Governance by current participants can impose costs on nonparticipants, future participants, or less powerful members; participation alone does not establish legitimacy or alignment.

A governance constituency is only a subset of those who may bear an institution’s effects. Current contributors can authorize actions whose costs fall on nonusers, future people, excluded populations, dependent parties, or members with less practical influence; formal access to participation does not ensure equal ability to enter, understand, contest, or exit. Participation can improve legitimacy by supplying voice and local knowledge, but it does not by itself prove that a decision represents humanity, protects affected outsiders, or aligns with the stated telos. The claim does not provide a complete moral theory, grant every affected party a veto, or show how future interests should be represented. For LivingIP it establishes a standing challenge: identify affected parties, preserve baseline protections and appeal, expose distributional assumptions, and treat present users and founders as proximate governors rather than exhaustive proxies for beneficiaries.