How to design future governance

Three principles to guide governance design beyond modern society and liberal democracy.

Although I have formerly developed an attempt at a comprehensive and general theory of governance — one that would be usable to diagnose the failures of human coordination across all social units (from tribes to organizations to states and beyond) — this article focuses specifically upon “the future of governance”, what I have come to call its protopian forms.

Governance is, in many ways, the most important question of all. In societies that are well-governed, people do well (as far as that’s possible in a world full of challenges).

In this article, I skip the wider and more universal framework for analyzing and diagnosing governance, moving directly to “the vision itself”: the more desirable forms of governance that may become possible only under the best societal conditions.

Let us briefly note: I am not presenting a certain system of governance that I believe is the best for all societies, in all situations. Rather, I am presenting a certain future “attractor point” of governance that I believe is possible (and desirable) to achieve if and when other problems have been dealt with to a sufficient degree: inefficient bureaucracy, failing monopolies of violence…