Cognitive Comparability and the Limits of Governance: Evaluating Authority Under Radical Capability Asymmetry
Governance theory presupposes a rough cognitive comparability between governors and governed. This paper makes that assumption explicit and testable through a six-dimension evaluation framework covering legitimacy, accountability, corrigibility, non-domination, subsidiarity, and institutional resilience, drawn from political legitimacy theory, principal-agent models, republican theory, and the AI alignment literature. The framework is first demonstrated on existing non-majoritarian institutions,
Record details
Published: 3 April 2026
Source: arXiv
Category: Research
Topics: Regulation · Safety & alignment · Agents & autonomy · Transparency
Retrieved: 14 July 2026
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ethics.ai (3 April 2026), “Cognitive Comparability and the Limits of Governance: Evaluating Authority Under Radical Capability Asymmetry,” evidence record 6412, https://ethics.ai/record/6412 (originally published by arXiv).
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