Prompt: Is there such a thing as a private direct democracy? Like a small group that does private things like a business or a club, and can restrict who may join, but everyone who is allowed entry is given equal ability to affect group decisions?
Claude: Yes, absolutely! This is actually quite common and has several names depending on the context:
Cooperatives (or co-ops) are probably the most prominent example. Worker cooperatives, housing co-ops, and consumer co-ops all operate on the principle of one-member-one-vote direct democracy. They're private organizations that can set membership criteria, but once you're in, you have equal say in decisions. Examples range from small worker-owned businesses to large organizations like REI or the Mondragon Corporation in Spain.
Private clubs and associations often operate this way too. Many social clubs, professional associations, or community organizations use direct democratic processes where all members vote on major decisions, elect leadership, or approve budgets—but they control who can join based on their own criteria.
Partnerships in smaller businesses sometimes function like this, where each partner has equal voting rights regardless of capital contribution (though this can be structured differently).
Intentional communities and some HOAs (homeowners associations) can also work this way—they're private in the sense that they control membership/residency, but residents or members vote directly on community decisions.
The key distinction you're identifying is important: these are private organizations (they can exclude people and pursue their own goals) using democratic governance internally (equal voice among members). This combination is perfectly coherent and actually represents a sweet spot between freedom of association and egalitarian decision-making within the group.
Second, expressive associations “are credited with enhancing the quality of democracy by cultivating citizenship and promoting open fora for public deliberation and self-government”, opening up a “parallel polis” through a “plurality of non-state social groups”, by which the state can be kept in check and its powers limited (Craiutu 2008: 263–4; Levy 2014: 27). Put differently, one core function of many expressive associations or “intermediate” associations is to check the power of the state. Intermediate groups give people an alternative to acting through the state. They enable people to act in concert and thereby more easily resist the wrongful threats to personal freedom that governments can pose (Levy 2014: 1). An important part of preserving this function of such associations is for a citizenry to become accustomed to the art of association, and to join with like-minded people in the pursuit of what they perceive, in competition with others, as the common good. This can only occur when groups are allowed to exclude people who have different understandings of that good. In other words, to create genuine space for democratic dissent, groups must be allowed to exclude people based on a principle of expressive discrimination: such “expressive exclusion” sits at the intersection of speech, association, and democracy (Bedi 2010).
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