How do we formalize and measure political governance?

What is it about?

This paper develops a formal framework for analyzing consent-holding structures, stakeholder friction, and legitimacy dynamics across adversarial environments where competing interests generate structural conflict. From seven minimal axioms (collective decision necessity, outcome constraints, shared reality, preference heterogeneity, stakes heterogeneity, value frame-dependence, and non-zero consent capacity), we derive three core theorems establishing: (1) consent-holding necessity—wherever collective decisions occur, some mapping assigning decision authority must exist; (2) inevitable friction—preference pluralism guarantees that someone's interests will be compromised unless perfect alignment obtains; and (3) minimal absolutism from relativism—even if content-level values are frame-dependent, the structural necessity of consent-holding remains invariant.

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Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The Doctrine of Consensual Sovereignty presented here provides the theoretical foundation for analyzing legitimacy in any adversarial environment by formalizing the relationship between stakes, voice, and friction. Future work will extend this framework to algorithmic governance systems, multi-stakeholder climate negotiations, and autonomous agent coordination problems where consent structures remain undefined but friction dynamics are already observable

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