Originally, a submarine naval officer, Peter Emerson gave it all up to volunteer as a teacher in Kenya. Three years later, he cycled 10,000 kms across Central Africa... and learnt, amongst other things, that majority rule does not work well in, say, Rwanda. In 1975, he moved to Northern Ireland. Ha; majoritarianism doesn't work well here either. Or anywhere: indeed, in Russia, the word translates as ‘bolshevism’. So he now runs the de Borda Institute – he speaks Russian, some Serbo-Croat, and a little Chinese – promoting multi-option decision-making, as first developed by another old sailor, Jean-Charles de Borda.