Consent-Holding and Consensual Sovereignty: An Axiomatic Architecture for Legitimacy, Morality, and Measurement

Abstract

This essay synthesizes two complementary projects: Consent-Holding Theory, a structural account of decision authority in shared domains, and the Doctrine of Consensual Sovereignty (DoCS), an ethical framework that treats consent as the singular axis of moral legitimacy. The first establishes that every outcome in a shared world presupposes a holder of consent; legitimacy is the alignment of that holding with those who bear the consequences. The second extends consent from procedure to ethics across interpersonal, societal, temporal, ecological, and psychological layers. Together they yield a clean separation between ontology ("who gets to act?"), normative appraisal ("was the action ethical?"), and empirics ("how do we measure and test it?"). The result is a program that is conceptually spare, operationally tractable, and built to survive cross-examination from both philosophers and econometricians.

1. The Structural Premise: Consent-Holding Is Unavoidable

Begin with minimal assumptions: agents act in shared domains; actions produce outcomes; preferences and stakes differ; attention and capacity are finite. From these spare premises it follows that in any domain where a non-null outcome occurs, some procedure selected an action, and therefore some locus of control held the right to decide, whether concentrated (a monarch, a manager), distributed (a vote, a board), delegated (a randomization rule), or encoded (an algorithm). There is no outcome without a consent-holder.

Two consequences fall out immediately. First, "letting chance decide" does not void consent—it discloses the meta-agent who permitted chance to rule. Second, misalignment between de facto control and de jure recognition is a structural source of instability. Put simply: power is the custody of other people's "yes," and when that custody is misallocated relative to those who bear the consequences, friction accumulates.

1.1 Formal Definition: Stakes-Weighted Legitimacy

Let the affected set in domain d be those with nonzero stakes. Let eff_voice_i(d) denote an agent's effective share of decision power. Then legitimacy in d at time t is:

A society-specific threshold τ sets the floor for minimally legitimate governance. Persistent α < τ predicts unrest, exit, sabotage, or norm decay. Legitimacy is consent aligned with consequence.

2. From Relativism to Minimal Absolutism

Value pluralism and frame-dependence do not erase structure. Even if contents of value are relative, the existence of consent-holding over shared outcomes is a transcendental condition of social life. Thus Consent-Holding Theory derives a thin, defensible absolutism out of relativism: the that of authority is inescapable even when the which of values is contestable.

This resolves a persistent tension in political philosophy: how to ground normative claims in a world of competing value systems. The answer lies not in specifying which values should govern but in recognizing that some procedure for value adjudication must exist, and that procedure's legitimacy depends on alignment between decision authority and consequence-bearing.

Moral theories become "apps" that run atop the operating system of consent-holding. Utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and other frameworks can be evaluated not on their metaphysical foundations but on their implementation characteristics: Who holds consent to define "utility"? How are duties determined, and by whom? Whose conception of virtue governs institutional design? Consent-Holding Theory provides the substrate on which ethical debates occur without presupposing their resolution.

3. The Ethical Superstructure: DoCS (Consent as Moral Gravity)

Where Consent-Holding Theory is ontological and descriptive, DoCS (Doctrine of Consensual Sovereignty) is normative: it treats informed, uncoerced, lucid consent as the singular axis of moral legitimacy. If ethics is to avoid collapsing into offense, tradition, or sheer outcome-worship, it must anchor in agency: to act without consent is to colonize another's being. DoCS generalizes this across four planes.

3.1 Interpersonal Consent

Bodily, sexual, emotional, contractual, and representational acts are ethical only under informed, non-coerced consent. Silence or "neutrality" is not consent. This layer addresses the most immediate sphere of moral action where direct agency interactions occur.

Key principle: Consent must be affirmative, informed (awareness of what is being consented to), and uncoerced (free from threats, manipulation, or structural coercion). Absence of explicit refusal does not constitute consent. This standard applies to physical touch, sexual activity, emotional labor demands, contractual obligations, and representational authority (speaking on another's behalf).

3.2 Shared Space Consent

Public life is a web of overlapping consent zones. Participation in shared space entails tolerating non-invasive difference; violations occur when acts force participation—auditory assault, targeted harassment, coerced witnessing.

