Consensus Decision Making, Northern Ireland and Indigenous Movements: Volume 24

Studies of consensus-based groups have historically focused on decision making processes as the defining attribute of a collective structure. Such organizations are typically analyzed as critical alternatives to capitalist bureaucratic hierarchies. This study of a small business, collectively owned and operated by women, expands the understanding of collective process by analyzing the relationship between democratic participation and the nature of the organization as socially constructed through the claimsmaking activities of its members. Tensions arising between the normative value of claims-making, the empowerment of women, running a sustainable business, and the use of consensus decision making are raised with examples from the business.

Transnational NGOs coalitions face unique challenges in designing decision making processes that reflect NGO norms and values. Based on my participant observation research, I analyze the decision making process of a transnational women's peace coalition that formed during the NGO Forum on Women 1995, a conference parallel to the Fourth UN World Conference on Women (FWCW) in Beijing, China in 1995. The coalition attempted to include all of their constituents in setting the agenda for the coalition but instead ended up marginalizing some of the very participants they hoped to include. To understand this issue, I focused my analysis on the coalition's agenda-setting process. The coalition leadership chose to use consensus, a non-hierarchical decision making process, in order to address unequal relations among coalition participants and to maximize participation. However, the use of consensus heightened rather than transformed power imbalances. I conclude that the consensus process did not facilitate NGO values of inclusion and empowerment.

Consensual decision making has traditionally been a defining characteristic of debates within Mexican indigenous communities. But in a modern socio-political context where inter-community alliances are perceived as necessary for economic and cultural survival, hitherto isolated communities have to converge in regional movements and reassess the bases and implications of this type of decision making, especially the interests that should be pursued by these decisions. Based on an ethnographic study of the internal dynamic of an emergent indigenous movement in the Mexican state of Guerrero, the Consejo de Pueblos Indigenas, it appears that the qualitative shift between intra- and inter-community decision making resides less in procedural changes than in the symbolic redefinition of the “community” within which consensus has to be achieved.

Over the past twenty years, Peace Brigades International (PBI) has pioneered a model of international non-violent accompaniment to protect the human rights of those threatened by political violence. Relying on small teams of international observers deployed where political violence is rampant (Indonesia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, Haiti, and elsewhere), PBI attempts to deter violence and open up safer political space for local activists under threat from both state forces and para-state organizations. PBI's international observers are trained in non-violence and equipped with cameras, notebooks, cell phones, extensive diplomatic contacts, and a cross-cutting international advocacy network. The recipient of numerous international awards, PBI has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.PBI is deeply committed to decentralized structures and consensus decision making, but using consensus decision making in an international accompaniment team context, marked by danger and fast-braking crises, is far from easy, carrying considerable risks for the participants and their clients.Based on extensive participant observation research with the larger organization and with two PBI teams in Sri Lanka, this paper analyzes the most salient issues involved in using consensus on PBI teams. Those issues include individual ownership of group decisions, full participation of all members, creative attention to the emotional concerns of members, the dangerous nature of the work and the potentially far-reaching ramifications of the decisions taken by a PBI team. Thick ethnographic descriptions of the teams' struggles and conflicts with using the consensus process are employed in the analysis. I argue that flexible, conscientious and proactive applications of consensus principles makes consensus decision making uniquely suited to many international non-violent accompaniment contexts.

Decision making processes within environmental social movement organizations are analysed with reference to principles derived from the communicative rationality of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas can provide normative grounds for consensual decision making, and analytical tools by which one can judge existing practices. The radical environmental organization chosen as an example of such analysis is Earth First!. But insight is also given into the operations of more hierarchical organizations such as Friends of the Earth. Organization theory can be used to show how these two different types of organization legitimate themselves in order to acquire resources from their environments, and thereby effectively engage in their chosen activities. These differing needs and structures impact upon their respective decision making processes in certain ways. Overall, while FOE is less able to put communicative rationality into practice than radical groups, the difficulties it faces here can potentially be overcome. Both organizational forms can therefore be constructively analysed using the principles of communicative rationality.

