# Governance Governance is the process of governing. Governing is ruling or exercising authority over. When we speak of governance, we imply a system of laws and an organization that implements them. Creating and administering the laws and regulations is governance. We can think of government as centralized, with all power in a single authority as the most extreme form of centralization, or decentralized, with everyone participating with equal power at the other end of the spectrum. Governance has historically been somewhat decentralized and informal in pre-history with participatory family/village government, then very centralized with the rise of larger organized societies with hereditary rulers with unlimited power, then less centralized again with the advent of constitutional democracy, and arguably more recently re-centralized through oligarchy and highly gamed political systems that do not represent constituents well. Suddenly, with the advent of the blockchain, the technology exists to provide infallibly censor-resistant decentralized governance that can guarantee everyone has their chance to participate and all rules of the system are obeyed. Decentralized governance uses a shared ledger, potentially allowing everyone access to processes where transparency is desired so that everyone can be confident that the system is functioning according to the agreement. Decentralized systems can use “governance tokens” which give the holder a right to participate in decision making. #### How are decentralized governments relevant to the Network State concept? If decentralized governments can support thriving economic activity and citizens are willing to co-locate and purchase land, they may be able to form a free enterprise zone, and then an archipelago of free-enterprise zones around the globe so people can opt-in to their decentralized government. If nation-states give that government diplomatic recognition, it can be called a Network State. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://gitbook.jur.io/wiki-network-state/dictionary/governance.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.