The Dimensions of Governance

Governance is often described through mechanisms such as process, oversight, control, accountability, policy, and audit. This paper proposes a more precise framework built from four independent dimensions: Objective, Standard, Carrier, and Authority. Objective distinguishes procedural governance from outcome governance and, within outcomes, separates the subject of the condition (artifact or world) from its duration (boundary or continuing). Standard separates constituted law, which decides standing, from optimization, which steers toward targets. Carrier classifies prose, code, and governed data by the operational work that remains when a rule is consumed, rather than by file format or serialization. Authority distinguishes constitution, adjudication, and amendment, while requiring that authority be explicit rather than inferred from production or execution capability. Together these dimensions frame governance architecture as, in large part, the placement of resolution: what must be resolved, when, in what operational form, and by whom. The framework is intended for technical and organizational systems, including analytical services, policy engines, software systems, and automated agents.