The crucial distinction: exposure versus participation. Observing someone wearing unusual clothing involves exposure (consensual by entering public space); being subjected to aggressive solicitation or targeted verbal harassment forces participation (non-consensual imposition). The line is not always clear-cut but revolves around whether the other party can reasonably avoid engagement without abandoning their own legitimate use of shared space.

3.3 Temporal and Intergenerational Consent

Future persons are stakeholders; policies that preclude their plausible consent (e.g., irreversible ecological damage, structural debt burdens, constitutional constraints without amendment mechanisms) are moral injuries in advance.

This temporal dimension addresses the problem of consent across time: present actors hold consent-authority over domains that will affect future agents who cannot currently consent. DoCS resolves this through a counterfactual test: Would a reasonable future agent, aware of consequences and alternatives, plausibly consent to this action? Actions that close off future option spaces or impose irreversible harms fail this test.

3.4 Beyond the Human: Ecological Consent

Ecosystems cannot "say yes," but shared survival implies a distributed consent contract; predatory externalization (overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction) violates that contract.

This extension acknowledges that non-verbal entities have stakes in shared domains. While trees and rivers cannot provide affirmative consent, their role in sustaining systems that humans depend on creates an implicit consent obligation: actions that degrade ecological foundations betray the consent of all future agents (human and non-human) who depend on those systems. This is not anthropomorphization but recognition of ecological interdependence as a constraint on legitimate action.

3.5 Psychiatric Autonomy: The Fifth Layer

DoCS adds a crucial refinement: psychiatric autonomy, the right not to have one's inner space involuntarily commandeered by imposed stimuli that compel processing one cannot reasonably refuse (e.g., traumatic re-exposure, high-salience triggering content in spaces where avoidance is not feasible).

This is not "taboo policing," but the recognition that involuntary mental colonization can be as real as bodily trespass. Just as non-consensual physical touch violates bodily autonomy, certain stimuli impose cognitive processing loads or emotional states that individuals have valid interest in controlling. The standard is not "offense" but involuntary commandeering of attention and processing capacity in contexts where reasonable avoidance is impossible.

4. Layered Consent and the "Green Shirt" Paradox

A common reductio charges that expansive consent ethics collapses into absurdity: "I didn't consent to seeing your green shirt." DoCS dissolves the paradox by distinguishing layers: entering public space entails a background consent to non-invasive difference (the "lifeworld" of ordinary exposure). Mere visibility is not a demand; forced participation is.

4.1 The Exposure/Participation Distinction

Consider three cases along the spectrum:

• Green shirt (pure exposure): No consent violation. Observing someone's clothing choice is part of the background consent granted by entering shared space. No participation is demanded beyond ordinary visual processing.
• Aggressive panhandling (forced interaction): Consent violation. Following someone, blocking their path, or persistently demanding engagement forces participation beyond background exposure. The person cannot exercise their legitimate right to transit public space without unwanted interaction.
• Public sex (contextual): Potential consent violation depending on context. In a clearly signposted adult venue with opt-in entry, no violation occurs (affirmative consent via entry). In a family park or transit station, violation occurs because children, trauma survivors, or others cannot avoid exposure without abandoning legitimate use of shared space. The issue is not that sex is "impure" but that it imposes sexual participation (as involuntary witnesses) on non-consenting parties.

4.2 Context and Signposting

On this layered view, context is pivotal: an opt-in art exhibit or clearly signposted zone restores consent ex ante; an unexpected imposition in a family park violates it. The touchstone remains constant: Did the act remove another's capacity to opt in or out of an experience in a shared space?

This framework explains why reckless driving is a straightforward consent violation while many "offensive" displays are not. Reckless driving unilaterally imposes substantial risk on others' bodies and life prospects—forced participation in the driver's risk-taking. A green shirt, a pride flag, or a political bumper sticker imposes only background exposure, which is part of the implicit contract of public space participation.

5. Integrating Structure and Ethics: The Complete Framework

Consent-Holding Theory and DoCS interlock without redundancy:

5.1 Three-Layer Architecture

• Ontology (structure): Every outcome implies a consent-holder; legitimacy is stakes-aligned voice. This is value-neutral and empirically testable via the α(d, t) formula.
• Normativity (ethics): Actions are moral if and only if they respect lucid, uncoerced, informed consent across bodily, social, temporal, ecological, and psychological layers.
• Mediating rule: Competence without consent is efficient usurpation; consent without competence is democratic malpractice. Legitimate orders balance both.

