Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production

Commons-based peer production – the distributed creation of freely accessible information resources through the mass aggregation of many contributions – represents a modality of collective intelligence that integrates the use of digital communication networks and information technologies [Benkler 2006; Benkler et al. 2013]. Peer production projects like Wikipedia and Linux have inspired numerous organizations, social movements, and scholars to embrace open online collaboration as a model of democratic organization with broad democratizing potential [Bennett and Segerberg 2013; Castells 2012; Shirky 2008]. However, many peer production projects exhibit entrenched leadership and deep inequalities [Healy and Schussman 2003; Ortega 2009; Viégas et al. 2007], and often explicitly embrace undemocratic organizational forms [Hill et al. 2008]. Instead of functioning as digital “laboratories of democracy,” peer production projects may conform to Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” ([1915]), an influential sociological theory which proposes that as membership organizations become large and complex, a small group of early members consolidate and exercise a monopoly of power within the organization as their interests diverge from those of the collective. In a working paper that is currently under review, we offer an empirical test of whether or not large peer production projects resist increasing levels of organizational oligarchy. Using exhaustive longitudinal data of internal processes drawn from 683 wikis that have grown large and complex, we adapt Michels’ iron law to the context of peer production communities and construct a series of hypothesis tests. In contrast to previous empirical studies of peer production [Konieczny 2009] and much theoretical work, we present quantitative evidence in support of Michels’ iron law.