Democracy Version History

In article one I started out by saying that most of us do not live in democracies. We might vote in elections, and we might vote for where to go for lunch, but for 364 days out of the year most people live and work in monarchies.

In article two I clarified my definitions for democracy, monarchy, and leadership:

• democracy – multiple different techniques and strategies where a group of people collaborate in solving the problems that affect them.

• monarchy – the leftover practice of choosing the best person, and then letting that person make the decisions.

• leadership – when someone else leads the implementation of an idea in place of the decision maker (the monarch).

TL;DR: In this article I want to lay out what I see as Democracy 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.0 to explain what I see emerging as Democracy 3.0. This one article will be a deep dive into political history. If you don't have the stomach for that and you're here for the new ideas, it's probably best to skip ahead to the next article.

I'm labeling this article as a version history, because each organization doesn't have to evolve from one to the next in order. You can choose to use versions 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 according to whatever fits your circumstances, but while any organization can use Democracy 1.0, most organizations will not allow version 2.0, which is why I think Democracy 3.0 has a better chance for adoption.

(NOTE: I may use US-centric terms because I come from the US and I know its systems better, but that certainly does not imply that the US has a monopoly on democracy.)

Democracy 1.0 – Direct Democracy

When democracy first appeared, monarchy had already been in place for thousands of years in a variety of forms and reincarnations. Historians will have a much better accounting of its evolution and the catalysts that brought it to the forefront of Greek governance. In short, enough people collectively realized that monarchs were not infallible, that they were prone to error. The solution was not finding a better monarch. The system itself was at fault and therefore their whole community was at risk as long as their future continued to be subject to the whims and decisions of single persons.

The first version of democracy is commonly labeled as "Direct Democracy". At small scales every member of the group votes and participates in the process of democracy since everybody is affected by the decisions of the democracy. However, once the communities grew large enough that listening to everyone's insights became too time consuming and inefficient, members of the community were chosen through the democratic process to serve as representatives of the larger community. This is what was used to run the first large-scale civilization operated on the principles of Democracy in Athens, Greece. We might call this Democracy 1.5, a significant change but still a Direct Democracy.

Direct Democracy – At small scales every member of the group votes and participates in the process of democracy since everybody is affected by the decisions of the democracy.

What distinguishes Democracy 1.x for me is that the citizens rotated in and out of service. In the U.S. this form of democracy was used by our Founding Fathers and is still present nationally in our Jury Duty. But today it is largely only used in small organizations such as community organizations like Home Owners Associations, churches, etc.

Comparing organizations with political history, Democracy 1.0 correlates most strongly with the startup phase and with small teams (less than 50) working on a single product line. By far, most startups are run as monarchies, but I do see more startups being run as democracies than larger organizations. When democracy is used in a startup, it is usually Direct Democracy. Everyone is consulted, everyone participates, and then they distribute the work among the members according to their skills. Democracy 1.0 in startups and larger organizations most often appears in teams practicing Agile or Lean methodologies. That said, most Agile and Lean implementations are actually operated within benevolent or stealth monarchy preventing them from becoming true democracies. Votes, if taken, influence decision makers who were not elected by the employees, and those appointed managers ultimately make the call.

Democracy 1.0 correlates most strongly with the startup phase and with small teams (less than 50) working on a single product line.

Democracy 1.5 only shows up in organizations in two places. The first place is unions where employees get together for collective bargaining, but only if they elect their leaders from among their own ranks. If they instead choose an outside organization to run the union, then they are adopting the monarchy model of choosing the best person for the job and letting that person make decisions for them, and then ratifying those decisions with majority voting. The second place where democracy might be introduced in organizations is when organizations officially adopt special democracy-based governance models like Sociocracy, Holacracy, "Teal", etc. which tend to operate using using a mixture of Democracy 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0 practices.

Democracy 1.5 only shows up in organizations in unions (when they elect their leaders from among their ranks) and special democracy-based governance models like Sociocracy, Holacracy, "Teal", etc.

Democracy 2.0 – Representative Democracy

After comparing organizations with political history, I would say that Democracy 2.0 evolved when the job of leadership became so large that the leaders could not also continue to have a job outside of leadership. At that point elected leadership became a full-time job, and salaries were collected through commerce, dues, or taxes. This was the model adopted by Rome up until Julius Caesar declared himself "dictator for life" (after which they reverted back to the monarchy system).

The parallel in organizations is the move from the startup phase to the mid-size phase. In the early stages there is so much work to do that founders offer "citizenship" rights through voting stock to employees in place of higher salaries, and trade "citizenship" rights to investors in exchange for capital. Then when the organization reaches the size where the founders entire job can be "running the company" most organizations either revert back to monarchy systems (like Julius Caesar) or employ a Democracy 2.0 model. If they choose democracy, though, only stockholders have citizen status which is why a Board of Directors can vote to replace a Founder as CEO, but the employees cannot.

Democracy 2.0 evolved when leadership became a full-time job. The parallel in organizations is the mid-size phase, but only stockholders have "citizen" status through voting stock.

