Governance

Two definitions rather than one, and the reason is that the word names two different things depending on which structure is using it. In the endosocial sense governance is enforced subordination to an endo-ideal and enforced membership in an endogroup, so being governed means being made to belong and to submit. In the exosocial sense it is caretaker responsibility of the user group, which is a duty held by everyone affected rather than authority exercised over them. Nothing carries across between the two. Marsh's test for which is operating is about voice rather than about form. Where your right to communicate is interrupted by those who would be your voice, your face or your representative, you are being subjected to the governance of another, and anyone attempting to suppress the voices of others is attempting to seize control. Horizontal governance does not mean nobody gets a voice, it means everyone does. Two failures are named directly. Governance by decree is governance by whim and is not just or fair under most definitions of the words, and an individual entering a binding social contract with a society needs to see and rely on the constitution they are contracting with. Direct democracy is very susceptible to a hidden oligarchy, since those at the bottom have no time available to represent themselves. The exosocial version is elaborated through user groups, epistemic communities and concentric circles, and the endosocial version through the three types she classifies by the direction anima travels.

Governance as distinct from government is a well established term of art, covering the coordination of collective action across public, private and networked actors, and the literature ranges from good governance indicators in development policy to network and polycentric governance in political science. Elinor Ostrom's work on self-governing commons and the participatory democracy tradition both address the question of authority held by those affected. Marsh's split definition is the unusual move. Rather than treating coercive and participatory arrangements as points on a scale of legitimacy, she treats them as two different things sharing a word, which forecloses the reformist position that a coercive structure can be made more participatory by degrees.