Informal power
Influence nobody granted and nobody can withdraw. It forms whether or not a community writes a structure down, and denying it only makes it unaccountable.
A conflict process that has never been used is a document, not a practice. Ask when it was last triggered, by whom, and what changed as a result — and ask whether somebody who is not on the board could start it. If the answer to that last question takes a while, that is the answer.
Informal power is the influence people hold in a group without anyone having voted for it, written it down, or being able to take it back. It is not a failure of a community; it is what happens automatically, and the only question is whether it is visible.
Jo Freeman’s essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970, published 1972) made the argument that has never stopped being relevant here: a structureless group is impossible. Where structure is informal it forms around friendship networks and access to information, and produces an elite that is unaccountable precisely because the group denies it exists.
Where it sits in a community
- The founders, whose objection carries weight nobody wrote down.
- The long-timers, who can end a discussion by remembering why a rule exists.
- Whoever holds the information — the accounts, the keys, the passwords, how the heating works.
- Whoever has the most time, which usually means retired, or without children.
None of these people is doing anything wrong. Informal power accumulates around competence and availability, and the people holding it are frequently the ones working hardest.
What reduces it
Freeman’s remedies transfer almost unchanged: delegate specific authority to specific people for specific tasks by an agreed procedure; require them to be accountable; rotate the tasks so nobody comes to own a role; allocate by ability and interest rather than by who volunteered first; and diffuse information as widely as possible.
That last one is the cheapest and least done. A community where two people can read the accounts has two people in charge, whatever its constitution says.
Sources & further reading
- 1 Freeman, J. — The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970/1972) — the essay, free from the author, with its seven principles
- 2 Conflict, power and repair — informal power in a community, and what to ask about it
Written by EcoHubs members, with AI assistance for drafting and editing, and reviewed by a person before publication. Facts are checked against the sources listed; anything we could not verify is marked. How this is written
Related terms
The agreed route a conflict takes. The test is not which method a community uses but whether someone who is not in charge can start it.
Running a meeting's process without taking a side on its content. The role that decides whether a decision method works at all.
Turning the authority that built a community into something anyone can hold or inherit. Communities that skip it cannot disagree with their founders or continue without them.