Governance has not disappeared. It has changed shape.
Across much of modern history, power was exercised through institutions that were at least nominally visible: governments, courts, regulators, and public bodies whose authority could be named, contested, and — in theory — constrained. Even when these systems failed, their presence was clear. We knew where decisions were made, who made them, and which mechanisms existed to challenge them.
Today, many of the most consequential decisions shaping daily life no longer pass through those channels.
They emerge instead from platforms, algorithms, data infrastructures, and contractual systems that operate alongside — and often ahead of — democratic oversight. These systems do not campaign for authority or announce themselves as governing forces. They simply set the conditions under which participation, visibility, access, and legitimacy now occur.
This series refers to that shift as governance by proxy.
Not rule by elected officials, but rule by infrastructure. Not law debated in public, but norms enforced through design, automation, and risk modelling. Power exercised quietly, efficiently, and at scale — often without clear lines of accountability or appeal.
The Governance by Proxy series does not argue that governments are irrelevant, nor that corporate systems act with unified intent. Instead, it examines a structural transition that is still unfolding: the gradual relocation of authority into systems that feel technical rather than political, and therefore resist scrutiny as sites of governance.
Each article explores a different layer of that transition. They are written to stand alone, but together they trace a broader pattern — one that raises difficult questions about consent, law, agency, and resistance in a world where power no longer needs to declare itself.
Articles in this series
Corporate Code: When Data Becomes Power in Global Governance
Introduces the concept of governance by proxy and examines how authority has migrated from democratic institutions into data-driven platforms and corporate infrastructure.
Terms of Service Tyranny — When Clicks Replace Consent
Explores how consent is reshaped in platform environments, where participation is required, refusal carries exclusion, and agreement becomes procedural rather than meaningful.
Algorithmic Law: When AI Becomes Judge, Jury, and Policy Maker
Examines how automated systems increasingly function as de facto legal frameworks, enforcing rules, allocating penalties, and determining outcomes without due process or transparency.
Digital Disobedience: Can We Resist a Borderless System?
Reflects on agency and resistance when power is distributed across systems rather than held by institutions, and asks what meaningful response still looks like.
The questions raised in this series do not resolve neatly. Governance by proxy is not a finished system, nor a single project that can be accepted or rejected outright. It is an evolving arrangement — shaped by convenience, efficiency, economic incentive, and regulatory accommodation.
What matters, for now, is recognition.
Before resistance can be imagined, power must be seen. Before consent can be reclaimed, its erosion must be understood. Before accountability can be restored, we must first recognise where authority has relocated — and how quietly it has learned to operate.
This series is an invitation to examine those shifts with care, patience, and critical attention. Not to react, but to think more clearly about the systems that increasingly govern us — often without ever claiming the name.
Image acknowledgment
The featured image on this page was created using ChatGPT and edited in Canva.com for sizing and layout adjustments.
