Consent-Theoretic Framework for Quantifying Legitimacy: Stakes, Voice, and Friction in Adversarial Governance

Abstract

A unified framework for measuring political legitimacy across heterogeneous governance domains. Consent-holding—the mapping from decision domains to those with authority over them—is established as a structural necessity of collective action and formalized through seven axioms and five core results: legitimacy is operationalized as stakes-weighted consent alignment, and friction measures the deviation between outcomes and stakeholder preferences. Historical validation spans suffrage, abolition, labor rights, and platform governance, enabling systematic comparison across democratic, technocratic, and algorithmic systems.