Intermediation and Governance: Tales from Trustland, Regland and Concordia

Intermediaries—actors that mediate between rule-makers, rule-takers, and rule-beneficiaries—are central to addressing coordination, legitimacy, and trust deficits in governance, while also creating new risks of exclusion, opacity, and capture. The role and challenges of governance by intermediaries is studied in this paper by using the fictional polities of Trustland, Regland, and Concordia as ideal types. In Trustland’s trust-based order, intermediaries derive legitimacy from moral authority and social embeddedness, operating as custodians of communal norms. In Regland’s rule-based system, intermediaries are formalized, technical actors that ensure procedural fidelity, standardization, and enforcement. Concordia, an imagined polity integrating both traditions, illustrates two competing visions: a minimalist “hybrid” model of compartmentalized coordination, and a maximalist “synergy” model of deep integration. The analysis highlights how different governance logics shape the identity, mechanisms, and legitimacy of intermediaries, and how these differences generate tensions in pluralist systems. By combining fictional narrative with theoretical synthesis, the paper demonstrates that intermediation is not a residual function but a positive mode of governance in its own right. The cases serve as heuristic laboratories for exploring institutional trade-offs, informing the design of accountable, adaptive, and legitimate governance architectures in complex democracies.