Self-governance

Three words that resolve an ambiguity the ordinary term carries. Self-governance usually suggests either an individual governing themselves or a territory governing its own affairs, and both keep the assumption that a bounded body decides for a bounded population. Marsh replaces the body with a user group, which is the entire population affected by an action and includes nobody who is not affected, so what governs is constituted by the decision rather than existing in advance of it. User groups range from one person to the entire world, which means the same principle covers a private choice and a global one without changing form. Two things follow. There is no standing authority, since a user group assembles around an action and dissolves with it, and there is no jurisdiction, since exposure to the consequences rather than residence in a territory settles who has standing. That is the exosocial sense of governance, caretaker responsibility of the user group, as against the endosocial sense, enforced subordination to an endo-ideal and enforced membership in an endogroup. The supporting mechanisms are the ones Marsh develops elsewhere. Epistemic communities supply expertise as a knowledge resource only, concentric circles amplify without conferring command, knowledge bridges make the expertise auditable and shunning removes power instantly in an open system. Stigmergy is how the resulting work gets done, since a culture grown by consistent action replaces the need for anyone to direct anyone.

Self-governance covers a wide range in ordinary use, from individual self-regulation to indigenous self-determination to Ostrom's work on communities governing shared resources without markets or states, which is the closest empirical parallel and shares the emphasis on those affected doing the governing. Participatory and deliberative democracy address who should decide, and subsidiarity holds that decisions belong at the lowest competent level. Marsh's version differs by making the constituency vary with the decision rather than being fixed by membership or territory, which removes the boundary problem those traditions have to solve and creates a different one, since establishing who is affected becomes the contested question.