. . Subject: Re: union decision making councils elected by group->delegate ? . . . . . . > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... > ... I agree that 70 is quite a few, however I do not agree with that 70 need to elect one, that is a very bad idea imho. I prefer the following system (I'll abbreviate it, but you should considder it fully featured because it is): - 50 persons in the top council - they re-group in 5 councils of 10 persons - a proposal enters one of the 5 subcouncils, they discuss it (in public, all proceedings are always public and minutes are published) - They pass their work to another sub-council, that subcouncil reviews it. The proposal bounces back & forth between these subcouncils until they agree, then they bounce it toward a third sub-council until the 3 subcouncils agree, then to a fourth until agreed and then the fifth until the agreement is there. - Between each pass to the next subcouncil, by nature of all being public, the people (the union members) can influence their delegates and thereby directly sit at the table of the council. Indeed this goes as far as members seeing a proposal coming, quickly replace selected delegates and actually sit on the council reviewing & voting. - Then a meeting of the entire council, for debate & decision making vote. There are some special rules for a war council (contracted council size) and for emergencies (not going through the subcouncils). In this way the council rules by its own majority. But how is this top-council created ? In this system, certainly for a 440.000 membership size, the top-council would be a council elected by delegates who are elected by votergroups mentioned; thus it would be standing on delegates: 2nd level. It is however required that the 2nd level is elected out of those already elected on the 1st level, which means that for each top-council member, there is both a section of delegates that elected him/her, and also a voter-group, both of whom can replace that delegate any moment (/both/ of whom, they do not need to communicate about this but it is their full and exclusive right to do so.) What you are looking for, however, is a presidential Roman/Greek fractions democracy system as you have in the USA. It is a model prone to corruption, and in the USA it is imperial and therefore completely hopeless (anything is hopeless on the imperial scale, I do not expect my model to function on the imperial level either, I expect it to be corrupt then). You are trying to change the council into an inspection entity rather then an executive entity. In my model the inspection entity consists primarily of the level that is immediately below a council, and secondarily by the level below that if any. That mean that the top council has as its inspection entity all the delegates. A 2nd level delegates council for example the province of Groningen would be elected by 50 sections of delegates from that province of Groningen, each section electing one delegate for that council. The inspection entity, by which fiat the council can rule (in actual fact!), are all the delegates in those sections, presumably all or most delegates in the province of Groningen for that union or such organized unit (might be per trade). Because this system is capable of dealing with very large amounts of people (for which it after all is designed: a state, between 1 and 100 million people), if the to organize group is smaller then you would have perhaps only one 2nd level council being feasible, immediately being that top body then (presumably). The model is quite flexible indeed. All councils on any level are suggested to run themselves on the subcouncil system. You should not confuse those subcouncils with comittees for the USA Congress. Committees there tend to monopolize one issue, each committee assumes most control over one aspect of all the issues, for example 'health care.' But these subcouncils are the opposite: they are to always rule on all issues, and any expertise should be spread around as much as possible between them all. The object is democracy, the will of the people, for better and for worse, and both for the better. 70 persons in one council ... it's quite a lot but remember that you are not dealing with people fresh off the street taken at random, but they have already been elected there. Thus a level of competence can be expected of them. Having one person rule is probably the worst system possible. Having the members elect 70 from the base up means every delegate is elected by thousands upon thousands of people, if you use the common Roman parliamentary system you end up with a popularity contest voted on by everyone at the same time. That means that if there are thousands upon thousands that elect one person, none of them or very few really know who they vote for. That means no direct social control over those elected. It also makes replacement cumbersome, so you end up with mandate periods of years (in the Union I talked about it is a 4 year mandate period). In my proposal you can get together with a quite few people (50 in a voter group, or delegates between 1 or thousands for the 2nd level sections), decide and replace that single delegate through harmless procedure. Nothing gets upset, just 1 delegate out of 50 gets replaced, by an action of only a small even tiny part of all people working for that union. Sweet, smooth, procedural, control by the base. I'm telling you: this is a good way to do it, I firmly believe in it. The system seems perfect (which is no guarantee it will work at all, but the system seems nice.)