" the agreement achieves a degree of legitimacy beyond that of majority rule."

It is more than a degree of legitimacy.  It is also a degree of quality.

How many of you have ever played one of the management training "survival" games?  Briefly in the game five of you are marooned someplace in the wilds.  A plane crash in the desert for instance.  You have a list of 20 items.  Your job is to list those items in order of importance in helping the group survive. You rank them one for most important to 20 for least important.  You are given about 15 minutes to do the ranking task.

Then you get in a small group, generally about five people, and rank as a group.  The ranking rule is it is done by consensus.  That means any individual in the group can veto any decision the rest of the group makes.  The group is given about 15 minutes to do the ranking task.  Failure to complete is unacceptable.

What are the results of individual rankings versus group rankings?  The group wins every single time in hundreds of trials.  I have spent an unusual amount of time in wilderness.  I fought my group fiercely on several items and as a result significantly improved my groups score both times I have played some version of the game.  My groups score still beat me as an individual.  The decision making process was loud and disorderly.  There was a lot of horse trading along the lines of "you give me this and I will give you that you idiot."  Also " you are crazy as hell" was audible a couple of times.

The point is while the process was uncivilized and noisy and not polite it was VERY effective in getting to the best group decision EVERY single time.  Our instructor told us the best individual score he had ever had in classes he taught was a Navy SEAL.  As I recall he had given the exercise to some 275 different five people groups.  The group the SEAL was in beat the SEAL.  By the way, if we had two hours to do the group ranking the group score would have been no better and possibly worse.

I think the process does not need to look pretty to get to a good end point if people listen to each other.  I also do not think the process generally needs to take a very long time.  In the recent Bee-L case I think some stopped listening and the process drug on far too long.  How about stating your position and backing off?  And I personally do not give a damn if the English is right or not providing I can understand the thinking if I want to and spend a tiny extra effort.  Anyone who can not deal with less than perfect English needs to get the hell outside of his tiny shelter and find out what the world is really like.  Some of the most important people in my life spoke English that sounded very little like English but it was important that I understood them and I had to learn to translate.  I am happy I spent the effort as they taught me a great deal.

Dick

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html