Governance Layer Relationships
How Local Commons Governance, CommonGround, and MCS Relate
Version: 1.0 Date: 2026-05-03
The Short Answer
Local Commons governance, CommonGround, and MCS are not three separate governance systems. They are the same constitutional architecture operating at three different scales, with three different default configurations.
- CommonGround is the governance engine — the deliberation framework, constitutional principles, decision methods, and Civic Memory infrastructure.
- Local Commons runs CommonGround configured for neighborhood context — lighter quorum thresholds, faster deliberation windows, place-based scoping.
- MCS runs a different configuration of the same governance architecture at municipal scale — longer windows, formal decision authority contracts, cross-jurisdiction interoperability.
A neighborhood Decision in Local Commons and a Civic Process in MCS are structurally the same thing: a bounded question, deliberated through the 5-phase protocol, resolved with a Decision Record. The difference is who is affected, what legal authority the outcome has, and how long deliberation takes.
Why One Layer, Two Components
Layer 5 of Integral Commons (Governance) has two named components: CommonGround and MCS. They cover different scopes but share the same constitutional backbone.
| CommonGround | MCS | |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | Any group (5–5,000 members) | Cities, municipalities, civic bodies |
| Primary users | Communities, co-ops, land trusts, neighborhoods via Local Commons | Municipal governments, civil society, civic technologists |
| Decision authority | Defined by the group’s governance profile | Defined by the Decision Authority Contract (DAC) — legal and institutional |
| Core constraint | Constitutional principles (Tier 1 inviolables) | Constitutional principles + institutional legal requirements |
| Deliberation window | 7 days minimum (configurable) | Longer (civic processes often 30–90 days) |
| Quorum | % of affected members | % of affected population (demographic tracking) |
| Output | Decision Record (internal institutional memory) | Decision Record + public response to the DAC commitment |
| Legitimacy source | Group consent and constitutional process | Group consent + legal/democratic authority of the institution |
What they share: the 5-phase deliberation protocol, Civic Memory, the 6 perspective lens types, the Tier 1 constitutional constraints, the principle that deliberation precedes decision, and the requirement that no decision is made in ignorance of its ecological scope.
How a Neighborhood Decision Relates to a City Civic Process
A neighborhood is not a city department. Local Commons governance and MCS governance operate in different legal and political contexts. The relationship between them is consultative and unidirectional in authority: neighborhood deliberation can formally inform municipal governance; municipal governance cannot override neighborhood governance within the Integral Commons system. (What it can do in the real world, through legal authority, is a different question — see below.)
The typical flow:
- A neighborhood (Local Commons) opens a governance Decision about a shared resource, a zoning proposal, or a land use question.
- The neighborhood deliberates, produces a Decision Record.
- If the Decision touches a matter under municipal authority, the Decision Record can be submitted as a formal community input to an MCS Civic Process — structured, documented, and attributed to the neighborhood governance process that produced it.
- MCS receives the neighborhood input as one structured perspective among many from across the city. The Decision Authority Contract for the MCS process must acknowledge how community inputs were used in the final decision.
- The outcome of the MCS process is fed back to the neighborhood — not as an instruction, but as the institutional response to the community’s deliberation.
This creates a legible chain: neighborhood sense-making → structured input → municipal deliberation → public outcome → neighborhood notification. Each step is documented. The chain does not require that the city agrees with the neighborhood — only that it cannot pretend the neighborhood’s deliberation didn’t happen.
When they conflict:
Integral Commons cannot resolve conflicts between neighborhood governance and municipal legal authority. A neighborhood may govern itself through Local Commons in ways that a city’s bylaws prohibit. When this happens, Integral Commons’s role is to make the conflict visible — not to adjudicate it.
The Holonic Nesting principle says higher-level holons cannot override lower-level holons within the Integral Commons system. It does not say a city has no legal authority over a neighborhood. These are different domains. Integral Commons is not a substitute for political change; it is infrastructure that can make the relationships between scales more legible and accountable. Communities that use it are better positioned to advocate for their interests within formal political structures.
