I think it’s a mistake to conflate making things more democratic or representative and making them more decentralised—historically the introduction of more representative institutions facilitated the centralisation of states by increasing their ability to tax cities (see e.g. here). In the same way I would expect making CEA/EVF more democratic would increase centralisation by increasing their perceived legitimacy and claim to leadership.
I take it you’re saying making things more democratic can make them more powerful because they then have greater legitimacy, right? More decentralised power → large actual power?
I suppose part of my motivation to democratise CEA is that it sort of has that leadership role de facto anyway, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon (because it’s so central). Yet, it lacks legitimacy (i.e. the de jure bit), so a solution is to give it legitimacy.
I guess someone could say, “I don’t want CEA to have more power, and it would have if it were a members society, so I don’t want that to happen”. But that’s not my concern. If anything, what your comments make me think is (1) something like CEA should exist, (2) actual CEA does a pretty good job, (3) nevertheless, there’s something icky about its lack of legitimacy (maybe I’m far more of an instinctive democratic that I thought), (4) adding some democracy stuff would address (3).
I think it’s a mistake to conflate making things more democratic or representative and making them more decentralised—historically the introduction of more representative institutions facilitated the centralisation of states by increasing their ability to tax cities (see e.g. here). In the same way I would expect making CEA/EVF more democratic would increase centralisation by increasing their perceived legitimacy and claim to leadership.
Yes, I think there’s a lot of sliding between “decentralised” and “democratic” even though these have pretty much nothing to do with each other.
As a pretty clear example, the open source software community is extremely decentralised but has essentially zero democracy anywhere.
I take it you’re saying making things more democratic can make them more powerful because they then have greater legitimacy, right? More decentralised power → large actual power?
I suppose part of my motivation to democratise CEA is that it sort of has that leadership role de facto anyway, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon (because it’s so central). Yet, it lacks legitimacy (i.e. the de jure bit), so a solution is to give it legitimacy.
I guess someone could say, “I don’t want CEA to have more power, and it would have if it were a members society, so I don’t want that to happen”. But that’s not my concern. If anything, what your comments make me think is (1) something like CEA should exist, (2) actual CEA does a pretty good job, (3) nevertheless, there’s something icky about its lack of legitimacy (maybe I’m far more of an instinctive democratic that I thought), (4) adding some democracy stuff would address (3).