The Selector
All governing systems have some mechanism for determining who the decider(s) will be.
Selection is executed through one of the following methodologies:
- Vote: Voting is, by far, the most commonly used system, but how it functions can vary greatly.
- Who votes?
- Stakeholders: Individuals who are in some way “part of the organization” Stakeholders range from people born in a country to employees of a company.
- Contributors: Individuals who have made a sacrifice for the organization. Contributors range from investors in a company to those who have risked their lives for their nation.
- Representatives: Individuals who have been chosen by another body vote. Chosen voters may be representatives of stakeholders, volunteers, members of certain groups, or voters chosen through another vote.
- How are votes weighted?
- Flat: One vote per voter.
- Proportional: The weight of each vote is proportional to an exogenous factor. For example, a shareholder’s vote in a company may be equivalent in weight to how much stock they own
(Note: We have an entire chapter devoted to voting systems, so don’t read this list as exhaustive.)
- Contest: In this rarely-used system, the decider is chosen through some form of contest such as a fight or race.
- Victor: Sometimes the deciding body is just whoever won the last military conflict. While this determinant is uncommon in stable regions, it dominated the early history of human governance (e.g., The new king is the guy who killed the last one).
- Initiative: Power is wielded by whoever chooses to take action. This isn’t relevant at a national level, but it comes up frequently in smaller systems (e.g., The most influential friend in a group is the one who plans and coordinates the lion’s share of the gatherings, or the CEO of a startup is the person who put their money, time, and reputation on the line to found the company).
- Previous Decider’s Choice: Governance falls to someone named by an outgoing governor, such as a dictator deciding their successor.
- Rules: A system of rules determining the decider could manifest as anything from an advanced AI to a policy like “the oldest male child of the last king” or a system in which individuals are chosen at random from the population.
- Dominance Hierarchy: The decider or group of deciders is chosen through the systems discussed at the beginning of the book (dominance displays and signaling).
- Combination: A system could combine rules (randomly choosing people from the population) with voting (this is how juries work) or combine direct democracy with proportional voting and representative democracy (this yields something called liquid democracy).
That’s really it. Governance does not get more complicated than that. All government structures that have ever existed are made up of modules that can be described by some combination of the above dimensions. While this may seem simple, every one of these dimensions could have a book written on it, exploring anything from term lengths to the effects of how votes are counted. We shall explore a few of these dynamics in more detail, using both case studies and previous research before presenting theoretically better systems.
By exploring a governing body through its component parts, you can easily understand how those components interact and more easily identify dangerous flaws.