others. The facilitator then proposes a person, and the circle decides by consent. Nobody campaigns, and nobody loses a vote in public.

Sociocracy 3.0 and Holacracy

Two later approaches are often confused with sociocracy.

Sociocracy 3.0 was begun in 2014 by James Priest and Bernhard Bockelbrink; the first version appeared in March 2015. It combines sociocratic ideas with practices from agile and lean work and is published as a free guide under a Creative Commons licence. Instead of a complete system, it offers a collection of patterns from which a group adopts what it needs, one step at a time.

Holacracy was developed by the software entrepreneur Brian Robertson at Ternary Software in Pennsylvania and named in 2007. It builds on sociocracy but organises work around roles rather than people and binds an organisation to a detailed written constitution. Its best-known test was the online retailer Zappos. According to Fortune, 18 percent of its staff had left within ten months by January 2016, after the company offered severance to those who did not want to work under the new system.

Sociocracy in ecovillages and permaculture

Sociocracy has spread widely in communities that look for a way between hierarchy and endless discussion. GEN Europe, the European branch of the Global Ecovillage Network, states that it aims to work sociocratically, with a governance structure based on consent decision-making, and calls this a continuous learning process. In an article for the Global Ecovillage Network in 2015, the ecovillage author Diana Leafe Christian named Earthaven in North Carolina and Aldeafeliz in Colombia among the communities that use the method or parts of it.

The permaculture education centre Lost Valley in Oregon adopted sociocracy in 2010, in a financial crisis, after one of its members had attended a workshop at the Northwest Permaculture Convergence. In 2023 the board of Permaculture Australia began to examine sociocracy in depth as a governance model. Sociocracy For All, a non-profit founded in 2016 in Amherst, Massachusetts, by Ted Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, teaches the method worldwide; its handbook Many Voices One Song appeared in 2018. In 2020 it held an online conference on the bridge between permaculture design and sociocracy.

Strengths and limits

Strengths. Every voice counts, but no single person can stop a decision by preference alone, so groups usually decide faster than by consensus. Responsibility is spread over many shoulders. Review dates make every decision a trial that can be corrected. Practitioners report clearer roles, better follow-up of decisions and less frustration in meetings than before.

Limits. The method has to be learned and practised; a group that adopts the rules without the skills gains little. It works best when the aims of a circle are clearly stated, because a reasoned objection can only be measured against an aim. It does not settle who owns the land or the money, and it does not replace trust between people. Independent research is scarce: most of what is known comes from reports by practitioners, and one of the most cited studies, by Georges Romme and Gerard Endenburg (2006), was co-written by the founder of the method himself.

Sociocracy and self-regulation

David Holmgren's fourth permaculture principle is apply self-regulation and accept feedback. Sociocracy is this principle turned into a way of organising people. Each decision is followed by doing and by measuring, and what is measured flows back into the next decision. Objections are signals, not disturbances. The double links carry feedback between circles, and review dates make sure that no decision outlives its purpose unnoticed.

In the language of permaculture, sociocracy is an invisible structure. It gives a group the means to manage what it holds in common, which is why it fits Elinor Ostrom's findings on the commons: those affected by the rules take part in making them, and the group watches its own results. Like small and slow solutions, it is usually introduced step by step, one circle at a time.