The Constitutional Backbone
The seven Tier 1 inviolable principles from the CommonGround Constitution apply at every scale — neighborhood, group, city — and cannot be overridden by any governance profile or institutional configuration:
| Principle | What it means at neighborhood scale (Local Commons) | What it means at city scale (MCS) |
|---|---|---|
| Revocability | Any facilitation delegation can be recalled; no permanent authority | Any Decision Authority Contract can be terminated; no permanent civic mandate |
| Due Process | Members subject to removal get transparent process | Residents affected by decisions get structured deliberation before outcome |
| Commons Protection | No Decision may privatize neighborhood shared infrastructure | No Civic Process may privatize public infrastructure or restrict civic participation rights |
| Forkability | Any neighborhood member can export data and leave | Any community can exit the MCS platform with full data; any jurisdiction can fork the governance architecture |
| Holonic Nesting | Neighborhood governance is sovereign within its scope; city governance cannot override it in the platform | City governance is sovereign within its scope; it does not automatically override neighborhood deliberation |
| Deliberation | No Local Commons Decision closes without Perspecting and Integration phases | No MCS Civic Process closes without structured deliberation; no participation theater allowed |
| Framework Accountability | The neighborhood’s governance profile is their own; any change to the Tier 1 constitutional framework requires a supermajority of active community holons across the network — not a unilateral decision by the Integral Commons organization | Same; the constitutional architecture governing all MCS Civic Processes is owned by the communities using it, not the platform provider |
The Naming Question
Local Commons runs governance via CommonGround. MCS is “Modular Civic Stack.” Both run governance derived from the same CommonGround constitutional architecture. The governance layer they share is sometimes called “CommonGround,” sometimes “Local Commons governance,” sometimes “MCS civic process.”
This is a map vs. territory distinction. The territory is one governance architecture, grounded in the CommonGround constitutional framework. The maps are:
- CommonGround → the governance module as a standalone product
- Local Commons governance → CommonGround configured for neighborhood context
- MCS → a different configuration of the same architecture for civic/municipal context
When the documentation refers to “governance,” it means the constitutional architecture. When it refers to CommonGround, Local Commons governance, or MCS, it means a specific configuration of that architecture. They are not competing systems; they are the same grammar written in different dialects.
What Each Configuration Does Differently
Local Commons governance (neighborhood profile)
- Quorum is scoped to affected members, not the full neighborhood. A decision about the community garden involves garden participants, not every neighbor.
- Default deliberation window: 7 days
- Default decision method: consent (objections must be paramount — reasoned claims of harm, not preferences)
- Facilitation: defaults to the opener; consent check + sortition fallback
- Civic Memory: neighborhood-scoped, full export in Markdown/JSON
- Emergency actions: Steward-level, 72-hour ratification window
CommonGround (group profile)
- Configurable for any group from 5 to several thousand
- Quorum: configurable by the group’s governance profile
- Decision methods: consent by default, but quadratic voting, sortition, liquid democracy available as Phase 2 modules
- Facilitation: as per group’s profile
- Civic Memory: group-scoped, full export
- Governance profiles: co-op, board, Indigenous governance, consensus — community-contributed templates
MCS (civic/municipal profile)
- Quorum: demographic representativeness tracking against the affected population, not just % of participants
- Decision Authority Contract: required before any process opens. Defines what decision the process informs and how the output will be used.
- Deliberation window: 30–90 days typical; longer for consequential decisions
- Decision methods: configured per process type (participatory budgeting, land use, citizens’ assembly)
- Civic Memory: public record of all processes and outcomes; institutional response to DAC commitments
- Simulation layer: policy trade-off modeling with uncertainty quantification (Phase 2)
- Accountability layer: tracks whether Decision Authority Contracts were honored; flags violations publicly
Interoperability in Practice
A neighborhood’s governance history informs a city’s decision: A neighborhood opens a governance Decision about a proposed development on their street. They run the 5-phase protocol. The outcome, with Decision Record, is submitted to the city’s MCS Civic Process for the rezoning application. The city must acknowledge the input in its outcome record.
A city’s governance profile shapes a neighborhood’s defaults: A city using MCS for participatory budgeting creates a community-contributed governance profile template for neighborhood sub-processes. Local Commons neighborhoods in that city can adopt the template to align their deliberation format with the city’s process requirements.
Constitutional principles cascade: The six Tier 1 inviolable principles apply at every scale. A neighborhood cannot adopt a governance profile that violates Forkability. A city cannot run an MCS Civic Process that violates Deliberation. The constitutional layer is not configurable at either scale.
This document describes the intended design relationships. In Phase 1, Local Commons and MCS are independent products. The integration described here — neighborhood Decision Records feeding into MCS Civic Processes — is Phase 3 federation work. What Phase 1 builds should not foreclose it: data models, Civic Memory formats, and Decision Record schemas should be compatible from the start.