The effects of and within Democracy 2.0 are easier to see in politics than in organizations, so I'll describe what I see using examples from history, and then point out how they could apply within our organizations. Democracy 2.0 had a critical flaw which allowed monarchy thinkers to reclaim power. Whether monarchy thinkers created Democracy 2.0 for themselves or just found a way to operate more freely within the new system could be debated. Much of the history of governance since then has been iterations on representative democracies in search of checks and balances to curb the power of monarchy thinking.

After the decline of Rome, the world reverted to monarchies for several centuries until the establishment of Parliaments in England in the 1200s using Democracy 1.5 techniques to compensate for the inability of the monarchs to rule effectively. Democracy made its formal comeback (underneath a formal hereditary monarchy) through the introduction of the House of Commons as Democracy 2.1. For the first time since the decline of Rome, the citizens of a large nation had a voice in their governance, but that voice was limited to the House of Commons. While the House of Lords did use voting, since its members were appointed from above, it is better described as Democracy 1.0 techniques being used by the existing hierarchical monarchy system.

The big revelation of the United States was to flip this model upside down, which is why they called it "The Grand Experiment". Instead of the British system of Democracy 2.1 operating under a formal hereditary monarchy, the Founding Fathers positioned democracy as the highest level of governance and forced all monarchies to be subject to the decisions of democracy. They used the techniques of Democracy 1.5 to test out their ideas first through the Declaration of Independence, then the Articles of Confederation, and later the U.S. Constitution during the convention of 1787.

While the U.S. Constitution had some similarities with Greek Democracy 1.5 and British Democracy 2.1, according to the research of Bruce Johansen it was more based on the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, which had been operating a continuous democracy among Native American tribes since about 1100 A.D. In my opinion it reached the vision of Athenian Direct Democracy, avoided the pitfalls of Roman Democracy, and was not subject to the whims of monarchy like the British Parliamentary system. The technology, however, did not yet exist to break through into the ideas of Democracy 3.0. It also failed to successfully integrate or withstand the onslaught of European colonialism, so I label it as Democracy 2.9.

The Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, had been operating a continuous democracy among Native American tribes since about 1100 A.D.

While duplicating the Iroquois system was the wish of Founding Fathers like Franklin and Jefferson, they also had to make it more palatable to the fledgling nation of monarchy thinkers. They removed some aspects of Iroquois Democracy 2.9, created two separate governing bodies employing Democracy 2.1 techniques, created an elected monarchy as the Presidential branch, and added a third Judicial branch which includes some techniques I see in Democracy 3.0 but subordinates them to lifetime appointments and Democracy 2.1 decision making processes. So overall it seems like a step backwards from the Haudenosaunee, so I'm labeling American Democracy as 2.5.

(For the software engineers: It's like they went back to the 2.1 branch and tried to merge in changes from the 2.9 branch by hand to create Democracy 2.2, which always introduces bugs. They fixed some of those bugs and made some debatable upgrades through the Bill of Rights and later amendments to eventually form Democracy 2.5.)

The Founding Fathers made American Democracy 2.5 more palatable to monarchy thinkers by removing aspects of Iroquois Democracy 2.9, creating the House and the Senate using Democracy 2.1, adding an elected monarchy as President, and a Judicial branch which uses some Democracy 3.0 techniques but subordinates them to lifetime monarchies.

And this is where most of the world currently is politically, using variations on Democracy 2.5. Some of the world's democracies have implemented better policies, integrated other techniques, or reintroduced monarchy thinking under different names. This latter place is actually where I see Communism and Socialism.  Socialist countries are more likely to vote and operate using a Representative Democracy 2.5, but then the means of production are placed under the supervision of an executive branch which is run as a monarchy. Most formal Communist countries today fare much worse. They are more likely to have leaders who are appointed by the party structure, meeting the definitions of either stealth monarchies or vindictive monarchies. They may even hold public votes, but they usually are not independently verifiable.

I mentioned Sociocracy, Holacracy, and Teal management practices earlier in addition to stockholder-based democracies. Since they have elected leaders in each case which earn their income from their positions, they qualify as Democracy 2.0 models under these definitions. Probably not by accident, these models also have a lot of things in common with Haudenosaunee Democracy 2.9, and some of them are the pioneers, designing and experimenting with the techniques of Democracy 3.0.

Sociocracy, Holacracy, and Teal management practices have a lot of things in common with Haudenosaunee Democracy 2.9, and some of them are the pioneers, designing and experimenting with the techniques of Democracy 3.0.

What's Next?

In the next article I will finally define the components of what I am seeing as Democracy 3.0 and the possibilities of what could be. At its core, I see Democracy 3.0 pushing back against the all-or-nothing philosophies found in both monarchy thinking and democracy thinking, versions 1.x and 2.x. Instead these are modular, scalable models of democracy that can collaborate with monarchies and previous versions of democracy.

If you like where this is going or you're also fascinated with how to build better lives, subscribe. I would enjoy discussing how to build a future where we all want to live. Please share this with others who you think should join the discussion.