Distributed commons communities need both democratic breadth and expert depth, which tension destabilizes governance.

Evidence

Although CC grew and generated multiple distributed communities around the world, CC’s governance was mainly centralized under a board comprising the original group who launched the commons project (Dobush and Quack 2010). They decided to launch a novel project called iCommons (2005) to create a democratic governance structure with democratic participation and deliberation, while the CC board would keep the brand and the product based on expertise. However, iCommons faced a significant challenge which Dobush and Quack (2010, p. 17) refer to as a “double movement: More and more activist license users without any legal background [were] gravitating towards the organization whereas legal professionals [were] drifting away from it.” — Laura Albareda and Alejo Jose G. Sison, Commons Organizing, 103

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Elinor Ostrom’s institutional analysis of commons governance and the general tension between democratic participation and expertise in any collective-governance setting. — connects to: Democracy must be deliberately cultivated rather than assumed natural. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 16
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Laura Albareda and Alejo Jose G. Sison, Commons Organizing: Embedding Common…, 103

Broader Connections

• Democracy must be deliberately cultivated rather than assumed natural. #expands (0.72) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 16