The principles of democratic structuring were defined by Jo Freeman in "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", first delivered as a talk in 1970, later published in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology in 1972. They were influential in power network theories, especially those challenging a single command hierarchy. She was a major influence in the theory of participatory democracy, consensus decision-making and collective intelligence, though her own work focused mostly on problems of elite formation in the American women's movement of the 1960s.