5.2 Clean Conceptual Separation

This division of labor is philosophically clean:

• Structure does not dictate moral content, but it constrains admissible arrangements (you cannot have legitimate outcomes where those affected have zero voice)
• Ethics does not legislate who must rule, but it judges how rulers—once identified structurally—may permissibly act
• Measurement provides empirical validation: we can test whether higher α correlates with lower friction (protests, exit, noncompliance) and validate the framework against real-world governance outcomes

5.3 Resolving Tensions

The framework resolves apparent tensions between competence and consent:

• Emergency medical treatment: Competence (medical expertise) provides presumptive consent when lucid consent is unavailable (unconscious patient). However, this is a delegation rule, not a violation: society grants this authority because reasonable agents would plausibly consent ex ante to life-saving intervention when incapacitated.
• Expert governance: Technical domains (monetary policy, infrastructure engineering) may justify delegated authority to specialists, but this delegation must be revocable (accountability mechanisms), transparent (understandable to affected parties), and limited in scope (experts control methodology, not ultimate values).
• Parent-child relationships: Parents hold consent-custody for minors because children cannot yet provide fully informed consent. However, this custody is fiduciary—exercised on behalf of the child's emerging autonomy—and subject to oversight when misused (abuse, neglect). As children develop capacity, consent-holding must gradually transfer.

6. Measurement and Evidence: From Philosophy to Data

The framework invites operationalization. Construct a consent matrix C ∈ [0,1]^N×M with C_i,d the effective decision share of agent i in domain d, Σ_i C_i,d = 1. Pair it with a stakes vector s_·(d) capturing sensitivity to outcomes, and a realized action x_d.

6.1 Key Metrics

Alignment Index

This measures stakes-weighted voice: how much of the decision power rests with those who bear consequences? Values range from 0 (complete misalignment: those affected have no voice) to 1 (perfect alignment: voice proportional to stakes).

Friction Index

This measures outcome distance from stakeholder preferences, where δ is an appropriate distance metric (Euclidean for continuous outcomes, Hamming for discrete). High friction indicates the realized outcome deviates substantially from what affected parties prefer.

Predictive Hypothesis

Reforms that increase the covariance between C_·,d (voice distribution) and s_·(d) (stakes distribution) should reduce friction F(d) and raise stability. Persistent low α predicts protest, noncompliance, and regime churn.

6.2 Empirical Proxies

Operationalizing these concepts requires observable proxies:

Voice Proxies

• Franchise breadth: Percentage of affected population with voting rights
• Veto points: Number of institutional actors who can block decisions
• Board control indices: Shareholder voting power concentration (Herfindahl index)
• Agenda centrality: Network analysis of who sets discussion topics in deliberative forums
• Algorithmic auditability: Extent to which automated decision systems can be inspected and contested by affected parties

Stakes Proxies

• Exposure indices: Tax burden, land area at risk from policy, patient caseload affected by healthcare reforms
• Time-horizon adjustments: Younger populations have longer exposure to policy consequences, justifying higher stakes weights
• Irreversibility factors: Policies with irreversible consequences (permanent environmental damage) impose higher stakes

Friction Proxies

• Labor actions: Strike frequency, work stoppages, slowdowns
• Legal challenges: Litigation rates, judicial reversals of decisions
• Policy reversals: Frequency of rapid policy changes or repeals
• Noncompliance: Tax evasion, regulatory violation rates, shadow economy share
• Exit: Emigration rates, corporate relocations, capital flight

6.3 Research Design Example

Panel design with exogenous shocks: Study franchise expansions (voting age lowering, felon re-enfranchisement), staggered board elections (introducing shareholder voice), or random redistricting (changing voter representation). Measure pre/post changes in:

• Alignment index α (voice-stakes correlation)
• Friction proxies (protests, litigation, noncompliance)
• Outcome stability (policy reversal rates, government turnover)

Hypothesis: Reforms increasing α should reduce friction and increase stability. Difference-in-differences estimation comparing treated (franchise expansion) versus control jurisdictions can identify causal effects.

