Discursive Decision-making in Meetings of the Global Justice Movements: Cultures and Practices

Abstract: Based on audio-recordings of 8 and participant observation in about 200 activist meetings in the Global Justice Movements in Europe (especially Attac and the Social Forum process), the thesis addresses two main questions: 1. In what way do the constraints of the meeting-form influence the discussion and hence the decision-making process? 2. How do meeting participants navigate across the various and potentially controversial junctures in the decision-making process to eventually establish what they call "consensus"? Four elementary structural constraints in meetings where identified: sequentiality, face, status, and frames. While these constraints are thought to be universal, they can be dealt with in culturally contingent ways, which are described as "regimes"; governing the interactions in the meeting. The turn-taking regime of a meeting determines the way in which sequentiality is handled. It prescribes whether a queueing mechanism (e.g. a list of speakers) is used to determine the order of speakers (formal turn-taking), whether speakers self-select at what conversation analysts call turn-transition points (informal turn-taking), or whether the chair or facilitator arbitrarily switches between these two modes (casual turn-taking management). The politeness regime (or the etiquette) of a meeting determines the range of conflictual issues that may be addressed without causing loss of face and embarrassment. In the regime of avoidance, few conflictual issues can be discussed without risking serious offense and eventually the decline of the meeting. In the regime of fight, on the other side, conflict and potentially harsh controversial debate about any kind of issue is possible, if not encouraged. In the regime of candour, the range of controversial issues and the harshness of adequate debate is considerably reduced, though allowing participants to express their views candidly as long as they take personal feelings into consideration. The leadership regime of a meeting determines how status differences are dealt with, namely whether they are accepted and reinforced by granting high status participants special authority, or whether status differences are denied or resisted on the basis of egalitarian values. The regime of authority readily accept and install a central decision-making authority who is usually the chair of the meeting. In the egalitarian regime, on the other side, participants tend to work against rather than reinforce the public production of status and prestige by refusing to award high-status participants superior decision-making authority. In the regime of complex equality, there is also a strong sense of equality, but limited authority is nevertheless temporarily granted to participants with a special status in a relevant field of knowledge. Seven types of leaders can be distinguished, each of which is based on a different source of authority: veterans (experience), brokers (connections), experts (expertise), representatives (a constituency), mobilizers (mobilizing-capacity), organizers (maintenance of a meeting arena), and facilitators (focus on process)). The preparatory regime of a meeting determines to what degree preparatory efforts are made before the commencement of the meeting are accepted as a fait accompli and hence to what degree (pre)established frames (such as the points on the agenda) are allowed to structure the discussion. In the regime of pre-structuration the results of 'external'; preparations are highly valued and cannot easily be overturned. In order to be relevant, participants have to respect these prepared frames. In the open space regime, on the other side, relatively few contributions will be dismissed as irrelevant, let alone illegitimate. The regime of evolving structures values a certain degree of structure in the discussion, some of which may also come from 'outside', but these elements are not automatically established but always subject to discussion so that the autonomy of the meeting is respected. The decision-making process was modelled as an incremental construction of the public opinion of the meeting. In this continuous process, six critical junctures were identified: the topic, the problem, the task, the options, positions, and determination. Conflicts are likely to occur around the process of establishing these decision-elements. Depending on the meeting culture, the participants use different practices to deal with (or avoid) controversies around these critical junctures. Some of these practices are described in detail in chapter 6 of the thesis. In total, the empirical findings show that (1.) the role of the facilitator has gained crucial importance in the global justice movements, (2.) decisions often are made implicitly first and made explicit later (post-hoc decisions), (3.) the productive role of interruptions, pauses, and 'new beginnings' in the decision-process.