Paradoxical quest for consensus regarding consensus

The Consensus Delusion (Part #7)

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What is the consensus to which so many initiatives aspire? It has been extensively researched by the social and political sciences. There are at least three general definitions: group solidarity in sentiment and belief; general agreement or concord, unanimity; and majority opinion.

Is it more then the warm and fuzzy feeling of togetherness evoked so eloquently by Barack Obama? What is suggested by insights into "team spirit" (Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: creating the high-performance organization,  1994)? And how is that to be related to the bribery scandals at the very core of world football at this time of writing (FIFA in crisis after claims against Jack Warner and Mohamed bin Hammam, The Guardian, 25 May 2011)?

Efforts to define "aggression", "terrorism" and "rape" continue to arouse challenging controversy, and remain essentially unresolved. So too, however, are efforts to clarify the nature of their opposites, such as "agreement", and "consensus". Disagreement as to the nature of agreement is necessarily problematic at the highest levels of governance, especially in arenas like the European Community with its commitment to "harmonisation" between nations.

What does "agreement" mean in practice? Can there be "agreement to disagree"? Alf Temme (Agreeing to Disagree) argues that: Disagreement is a very useful tool in life to drive improvement and progress. Can one agree with that? Is there general agreement, namely consensus, as with that described by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury (Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 1981)? But what of cultures where "yes" is readily said to avoid the embarrassment of saying "no" (Massaaki Imai, 16 Ways To Avoid Saying No: an invitation to experience Japanese management, 1981)? What of the nature of consensus in repressive societies where saying "no" is fatal to career, livelihood and even life -- or where is extorted under duress? The Japanese case is especially interesting because of the reliance in management on a culturally unique process of consensual decision-making (ringisei).

A group process of consensus decision-making is indeed recognized as seeking not only the agreement of most participants but also the resolution or mitigation of minority objections. This involves both general agreement and group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It is a question of both "hearts and minds". As might be expected, in addition to the restricted areas in which any such process is used, distinct variants are recognized. These include the Quaker model, the Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making, the ringisei Japanese model, Internet Engineering Task Force rough consensus model, as well as others merging into voting procedures. The inability to apply these approaches more widely, or their wider unacceptability, suggests that there is indeed a degree of delusion in assuming the possibility of broader consensus. Belief in the possibility of "scaling up" any one of these models to a global level, would then exemplify the consensus delusion.

Of relevance to pressures for increased public involvement in the formulation of science and technology policy, efforts have been made in various countries to organize "consensus conferences". These involve lay people in the assessment of socially sensitive topics, as summarized by Simon Joss and John Durant (Public participation in science: the role of consensus conferences in Europe, 1995). This study raises the issue of the "epistemology of consensus" -- also explored by the RealTruth Project.

Wikipedia, which uses its own process of consensus decision-making (as is necessary for any open source project), offers a section on the idea of consensus in the abstract. This is related to two processes:

• Collaboration: Again it is necessary to note that "collaboration" or "cooperation" does indeed occur in specific domains or locally, but its failure is best remarked in the dynamics of dysfunctional political decision-making at a global level. As the number of parties (or countries) increases, the capacity to "collaborate" decreases -- unless the topic becomes ever more specific, or ever more superficial. Assumptions of potential global collaboration (on more than an ad hoc narrow technical basis) are then necessarily delusional, even if "consensus" emerges as to its desirability. (Cooperation and its Failures (From the 1960s through the 1980s): 12 Metaphors towards understanding the dilemma for the 1990s. 1988)
  
  
• Collective intelligence: Few could adequately defend the quality of intelligence brought to bear on the challenges of the times, most notably in response to emergences (Enabling Collective Intelligence in Response to Emergencies, 2010). Many remark on collective stupidity of one form or another. In the light of the challenges of Wikipedia, a useful summary is offered by Krissada Maleewong, et al. Analyzing Community Deliberation and Achieving Consensual Knowledge in SAM. International Journal of Organizational and Journal of Organizational and Collective Intelligence, 2010).

An online initiative dating from the 1970s has endeavoured to combine these functions by clustering the insights of thousands of international constituencies in an Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (Encyclopedia Illusions, 1991). This specifically sought to hold opposing evaluations of both problems and and remedial strategies -- effectively a detailed indication of the delusions held and attributed, together inhibiting the emergence of consensus. Of interest are learnings from a systemic approach to what inhibits consensus (Recognizing the Psychosocial Boundaries of Remedial Action: constraints on ensuring a safe operating space for humanity, 2009).

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