7. Objections and Replies

7.1 "Randomness or 'the market' decides; there is no consent-holder."

Reply: Delegation to chance or market rules is itself a choice; the meta-chooser remains the consent-holder. Saying "let the market decide" is structurally equivalent to saying "we consent to allocate authority to price mechanisms." The legitimacy question then becomes: Did those affected by market outcomes have voice in the decision to use markets for this domain? Housing markets, for instance, impose outcomes on renters and homeless populations who had no voice in the decision to commodify shelter.

7.2 "Anarchism avoids centralized consent."

Reply: Decentralization fragments domains and localizes holding; it does not eliminate it. Someone still decides at the micro-level. In an anarchist commune, collective decision-making distributes consent-holding, but it remains present. The question becomes: Is voice distribution aligned with stakes distribution at this localized level? Anarchism is a particular implementation of consent-holding, not an escape from it.

7.3 "Utilitarian overrides: net good justifies non-consensual harm."

Reply: This contests the ethical layer (DoCS), not the structural one (Consent-Holding Theory). DoCS rejects outcome-worship: non-consensual benefit remains domination. If a policy genuinely maximizes welfare, the onus is to design benefits through consent-preserving means (compensation, opt-in structures) rather than unilateral imposition. If consent-preserving implementation is impossible, the policy may not be as beneficial as claimed—it relies on uncompensated externalization.

7.4 "Infinite regress: who consents to the consent rules?"

Reply: Regress terminates in a founding act (revolution, constitution, custom) or an ongoing meta-mechanism (amendment procedures, judicial review, constitutional conventions). That meta-domain has its own consent-holding structure to be measured and criticized. The framework is recursive but not infinitely so: practical constraints (transaction costs, time horizons) naturally bound the depth of meta-governance.

Moreover, legitimacy is not binary but scalar (the α index). A system with α = 0.7 is more legitimate than one with α = 0.3, even if neither achieves perfect alignment. The goal is continuous improvement, not metaphysical perfection.

7.5 "'Green shirt' problem and offense culture."

Reply: Layered consent distinguishes exposure from coerced participation; discomfort is not moral injury. DoCS is not offense-policing. The standard is involuntary commandeering, not "I find this unpleasant." Seeing a green shirt, a political sign, or unfamiliar cultural practices involves background exposure consensually accepted by entering public space. Being physically blocked, followed, or subjected to targeted harassment forces participation and violates consent.

7.6 "Projection disguised as 'boundaries.'"

Reply: DoCS sharpens sovereignty by introducing internal consent: refusals grounded in unexamined projections (e.g., bigotry, disgust toward protected classes) are ethically impure. Valid boundaries must be introspectively accountable and individuated, not category-denying.

Example: "I don't want to interact with people of X ethnicity" fails internal consent scrutiny if the refusal stems from unexamined prejudice rather than genuine individual incompatibility. In contrast, "I don't want to interact with this specific person because of their documented history of harassment" passes scrutiny—it's individuated and evidence-based. This distinguishes legitimate boundary-setting from discriminatory projection.

7.7 "Children and incapacitated persons cannot consent."

Reply: Consent-holding recognizes fiduciary custody: parents, guardians, or medical proxies hold consent-custody on behalf of the person who cannot currently consent. This custody is not ownership but temporary stewardship with accountability obligations. The framework demands:

• Best interest standard: Decisions must plausibly align with what the person would consent to if capable (projected preferences)
• Least restrictive means: Interventions should minimize autonomy restriction
• Graduated transfer: As capacity develops, consent-holding must progressively transfer to the individual
• External oversight: Fiduciary relationships require monitoring to prevent abuse (child protective services, ethics committees)

8. Policy and Design Corollaries

8.1 Transparency and Measurement

Publish α by domain. Make stakes-weighted voice indices public for major governance domains (education policy, urban planning, corporate governance, algorithmic systems). Opacity breeds friction. When affected populations can see misalignment quantitatively, they have grounds for specific reform demands rather than diffuse grievance.

