POWER
Power Project is an MJN research effort to create a library of tactics and examples for how organizations design governance methods, contracts, and norms embodying MJN's four characteristics of justice.
WHAT
We study power structures in human systems to understand why justice consistently breaks down and how it can be strengthened. In our framework, democracy is one of four core characteristics of justice. We distinguish:
Big D democracy: shared power in governmental systems, including elections, policies, and public institutions.
Little d democracy: shared power in organizations, communities, and everyday decision-making.
We study failures — hierarchical structures, concentrated wealth, and practices that reproduce inequality — alongside successful experiments in shared power, like cooperative models, ESOPs, participatory voting practices, and distributed decision-making. This research is core to our mission.
WHY
Most private organizations do not practice little d democracy. Hierarchies in decision-making, compensation, and reporting structures concentrate authority rather than share it. When these organizations gain influence, that concentrated power spills into public systems — through lobbying, philanthropy, media, and contracts — narrowing whose interests are served.
Understanding these dynamics is essential to designing policies and practices that reliably advance justice rather than unintentionally reproducing inequality or hierarchical control.
WHY NOW
Democracy (Big D) is deteriorating as wealth and influence become increasingly concentrated, and takes control of our governments.
We need policy makers and people with experience navigating the law to push back, but we also need every individual to understand and respect the beauty and function of shared power. And private systems can't be exempt.
WORKING DEFINITIONS
Systems
The way in which contracts, pledges, & norms — and methods of decision- making shaping them — determine how groups make decisions, coordinate, and co-operate.
Power
The ability to get what you want or achieve an outcome that reflects your interests, hopes, and values.
Structural Power
Ways in which systems constrain or foster the ability of individuals and groups to get what they want.
Personal Power
Our beliefs about our own power. No person/system can tell us what our personal power is. But outside forces affect our perceptions.
Voice
The ability to express what you want in your own way.
COMPONENTS
-
Describe
What is power? And what problems are evident in the dynamics of power in organizational systems today? We’re clarifying what we mean by power to help keep our research focused on what supports justice and illuminate shared and different meanings.
-
Catalog
What specific system innovations, like contract designs and governance methods, distribute power in ways that better serve justice? We're starting by looking at models for decoupling wealth & power, recognizing our draft characteristics of justice are inter-related.
-
Share & Embody
By applying what we learn in MJN, we’ll create a feedback loop between learning and doing while hopefully helping others evolve, too. Examples being applied today include collective compensation structures similar to worker self-directed nonprofits.
System Studio Team
Learn about our mission, evolving collective structure, and how we work in circular communities to serve justice.
