Sociocracy
A governance system organising a group into linked circles, each with its own domain, deciding by consent.
Governance terms only mean something once they are written into agreements with a named process. Ask a community to show you the paragraph — and the last time it was reviewed. If a group can describe the feeling but not point to the text, treat this as an intention rather than a working system.
Sociocracy is a governance system that divides a group into circles — small teams, each with a defined domain it may decide within — and connects them so that authority flows both ways. Within a circle, decisions are made by consent : a proposal passes when nobody has a reasoned, paramount objection.
Three parts do the work, and a group that adopts only one of them has not adopted sociocracy.
Circles with real domains. A circle is not a committee that recommends; it decides, within a boundary the wider group agreed. The kitchen circle does not bring the menu to the general meeting.
Double linking. Two people sit in both a circle and its parent: one chosen by the parent, one chosen by the circle. Information and authority therefore travel upward as well as down, which is what separates this from a hierarchy that has been renamed.
Elections by consent. Roles are filled by open nomination and reasoned argument rather than a secret ballot, so the group hears why someone is suited before it decides.
An example
Sociocracy was developed in the Netherlands in the 1970s by Gerard Endenburg, who applied it to his family’s electrical engineering firm, building on the earlier educational work of Kees Boeke. Its spread into intentional communities is much more recent, and largely traceable to the work of Sociocracy For All and to Many Voices One Song by Ted Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, which rewrote the corporate framing for groups without shareholders.
What it is often confused with
Sociocracy is not simply “consensus with extra steps”. Consent is one component of it; the circle structure and double linking are what make it scale, and they are the parts most often dropped. Nor is it the same as holacracy, a later trademarked system that shares the circle idea but adds a much heavier rule set and a formal constitution.
Sources & further reading
- 1 RCOS Core — Layer 2: Governance & Decision Logic — how circles and domains are specified
- 2 Sociocracy For All — the main practitioner organisation for non-corporate groups
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