I does not force them to find consensus, but if you‘re the minority you just have to „accept“ your loss and do as the majorities optinion were you‘re opinion. Which makes - imo - an oppisiotion useless, which is a good thing (you can‘t block progress if you don‘t agree).
Don’t they suggest that they don’t want to simply take the majority vote? I’m not really sure whether by consensus you mean the majority opinion or a smaller more shared opinion so maybe I’m misunderstanding.
I don't think consensus needs to be unanimously affirmative in order to make progress. Even dissent can be a form of consensus, in that everyone in this group acknowledges the proposed course of action, and have formed their positions relative to it.
In many cases, "consensus" is just rubbing salt in the wounds of the losers -- not only do they not get their way, they have to pretend that they agree with the outcome that is decided on. As David Mitchell once said in one of his monologues, the idea of consensus robs people of the ability to say "I told you so!" when the bad idea that the majority favored fails, because with consensus you have to share responsibility with those who favored the idea.
We don't need consensus since consensus is impossible with a large population. You just need a vast majority and the vast majority agree on the winning condition.
The real problem is that there is a tyranny of sorts involved, whether by the majority or the minority is not really all that important. Consensus building should be the norm, not to ram your view down other people's throats because you can.
That is not what consensus is. That's what majority politics is. Two groups that come to agreement through their leadership is not consensus, it's leadership-based agreements. There can be dissension within each of the groups. So you don't have consensus.
One significant advantage of consensus is that once you're able to get past disagreement you have everyone pulling in the same direction. That's not to say that there're no disadvantages, but it's often overlooked.
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