8.2 Reversible Delegation

Build sunset clauses, recall triggers, referenda, and contestable code. Delegated authority (to experts, algorithms, representatives) should be revocable when performance fails or preferences shift. This prevents permanent lock-in and maintains consent as an ongoing process rather than one-time grant.

Example: Algorithmic systems making consequential decisions (credit scoring, hiring, parole recommendations) should include mandatory periodic review with affected populations able to trigger audits when outcomes systematically disadvantage specific groups.

8.3 Federation and Portability

Increase exit/voice options. Federated governance structures with high inter-jurisdictional mobility reduce coerced participation in ill-fitting regimes. If exit is feasible (low switching costs, available alternatives), remaining members have revealed stronger consent. If exit is prohibitively costly (health insurance tied to employment, citizenship restrictions), apparent consent may be coerced.

Policy implication: Reduce lock-in mechanisms. Portable benefits (pension portability, universal healthcare not tied to employment) increase genuine consent by making exit viable.

8.4 Guardianship Audits

Where principals cannot consent (children, incapacitated persons, data subjects), audit proxies. Fiduciary relationships require external oversight: child welfare checks, medical ethics committees, data protection authorities. Minimize misallocation harms by presuming in favor of least restrictive alternatives and requiring evidence-based justification for autonomy restrictions.

8.5 Restorative Justice and Ecological Custodianship

Prioritize restoration of consent over punitive theater. When consent violations occur (environmental damage, contractual breaches, rights violations), focus on:

• Reparations: Restore injured parties to position approximating what they would occupy absent violation
• Transparency: Full disclosure of harms and mechanisms that produced them
• Structural reform: Change systems that enabled violation to prevent recurrence
• Sustainable baselines: For ecological harms, establish restoration targets that maintain option space for future agents

8.6 Psychiatric Autonomy in Design

Regulate high-salience public stimuli and recommender systems. Where vulnerability is predictable (trauma survivors, children, captive audiences), design interventions:

• Opt-in structures: Adult content, graphic violence, or potentially triggering material behind clear warnings with genuine opt-in (not just "I acknowledge" click-through)
• Algorithmic transparency: Recommender systems (social media feeds, video autoplay) disclose optimization targets and allow meaningful user control over engagement intensity
• Captive audience protections: In spaces where exit is not feasible (public transit, airports, healthcare waiting rooms), limit high-salience advertising or content that commandeers attention

This is not censorship but choice architecture that preserves autonomy: those who want access retain it, those who don't aren't subjected involuntarily.

9. Conclusion

Consent-Holding Theory supplies the structural realism our plural world cannot escape: outcomes presuppose holders; legitimacy is the alignment of voice with consequence. The Doctrine of Consensual Sovereignty supplies the ethical north: moral life is the disciplined refusal to steal another's will—bodily, social, temporal, ecological, or psychological.

Together they yield a doctrine at once rigorous and humane: when values are relative, the only invariant is who gets to act. Measure that, align it with the affected, and subject action to lucid, uncoerced consent. This framework survives scrutiny from both sides: philosophers cannot dismiss it as mere procedure (it contains substantive ethical claims about consent primacy), and empiricists cannot dismiss it as untestable metaphysics (it generates measurable predictions about friction, stability, and legitimacy).

The practical work begins with measurement. Construct consent matrices for major governance domains. Compute stakes-weighted alignment indices. Track friction proxies. Identify persistent misalignments and design reforms that increase α. Test predictions: Do franchise expansions reduce protest? Do federated structures with higher exit options show lower noncompliance? Does algorithmic transparency correlate with user trust and sustained engagement?

The conceptual work continues with refinement. How do we handle consent across radically different time horizons (climate policy affecting centuries)? What decision rules apply in genuine emergencies where consultation is impossible? How do we weight conflicting consents in zero-sum domains where someone must lose?

But the core insight stands: Consent without consequence is theater; consequence without consent is tyranny. The work of institutions is to ensure we live under neither. This framework provides the architecture to build that world—one where power remains in the custody of those it affects, where authority is earned through alignment rather than imposed through force, and where legitimacy is not a rhetorical claim but a measurable fact.

Concise maxim: When values are relative, the only invariant is who gets to act. Measure that, align it with the affected, and subject action to lucid, uncoerced consent. Everything else is commentary.