That said, my personal experience with coops is that they tend to be consensus-driven and give everyone a veto. This is a problematic model when vision is required. Works well for more readily-defined things like grocery stores or running a dorm, though.
The kinds that have management representing the coop work around that problem a bit. They have someone with vision, experience, and the ability to work through disagreements. That person normally does his or her thing with others adding opinions, votes, or whatever. The critical benefit is that such a person can step in to clear out obstacles caused by a lack of consensus.
So, even with its issues, representational democracy can be better than pure democracy so long as everyone is doing his or her part. :)
