For some time now, we have been compiling a directory of concepts related to the emergence of peer governance.
The key aspects of peer governance are Anti-credentialism , Communal Validation, Equipotentiality, and Holoptism . The Open Co-op Project has tried to formalize a number of characteristics of such Open Organizations.
I think it is important to distinguish the peer governance of specific distributed networks and communities, i.e. of peer producing communities which are often “plural monocultures“, from the governance of the political sphere as a whole, which is a decentralized, and not distributed, network with competing power centers. Here, we will not have the pure peer governance models, but rather peer-inspired models, such as multistakeholdership-based models of governance.
In order to clarify this distinction, I have selected a number of entries under 4 headings: 1) the peer governance of peer producing communities; 2) the forms of ownership/distribution that can be used for the market-oriented derivative firms that are sustained by such commons; 3) the forms of management that can be used; 4) the peer-inspired forms of political governance.
Here they are:
1. the forms of peer governance of open/free communities and peer production groups
Burning Man – Governance , Free Software Foundation , FLOSS – Governance , FLOSS Foundations , GNOME Foundation , Mozilla Foundation
2. the forms of governance/ownership/income distribution for the derived and monetizable service and market-oriented production models that derive from commons-related projects
Capital Commons Trusts , Cooperatives , Limited Liability Partnership , Mutual Home Ownership , Open Organization
3. the forms of management that can be used
Chaordic Organizations – Characteristics , Consensus , Consent vs. Consensus , Coordination Format , Council Ceremony , Harmonization Governance , Heterarchy , Holacracy , Horizontal Accountablity , Leaderless Organizations , Open Organization , Sociocracy
4. political governance models for the whole of society that are inspired by peer to peer models or principles
Citizen Dialogue and Deliberation , Commons , Community Assets , Coordination Format , Council Ceremony , Delegative Democracy , Deliberative Democracy , Deliberative Development , Democracy 2.1 , Disaggregated Democracy , Extreme Democracy , Gaian Democracies , Global Microstructures , Global Villages , Glocalized Networks , Inclusive Democracy , Megacommunities , Participatory Democracy Networks