Horizontal protest collectives cannot negotiate because they lack decision mechanisms

Evidence

The Turkish government presented a deal as a fait accompli. The people would keep the Park if the country voted for it in a national plebiscite, but that was it. Nothing else. Take it or leave it. The people in the park were split on that proposal, and there was no mechanism for deciding how to respond collectively. Apparently, many people within the government felt deeply frustrated that they could not find a negotiating partner—the best outcome might have been to give the people (or at least, these influential people in Istanbul) some of what they said they wanted. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 445

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The core structural tragedy of the horizontalist decade: a state that would have compromised could not, because the movement had deliberately abolished the organs needed to accept a compromise. Both sides lost because one refused to organize vertically.
• XREF: connects to: Spanish 2011 protesters organized horizontally with consensus-based assemblies — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 261; Horizontal protest movements that refuse representation get co-opted or crushed by existing powers — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 444; Modern protest movements are transient swarms held together by stimuli, not durable organizations — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization…, 229 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• A major Brazilian protest movement organized as consensus-based and leaderless by design #exemplifies (0.85) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 149
• Consensus-based horizontal structures let tiny minorities veto prominent allies #corroborates (0.82) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 266
• Large anonymous groups cannot sustain collective action without some enforcing mechanism #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 412
• Modern protest movements are transient swarms held together by stimuli, not durable organizations #expands (0.78) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 229
• Consensus-based protest groups deliberately suppress individual prominence to preserve collective identity. #expands (0.78) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 358
• A consensus politics that refuses zero-sum losses cannot advance feminist demands #corroborates (0.76) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 500
• Horizontal protest movements that refuse representation get co-opted or crushed by existing powers #corroborates (0.75) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 444
• Digital protest crowds behave like swarms that cannot be organized durably #expands (0.75) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 343
• Left solidarity requires heterogeneous coalition rather than unity or horizontalism #corroborates (0.74) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1743
• Large groups facing collective-action dilemmas cannot be trustworthy as groups. #corroborates (0.72) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 810
• Rejecting consensus as impossible protects democracy from closure #complicates (0.72) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 146
• Democratic negotiation is agonistic struggle without final resolution #complicates (0.72)