We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public [LWN.net]

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 22, 2025 2:13 UTC (Sat) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642)
In reply to: One of the 'cynical people' by kpfleming
Parent article: OSI election ends with unsatisfying results

Kevin wrote:

“If the board had just publicly stated that the election results indicated that the voters preferred a specific set of candidates, but that some of those candidates were deemed ineligible to be seated, and the board had used its discretion to seat alternate candidates, many of us would have been completely fine with that.”

Possibly surprisingly, I am one of the people who would have been completely fine with that — even though I'm one of the 2025 candidates that may have won a seat only to not be appointed. As Kevin said, the results matter even if legitimately overridden.

While I would have hoped in such a situation that the OSI Directors — knowing our platform — would negotiate (post-election) with { Fontana, Luke, me } to change those 19 words (of the 727-word Board Agreement) to solve everyone's concerns, we'd have nevertheless gracefully (albeit sadly) accepted a refusal to negotiate if the true results were posted.

Both sides actually have the same BATNA: “we just don't get seated on the Board”. Fontana and I discussed running to that BATNA many times in the process, but we concluded that policy disagreements are best solved by political engagement and negotiated consensus — not each side running as fast as possible to their BATNAs.

Fontana and I are truly baffled that these 19 words, as drafted, are considered sacrosanct. I mean, the sentiment is right but the drafting just isn't good. Since they don't appear in the main article, I'll quote those 19 words [with context]:

“[Directors can expect each other] to Disagree during Board deliberation but support publicly all Board decisions, especially those that do not have unanimous consent.”

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We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 22, 2025 2:35 UTC (Sat) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link] (15 responses)

> “[Directors can expect each other] to Disagree during Board deliberation but support publicly all Board decisions, especially those that do not have unanimous consent.”

It took me a while to see the core drafting problem here. The way it's written, it suggests that disagreement can only take place "during Board deliberation", and *therefore* in public all you can do is express agreement with a decision that resulted from that possibly-contentious deliberation. Based on some comments from current OSI board members on the OSI's discussion forum, I think this is how the current board reads it. But I'm not sure that was the intent of whoever originally drafted this.

I've learned from these recent discussions about the principle of "collective responsibility" in nonprofit governance. This includes the idea that a board's members will all pledge to support the board's decisions. But this need not mean that the board's members have to *agree* with the decisions in public (it is acknowledged that they might not have agreed in deliberations). You can respectfully and responsibly dissent, in public, from a decision made by your board, and still *support* the decision as one that has been properly and finally made by the board.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 22, 2025 21:27 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (14 responses)

> The way it's written, it suggests that disagreement can only take place "during Board deliberation", and *therefore* in public all you can do is express agreement with a decision that resulted from that possibly-contentious deliberation.

This is fairly typical in parliamentary systems (and probably others). Once you are part of the executive (the cabinet) then they speak as one voice. And that means supporting any decision in public, even if you disagree with it in private. If you don't like that you can simply not join the executive and stay an MP. If there's a decision you can't defend in public for whatever reason you can just resign and then say whatever you like.

The argument is that it doesn't help if the executive is seen to be internally divided and that decisions might not actually be final.

Of course enforcement is a thing, because "disagreeing" is such a fuzzy line, but every now and then ministers do actually resign because they can't support whatever decision was made.

(It gets exceptionally fuzzy in systems like the UK where ministers are also MPs that can vote on their own legislation, meaning they're actually wearing two hats at the same time. That's not a problem for the OSI though.)

So yeah, I'm thinking that the way it's interpreted is what was intended.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 8:03 UTC (Sun) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you don't like that you can simply not join the executive and stay an MP.

The other way, and frankly the way I expect a legitimate board to be run, is to agree to disagree, but decide to support the majority decision anyway. At least on topics where there was prior public disagreement.

I don't think there's a democratic parliament out there (i.e. excluding mock parliaments like China's, or autocraties like Turkey's these days) where you need to sign a formal statement that you will do the former but not the latter, otherwise you don't get in despite being elected.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 16:31 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

> The other way, and frankly the way I expect a legitimate board to be run, is to agree to disagree, but decide to support the majority decision anyway. At least on topics where there was prior public disagreement.

