The dose makes the democracy

So you want democracy. This is a good thing; remember, though, that the dose makes the poison, as Paracelsus put it.

Democracy as a form of government

What is democracy, for a starter? In classical Athens, it denoted the fact that important decisions were taken by normal citizens, possibly picked by a lottery. Yes, by a lottery. The main parliament in early Athenian direct democracy was not composed of citizens chosen by vote, but by chance. This was thought to be important as it was known (back in 6th century BC, mind you) that elections tend to be dominated by wealthy individuals. Today's typical representative democracy refers to the fact that countries are run by bodies of individuals which are elected among the population. Again, it is well known that, although to candidate for a political role should be open for everybody, in fact a reasonable amount of resources should be invested in it in order to have a realistic chance to be elected. The specific regulations change from country to country, but they do not change the overall view.

Democratic principles all over the place

Given that, it must also be said that often we talk of groups, institutions, communities as to be run by democratic principles. Or not, of course, this latter being considered harmful. A larger participation in decisions is often advocated even in private companies. Many techniques and social hacks from the agility culture aim to improve direct participation in decisional processes, think of planning poker and the like. In general, when we talk about communities, we refer to democratic principles as a cultural meme describing the aim of extending participation to decisional processes to the broader masses. It is thought that this should improve identification with the community, productivity if talking about companies and in general to be a good thing. 
But is it so? 
Although of leftist tendencies myself, I always suspect of things which are always good, even if this is democracy and sharing of power. Nothing can be always good; a standard tactics to prove this claim in different contexts is indirect proof (or reductio ad absurdum). If democracy is always good, then it must also be good to held general votes about what kind of size must be allowed for the southernian kiwi-kale. The latter is obviously false, so the premise must be false, too. I know, this is dirty, more on this in a latter post. For now, let us accept this and consider the fact: what are the criteria which make democratic principles necessary?

Democracy is the more important the less you can walk away 

For the sake of the discussion, let us assume that we are looking at a community whose honest goal is to make possible to its members to be happy. Since its members are nevertheless humans, it makes sense to have somebody running the show to avoid things going to the dogs. Or does it? In fact, if in your community everybody can walk away without any negative effects on her, then you wouldn't need any democracy. This must be intended strictly: if your walking aways damage the remaining members of the community, then it will have a negative influence on you (since they could sue you and so on). I think the most clear example is that of an amateur sport team with a large basis, say football: there is a trainer, and he decides. Since they are amateurs, there is nothing at stake, so if a player walks away and join another team, nothing will actually happen. Such a team can have a concentration of power in the trainer or instructor. In fact, if he messes up, all players will leave and the community will be disbanded. I am in a yoga class in which we experienced this kind of scenario on a significant level some times ago. It was stressful for the teachers, for us it went very smooth. Much different is the case in which members of the community cannot realistically walk away. This is thy typical case of a country: if you are born in a country, you could in principle move to another one, but this comes with much discomfort. Not to have a democracy here is risky: if you have a dictator, and he is bad, people will be forced to stay. Nobody will be happy here, and we missed our goal. What about an average case? Say a team manager in a company making some important decisions. If the decisions impact everybody, you better involve them. If you mess up, they will be unhappy; they could even be unhappy if you don't mess it up, because they were not involved. The amount of autocracy you can allow depends directly on how easily people can actually walk away; interestingly, if you are in a hot market, people will be able to change employer fast, if with a bit discomfort. You can allow some autocracy here; in a stagnant markert autocracy will automatically generate unsatisfactory feelings in everybody. In general, in a company, you will allow less autocracy than in the football team example, but more than in the country example. This of course only takes into account satisfaction of the members, and not quality of the decisions. But this is another story.