Most research on social movements and the Internet has focused on pre-existing movements which have recently adopted on-line tactics. This body of research has applied classic social movement theories to such movements, focusing on the faster communication, broader reach, and the expanded mobilization capacity facilitated by the Internet for pre-existing movements. Using the on-line strategic voting movement during the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election as a case study, we argue that the application of prior theory often overlooks the ways in which movements that emerge and thrive on-line function differently from conventional movements. Specifically, we argue that movement entrepreneurs, instead of social movement organizations, were largely responsible for organizing the strategic voting movement. This more entrepreneurial movement infrastructure brought with it changes in decision making processes and concerns. Decision making became more discretionary, the importance of leadership declined, decisions about organizational form became less problematic, and ideological and Internet-related concerns informed decision making in lieu of organizational or more standard social movement concerns. However, we argue that e-movements, and the strategic voting movement in particular, are not so exotic that they constitute fundamentally new forms of action; instead, such movements are still usefully thought of as social movements.

Network approaches to understanding the recruitment of social movement adherents and their involvement in collective action have proven highly useful, especially when established personal and organizational networks are considered important. Yet how networks evolve — which greatly affects whether they significantly influence social movements — has been understudied. This article uses comparative, empirical research to analyze organizational network formation (here, networks connecting unions, not interpersonal networks) by the attempts of Korean white-collar unions to intensify interunion solidarity. Networks are created by organizers' tactical efforts — based on participants' endorsement — to elevate the collective power of their movements. My analysis reveals that successful networks feature moderate organizational leadership centralization and intervention in the activities of discrete unions. Such leadership best promotes a democratic network structure and directs coalition efforts — two, mutually conflicting, requirements for effective networks. Excessive leadership centralization and decentralization equally attenuate network cohesion and effectiveness. The former impedes internal organizational democracy, whereas the latter hinders interorganizational coalition.

The approach of Government to resolving the Northern Ireland conflict has been twin-track. At the macro political level the focus has been on finding a settlement to the constitutional imbroglio. At the micro level efforts have concentrated on improving relations between the Protestant and Catholic communities. Since the mid-1980s community relations has been a policy priority with the promotion of cross-community contact high on the agenda. Despite considerable political progress, however, there is evidence to suggest that contact initiatives may have limited success and that Northern Ireland remains a deeply segregated and polarised society. In acknowledgement of this, community relations practice has shifted in emphasis towards work at an intra-community level where the aim is to build confidence and mutual understanding within what practitioners have termed “single identity” communities. This paper considers the contribution of intra-community work to improving community relations in Northern Ireland. On the basis of empirical evidence, including four case studies, it argues that whilst the approach has much to commend it, “single identity” work may also have the potential to exacerbate hostility and conflict by creating “educated bigots.”

Whether seen as a buffer for the worst excesses of market, corporate or global capitalism or a defense against domination by an authoritarian, totalitarian, bureaucratized state, the civic sector of society is thought to play a crucial role in contemporary political theory and practice. This critical analysis of the Northern Ireland Women's Festival Day Project does not proceed from these predominant assumptions. While acknowledging considerable variation in civic groups and projects, it argues instead that the organizational procedures of many civic groups can provide an unequal playing field for social actors and that their civic practices (Eliasoph, 1996) may construct and maintain boundaries between groups and individuals and even discourage public discourse through processes of cultural censorship (Sheriff 2000). In short, civic groups may play contradictory and, at times, negative roles in the development of democracy, generally, and in the pursuit of peace in Northern Ireland, specifically.

“Remember Kinzua!” is a cry that went up in the 1960s after the Army Corp of Engineers built a dam that flooded one third of the Senecas' Allegany reservation in violation of the oldest U.S.-Indian treaty still in effect. Kinzua Dam became a symbol for Indian activism, but as the years pass and post-Kinzua generations reach adulthood, the cry is losing some of its power. The Native American Program (NAP) of the Syracuse, New York School District decided that students, both Native and non-Native, needed to learn about Kinzua and about collaborative conflict resolution in order to prevent future tragedies like Kinzua from taking place. This article is a reflection on work that we did with the NAP to develop a curriculum to accomplish these ends. In particular, we focus on the use of fully scripted dialogues as an innovative pedagogical tool for teaching Native history and basic conflict resolution skills.

This research demonstrates that, in order to understand the interactions which comprise social movement development, researchers must examine the impact of institutions on self-development. I start by examining the self-development of Native American women within the institutions of education, law and economics. In these institutions, Native American women acquire an organizational repertoire that primarily involves nurturing people, keeping culture alive, and transmitting cultural knowledge to future generations. Adding to the recent focus on social movement culture, and drawing on an ethnographic study of two Native American social movement organizations, I examine how the self helps Native American women legitimate their influence on the construction of meaning in collective action framing. As caretakers of the people and the keepers and transmitters of culture, Native American women can make strategic contributions to movement frames, grounding them in cultural values, beliefs and practices, and thus influencing the direction that the movement takes.