Power has not disappeared from public life. It has simply changed hands, changed form, and learned to speak a different language.
For most of modern history, governance was understood as something exercised through visible institutions: parliaments, courts, regulators, ministries. Authority was imperfect, often compromised, but at least theoretically accountable to voters, laws, and constitutions. Even when power overreached, it did so in ways that could be named, challenged, and resisted within familiar frameworks.
Today, much of that architecture still exists. Elections are held. Laws are passed. Agencies issue reports. Yet alongside this visible system, another layer of governance has quietly taken shape — one that does not campaign, legislate, or debate, but nonetheless sets the conditions under which daily life now operates.
This series calls that layer governance by proxy.
It is not rule by decree, but rule by infrastructure. Not authority asserted openly, but influence exercised through platforms, standards, algorithms, contracts, and data flows that sit outside democratic oversight while shaping it from the edges.
The question is not whether governments still govern. It is whether they remain the primary site where power is exercised.
When digital infrastructure starts to decide
Most people do not experience governance through legislation. They experience it through systems that decide what is visible, what is permitted, what is flagged, slowed, denied, or nudged. Increasingly, those systems are owned and operated by private entities whose incentives, accountability structures, and jurisdictional reach bear little resemblance to public institutions.
Consider how access to information is mediated. Search rankings determine what counts as relevant. Content moderation systems decide what is acceptable speech. Payment processors can quietly exclude individuals or organisations from economic participation. App stores act as gatekeepers to digital presence. None of these mechanisms require a vote. Few allow appeal in any meaningful sense.
What makes this shift difficult to grasp is that it does not feel like governance in the traditional sense. There are no uniforms, no press conferences, no declarations of authority. Instead, power is exercised through design choices, risk models, and policy documents that appear technical rather than political.
Yet these decisions shape behaviour at scale. They determine who is heard, who is trusted, who is flagged as a risk, and who is rendered invisible. In practice, they function less like services and more like rulebooks — enforced automatically, globally, and often without explanation.
The quiet relocation of sovereignty from states to platforms
Historically, sovereignty was tied to territory. Laws applied within borders. Courts operated within jurisdictions. Authority was geographically bounded, even when imperfectly enforced.
Digital platforms are not.
A small number of corporations now operate transnational systems that rival states in reach, data collection, and behavioural influence. Their terms of service apply across borders. Their enforcement mechanisms operate instantly. Their policies are updated unilaterally, often without negotiation or meaningful recourse.
Companies such as Google, Meta, and Amazon do not merely offer tools. They set the conditions under which communication, commerce, and visibility occur. Governments may regulate around the edges, but the core architecture remains privately owned.
This is not a conspiracy. It is a structural outcome of how digital infrastructure developed — rapidly, globally, and ahead of regulatory capacity. What began as convenience has become dependency. What began as optional has become foundational.
Sovereignty has not vanished; it has been outsourced.
Data as the new crown of governance
In earlier eras, power flowed from land, labour, and capital. Today, it flows increasingly from data — not simply its possession, but its interpretation and deployment.
Data determines creditworthiness, employability, visibility, risk classification, and trust. It feeds algorithms that make decisions faster than any human system could, yet often without the transparency required of public authority.
The critical shift is not surveillance alone, but delegation. Decisions once made by accountable institutions are now deferred to automated systems trained on proprietary datasets, optimised for objectives that are rarely disclosed.
When outcomes are contested, responsibility dissolves. Platforms point to policies. Companies point to algorithms. Algorithms point to data. Somewhere along that chain, accountability evaporates.
This is governance without governors — or rather, governance where the governors are obscured behind technical language and contractual shields.
Consent in systems that cannot be refused
Traditional governance at least pretended to rest on consent. Citizens could vote, protest, litigate, or withdraw support. None of these mechanisms function cleanly in a system where participation is effectively mandatory.
Opting out of digital infrastructure is no longer a realistic choice for most people. Work, education, healthcare, banking, and civic engagement increasingly require platform access. Consent is not meaningfully given when refusal carries exclusion.
This is where governance by proxy becomes most apparent. Power is exercised not by force, but by default. Rules apply not because they were agreed upon, but because there is no alternative path around them.
Terms of service replace law. Risk models replace judgment. Automated enforcement replaces due process. Each shift seems minor in isolation. Together, they amount to a reconfiguration of how authority operates.
Why governance by proxy matters now
None of this implies that democratic institutions are irrelevant, nor that corporate power is monolithic or uniformly malicious. The concern is more subtle — and more consequential.
When governance migrates into systems that are opaque, unaccountable, and structurally insulated from public challenge, the space for collective decision-making narrows. Questions of rights, fairness, and legitimacy become technical disputes rather than civic ones. Power remains very real, but increasingly difficult to locate, contest, or reform.
This series does not argue that we have already crossed a point of no return. It suggests that we are standing in the middle of a transition that has not yet been fully named.
Understanding governance by proxy is the first step toward recognising where power now resides — and how quietly it has been allowed to move.
If democratic oversight once depended on knowing who governed and by what authority, the task ahead is more complex. We must learn to see governance where it no longer announces itself, and to ask whether systems designed for efficiency have quietly become systems of rule.
The next articles will examine what happens when these systems begin to function as law, how consent is redefined in platform environments, and whether meaningful resistance is possible when power is everywhere and nowhere at once.
For now, the question remains open: if data has become the new crown, who — if anyone — still holds it to account?
Governance by Proxy: The Rise of the Corporate Control Grid
This article is part of the Governance by Proxy mini-series, which explores how power is increasingly exercised through platforms, algorithms, and corporate infrastructure rather than democratic institutions.
Articles in this series:
Corporate Code: When Data Becomes Power in Global Governance – You are here.
Examines the emergence of governance by proxy and the quiet relocation of authority into data-driven systems.
Terms of Service Tyranny: When Clicks Replace Consent Online
Explores how consent is reshaped inside platform environments, where participation is required but refusal carries exclusion.
Algorithmic Law: How AI Becomes Judge, Jury, and Policy-Maker
Investigates how automated systems begin to function as de facto legal frameworks, enforcing rules without transparency or appeal.
Digital Disobedience: Can We Resist Borderless Digital Governance?
Reflects on agency, adaptation, and resistance when power is distributed across invisible, transnational systems.
Image acknowledgement
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