There's a difference between "agreeing to disagree" and touring all the talk-shows loudly exclaiming how you disagree with a decision that you are nonetheless bound to carry out, but are going to do your best to stonewall as much as possible. The latter is just not cool. You don't have to sing praises, but actively working against is bad.

And sure, no-one asks you to sign a document about that because you can't enforce it anyway. Who is going to enforce that an executive is acting in a consistent and predictable manner? In the end it's the legislature that can bring down the executive if they feel it's gotten out of hand (motion of no-confidence, in systems that have such a mechanism).

Parliament

Posted Mar 23, 2025 16:23 UTC (Sun) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (7 responses)

Yes, Cabinet solidarity is pretty conventional. I don't see why it makes sense for an entity like OSI though.

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 13:51 UTC (Mon) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (6 responses)

I had another thought.

Unlike many systems, and exactly like this OSI board, a British cabinet will consist of people who were elected. In some cases they'll have been elected on more or less the assumption that they'll be doing this exact job in the cabinet although the actual rules don't require that, it would be weird to win an election and then reward some previously unknown with a Great Office of State for example (e.g. Foreign Secretary, it was a scandal that a previous Tory admin had to appoint Lord Dave because that's effectively a slight to the Commons and arguably to the People who it represents not to select your Great Officers from among their ranks) even though that's technically legal.

Because they have democratic legitimacy - in a way that, for example Elon Musk does not - when they disagree they're not just speaking for themselves, they're speaking for great many more people, and so in this sense the solidarity argument breaks down. As a result it becomes not so much that they can't speak out as that it's clear *if* they speak out they can't keep that job in the executive. Which is something altogether different.

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 15:24 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

It's the convention the cabinet in the UK are also a member of the house of parliament or house of lords, and it's typical that they are elected MPs, however they don't have to be. It's not that unusual to have a minister from the House of Lords - typically an appointed life peer. However, they can be anyone.

In Ireland, the government consists of ministers who must all be members of the oireachtas, so all elected, either by the wider general electorate to the dail or the Seanad (the somewhat toothless upper house, which has a restricted electorate, university members, etc.).

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 16:42 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> It's the convention the cabinet in the UK are also a member of the house of parliament or house of lords, and it's typical that they are elected MPs, however they don't have to be. It's not that unusual to have a minister from the House of Lords - typically an appointed life peer. However, they can be anyone.

It's only in the last 100 years or so that it's become typical for the executive to be elected MPs. Before the great reform by George V (1910-1935), it was the House of Lords with much of the power and most of the executive. That was probably the end of the great shift of power that began with the Civil War and execution of Charles I.

Cheers,
Wol

Parliament

Posted Mar 25, 2025 0:18 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (2 responses)

That first part is not convention. Parliament requires that the King's ministers must be accountable to Parliament, it lacks a mechanism to oblige ordinary folk to attend and answer for their actions, so the ministers have to be in Parliament, the two choices available are that they could be Lords (in the upper chamber) or commoners (in the lower). In both cases it is within the power of the Parliament to compel them to come tell it what they have done and why.

Junior ministers are frequently "elevated" (made into a peer for life) specifically in order to make them a minister. If you want your old friend Jim Smith to be Minister for Video Games you announce that Jim gets a peerage, Lord Jim of Someplace, and make Lord Jim your Minister for Video Games, fine.

Of course because the Parliament is a sovereign entity it could arbitrarily change these rules, for example to create a tier of ministers who are compelled to attend but are not in parliament, and the previous administration did look at that option. Rule changes don't tend to stick, the Coalition decided to fix Parliamentary terms, that soon proved inconvenient and so the change was abolished again. But of course the rules we have now are an accumulation of rules which did stick, so anything (in this sense) is possible.

The convention is that Great Officers (those cabinet ministers who, under various names over the years, represent the core competencies of the executive, often given as the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary must be MPs, that's not a rule it's just that if they are not (as Lord Dave wasn't) the only place they can easily be obliged to answer for what they've done is the Lords, which is obviously a slight to the MPs and their constituents, ie basically everyone in the country. It makes sense for a government which held its own population - including many of its own party members - in contempt that they'd do so I suppose.

Parliament

Posted Mar 25, 2025 1:19 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> It makes sense for a government which held its own population - including many of its own party members - in contempt that they'd do so I suppose.

Are you a Brit? I can't remember. I certainly didn't feel it contemptuous especially given the light of history.

