Inspirations on Consensus Society

The Quakers

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The Religious Society of Friends#

Founded: 1652, England | Active: Yes | Worldwide membership: ~400,000

The Religious Society of Friends — known widely as the Quakers — is one of the longest-running experiments in consensus-based governance in the Western world. For nearly four centuries, Friends have organized their communities around a remarkably simple conviction: that every person has direct, unmediated access to truth, and that no one stands above another in that access.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy

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The Haudenosaunee Confederacy#

Founded: c. 1142 | Active: Yes | Nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora

Long before the word “democracy” entered the English language, the Haudenosaunee — the People of the Longhouse — built one.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, known to French colonists as the Iroquois League and to the English as the League of Five Nations (later Six), united warring nations under a shared constitution called the Great Law of Peace. Founded around 1142 according to oral tradition and scholarly reconstruction, the Confederacy has governed continuously for nearly nine centuries — making it one of the oldest participatory democracies on Earth.

Further Inspirations

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Further Inspirations#

The communities profiled elsewhere in this section — the Quakers and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — receive deeper treatment because of the breadth of their resonance with this framework and the depth of their history. But they are far from alone. Across centuries and continents, people have organized around principles of equality, consensus, mutual aid, and voluntary cooperation.

The following are brief introductions to four more traditions worth knowing. Each embodies some of the principles at the heart of the Consensus Society in its own way, and each carries its own lessons — including lessons about what happens when these principles meet the pressures of the real world.