Modular politics

If implicit feudalism is the problem — online spaces hard-wired for “admin controls all” — modular politics is one answer. It’s a framework, developed by a group at Metagov, for building platforms that let communities compose their own governance out of interchangeable parts.

Governance you cobble together

Instead of baking one form of governance into the software, a modular platform offers a base layer and a kit of governance modules that a community can mix and match for its own context. You might combine an executive role with a referendum that can check it; another community might wire things up completely differently. The aim is software that’s as neutral and inviting as possible to diverse, culturally-specific ways of governing — rather than quietly imposing one (usually the admin-on-top model, or the assumption that, say, voting is always right).

This isn’t only theory. Where online governance has actually been built for real stakes — Barcelona’s Decidim platform, or blockchain governance tools like Aragon and OpenZeppelin — projects have repeatedly converged on something modular, often after starting with a single rigid design and finding it too limiting.

Why it matters

Modular politics reframes the question from “what’s the right way to govern an online community?” to “how do we build tools that let every community find its own?” It’s a direct attempt to make flexible, creative self-governance a standard feature of online life. (Schneider’s more recent work asks whether an AI agent reading a plain-language constitution could do this even more flexibly — see constitutional agents.)

Sources

• Nathan Schneider — Democracy Innovators Podcast (2026): youtube.com/watch?v=jlyfhmUWX04
• “Modular Politics: Toward a Governance Layer for Online Communities” — Metagov (Frey, Schneider, et al., 2021).