Nor did I find it contemptuous for that particular government. There's been plenty worse. And it's pretty much an inevitable consequence of our system of government. How come one election we get a government with a massive majority on a popular vote of 40%, and another government where the opposition was wiped out with 51% of the popular vote? It's the SYSTEM that doesn't respect the people. It's not a true representation of the wishes of the people. At all!

Mind you, a complete representation of what the people want would presumably be just as bad the other way. We've seen it elsewhere. It wasn't a debating chamber, it was a dead-locked arguing chamber with the Prime Minister's job being a rapidly revolving door ...

We've got the government history gave us. We've got the government we deserve. And quite frankly I don't find it contemptuous at all that the government would want an ex-Prime Minister's experience to help. The older I get, the more I feel that experience is valuable. And to call it contemptuous because people are ADULT enough to stand up and ask for help from someone with experience???

Cheers,
Wol

Parliament

Posted Mar 27, 2025 13:20 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Yes, it's contempt. It says to me that from their point of view the hard work isn't necessary. Dave could be an MP if he wants, and if constituents will have him† he doesn't want, so he isn't an MP, well too bad. But they made him foreign secretary anyway, because they had no better candidates. Miserable, just accept that you can't govern the country with what's left of your party and make way for somebody who can.

† In practice you would parachute him into a safety Tory seat, my grandmother's old place would work, one of the safest seats in the whole country, A rotting corpse with the Conservative logo would handily win if it was allowed to stand. But that would be an imposition on poor Dave's time. Local party might even insist on meeting him. Tedious.

Parliament

Posted Mar 24, 2025 15:53 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Another way is like in the Netherlands where members of cabinet cannot also be members of parliament. If you want to join the executive, you must vacate your seat in parliament. So you can't wear both hats at the same time. The cabinet can also include people that didn't appear on any ballot. Thus you get a strict separation between the executive and the legislature. Not even our prime minister has a vote in passing legislation (which also why legislation gets passed just fine even if it takes a few hundred days to form government, the executive is an optimisation, not a requirement).

Indirectly elected representatives (that is, people elected by elected representatives) are no less legitimate that directly elected ones, as long as the first layer of election is reasonably representative (i.e. any form of MMR).

The requirement to speak as one voice is because the cabinet consists of multiple parties hashing out a common position. If you don't like the common position, you're free to leave, or more likely, convince your party in the legislature to vote against it.

(This system was born out of the last set of culture wars, we'll see how it holds up this time.)

All of this is pretty far from the OSI board though.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 19:58 UTC (Sun) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] (1 responses)

kleptog said “Once you are part of the executive (the cabinet) then they speak as one voice. And that means supporting any decision in public”

In USA nonprofit orgs, the Executive/cabinet is the Executive Director and their staff. The Board of Directors is more akin to the legislature, and I know in parliamentary systems, in fact the legislature regularly engages with the Executive to hold them accountable. That said, the analogy is just poor — the governance models are just too different to really compare.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 22:24 UTC (Sun) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link]

> That said, the analogy is just poor — the governance models are just too different to really compare.

This is somewhat similar to a point I was making on the OSI forum when people defended the "support publicly" clause as being similar to so-called "disagree and commit" philosophies that were in place at, reportedly, Sun Microsystems and Intel. If indeed some Silicon Valley tech companies adopted a "disagree and commit" policy regarding *employees*, that doesn't mean (a) it was a good idea, (b) it worked well, (c) it is appropriate to apply to nonprofit organizations, or (d) it is appropriately applied to *board* governance as opposed to management of employees.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 24, 2025 12:33 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

> And that means supporting any decision in public, even if you disagree with it in private.

The way this game is played in politics in the UK and Ireland (which both have this "cabinet discussions are secret" rule - in Ireland enshrined in the constitution) is the politicians "leak" their position or materials favourable to their position, to favoured members of the press, directly or via aides; and/or leak stuff unfavourable to cabinet opponents).

The excellent (still to this day, indeed it's remarkable how well it has aged) "Yes, Minister" satirical series has plenty of examples of how this game is played. Absolute must watch. Lot of UK specific references in it of course, but the political games are no doubt universal.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 24, 2025 15:42 UTC (Mon) by adobriyan (subscriber, #30858) [Link]

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