Governance of Church. This may not seem like a big deal today, but in early medieval Europe, church probably had more capacity than states, so it mattered a lot. Also, catholic governance structures are quite different from protestant, from the structures in Judaism etc.
IETF has a pretty weird governance. The assumption is that anyone can join (or leave) at any moment, so the boundaries of the body politic are quite fuzzy. Thus, no voting, the stress on decision making by consensus, running code etc. Also, limited lifetime of the working groups seems to be designed to prevent concentration of power and bureacratizaton.
Open source governance models overall, from BDFL to Debian. Nadya Eghbal wrote a nice paper not 100% focused on the governance, but close.
Governance of common pool resources. Elinor Ostrom’s work is interesting here. Book review.
Governance structures in the organized crime.
Vast anthropological literature on the governance in traditional societies. (Clans, age groups etc.)
Swiss political system breaks the typical state governance patterns. Known mostly for direct democracy—but the real meat is: Any randomly assembled group of actors can get immediate political power by threatening to launch a binding, all-overriding referendum. Such groups are trpically consulted with and appeased.
Lee Kuan Yew wrote about how he went looking for a governance system for his party, the PAP (which now rules Singapore) after the party nearly was captured by the communists in the 50s. He looked at the Catholic Church as an inspiring example of a system that had survived for a long time, and he eventually settled on a system based on the Church’s system for electing cardinals and the Pope.
This is from his memoir The Singapore Story, from right after he finished studying in the UK. (Don’t have a precise reference, just a text file with some notes.)
Fictional example: In The Chosen by Ricardo Pinto, the Emperor is elected by the entire body of nobles descended from a semi-legendary ancestor, but the number of votes is determined by a calculated blood quantum representing the percent of your total ancestry from that person. (In the book, the exceptionally pure-blooded dowager empress casts something like a quarter million votes by herself, but she is nonetheless outvoted by a coalition of most of the rest of the nobles.)
One could imagine something similar for the US where voting rights are apportioned according to your ancestry from the Mayflower or the like.
Or: all citizens are granted a single vote upon reaching the age of majority, but they are free to permanently sell that vote. Current vote holders are recorded in a public registry. There is a large and thriving vote-trading market. Savvy players will buy up large numbers of votes before an election that they care about, then sell them off before elections of lesser importance.
It seems much harder to track sales-per-election, and it seems to involve a lot more overhead. Specifically, before every election, you have to remember to put your vote up for sale, and this is likely to involve enough effort that most people won’t do it, which means that available votes will be scarce before niche elections.
Some other stuff to look into:
Governance of Church. This may not seem like a big deal today, but in early medieval Europe, church probably had more capacity than states, so it mattered a lot. Also, catholic governance structures are quite different from protestant, from the structures in Judaism etc.
IETF has a pretty weird governance. The assumption is that anyone can join (or leave) at any moment, so the boundaries of the body politic are quite fuzzy. Thus, no voting, the stress on decision making by consensus, running code etc. Also, limited lifetime of the working groups seems to be designed to prevent concentration of power and bureacratizaton.
Open source governance models overall, from BDFL to Debian. Nadya Eghbal wrote a nice paper not 100% focused on the governance, but close.
Governance of common pool resources. Elinor Ostrom’s work is interesting here. Book review.
Governance structures in the organized crime.
Vast anthropological literature on the governance in traditional societies. (Clans, age groups etc.)
Swiss political system breaks the typical state governance patterns. Known mostly for direct democracy—but the real meat is: Any randomly assembled group of actors can get immediate political power by threatening to launch a binding, all-overriding referendum. Such groups are trpically consulted with and appeased.
Governance of international bodies.
Lee Kuan Yew wrote about how he went looking for a governance system for his party, the PAP (which now rules Singapore) after the party nearly was captured by the communists in the 50s. He looked at the Catholic Church as an inspiring example of a system that had survived for a long time, and he eventually settled on a system based on the Church’s system for electing cardinals and the Pope.
That’s fascinating, have you got a source?
This is from his memoir The Singapore Story, from right after he finished studying in the UK. (Don’t have a precise reference, just a text file with some notes.)
Fictional example: In The Chosen by Ricardo Pinto, the Emperor is elected by the entire body of nobles descended from a semi-legendary ancestor, but the number of votes is determined by a calculated blood quantum representing the percent of your total ancestry from that person. (In the book, the exceptionally pure-blooded dowager empress casts something like a quarter million votes by herself, but she is nonetheless outvoted by a coalition of most of the rest of the nobles.)
One could imagine something similar for the US where voting rights are apportioned according to your ancestry from the Mayflower or the like.
Or: all citizens are granted a single vote upon reaching the age of majority, but they are free to permanently sell that vote. Current vote holders are recorded in a public registry. There is a large and thriving vote-trading market. Savvy players will buy up large numbers of votes before an election that they care about, then sell them off before elections of lesser importance.
You don’t even need fiction for that one. Look into the old Sila kingdom (3 kingdoms period of Korea) bone rank system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone-rank_system
why permanently selling vs selling per election?
It seems much harder to track sales-per-election, and it seems to involve a lot more overhead. Specifically, before every election, you have to remember to put your vote up for sale, and this is likely to involve enough effort that most people won’t do it, which means that available votes will be scarce before niche elections.