>>49142Self GovernanceSelf governance, although an ancient concept, has remained a rather unpopular one throughout history.
And even when and where it was popular, it was decidedly short lived; it’s death most often self inflicted.
Central to any remotely serious attempt at self governance is a declaration of the rights of the inhabitants, the reason for this is a purely logical one; if the people have no power over themselves as individuals, they can by no stretch of reason, have any power over government, and nor can they claim power over their fellow citizens.
If one wishes to, as the Declaration of Independence so succinctly put it, secure the blessings of liberty; one must institute as the founding principle of said government, a system of operating constraints, and most importantly, that system of constraints must be at all times kept beyond the control or influence of the government itself.
An object lesson in this principle, is the Magna Carta of 1216; a document which held great promise, but was gutted in all but name, over the intervening years.
The nobles and freemen of England were ensured protection from the advances of an absolute monarchy against the right to life, liberty, and property; the problem being that although it precluded action by the monarch, it’s adulteration by the houses of parliament was not.
Today, it is said that the English have a constitution, it is but a collection of parliamentary acts, acts just like the Magna Carta.
Acts of a legislative body are unquestionably at the mercy of said body, thus there is no English constitution except the regent, who holds disolutionary power over the parliament.
This of course ceases to be self governance at all, since the only hard limit control is vested in the good will of an unaccountable person.
Accountability is an inescapable principle of self governance, without it the whole thing becomes a farce, an exercise in the naked pursuit of power for it’s own sake.
In a constitutionally regulated system of self governance, the government is internally held accountable via separation of powers, and externally by the people themselves.