---
title: "Planetary Subsidiarity"
description: "Jonathan Blake's principle, from Children of a Modest Star, for allocating authority in a worldwide but non-world-state governance architecture: authority over any function goes to the scale that governs it most effectively, in service of habitability and multispecies flourishing."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/planetary-subsidiarity"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/planetary-subsidiarity"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Planetary Subsidiarity

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/planetary-subsidiarity), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Jonathan Blake's principle, from *Children of a Modest Star*, for allocating authority in a worldwide but non-world-state governance architecture: authority over any function goes to the scale that governs it most effectively, in service of habitability and multispecies flourishing. Four features: form follows function (habitat restoration local, carbon management planetary); new institutions above and below the nation-state, such as a Planetary Atmospheric Steward; duties of assistance (*subsidium*) in all directions; and a preference for the local that keeps planetary institutions "minimally viable." A subsidiarity assembly holding meta-authority periodically revises allocations, deciding who decides, not what. Moynihan cites it as the middle ground between chaos and world government; Bratton's cybernetic account of governance in the same volume is its unreconciled rival.

## Appears in

- [Are We Accidentally Building A Planetary Brain?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/media/noema-are-we-accidentally-building-a-planetary-brain) (2024-11-19)
- [The Planetary](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/the-planetary) (2024-11-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._