™Plain Governance uses concepts as models for analysing situations. These models are simplified representations of how things are done. The models help users identify the features of a situation that matter for governance.
Sentence patterns are one way of representing the models. They make the elements of each model explicit. For example, accountability can be represented as ‘someone is answerable to someone for something’. Recommendation can be represented as ‘someone puts to someone that something be done’. These patterns allow users to identify what needs to be specified for a particular arrangement.
For example, standing orders may authorise the chair to close the meeting once there is no further business to transact at the meeting, and the chair declares the meeting closed in those circumstances. To examine this provision of the standing orders: identify the provision, the chair’s capacity, the circumstances, the actions required to close the meeting, the attitudes of the participant, and their conduct after the meeting was declared closed.
There are also complex models. For example, the model for carrying out a procedure can be represented as follows: a convention exists and is accepted within an organisation under which appropriate participants, in appropriate capacities and appropriate circumstances, carry out the required actions correctly and completely to perform an act, have any required thoughts, feelings, or intentions, and subsequently act as required.
At an elementary level, governance design often consists in defining a role and assigning it to someone, with responsibilities, duties, powers, authority, and accountability relationships attached to it. A model will make those assignments explicit.
In Plain Governance, responsibility and accountability form the core analytical unit: we assume here that governance arrangements will have at least a responsibility and an accountability specified. Authority, duty, and other concepts add on to this core.
In sentence patterns used in Plain Governance, the italicised parts represent elements of the models that need to be specified. Users should replace them with the relevant people, roles, bodies, acts, function, work to be carried out, etc.
Roles and obligations
Someone occupies a position within an arrangement.
Someone is assigned a kind of work or action.
Someone is charged with doing or ensuring something.
Someone is under an obligation to someone to do or refrain from something.
Obligation is the broader term for required conduct. This duty pattern identifies conduct owed to someone. Accountability identifies whom someone must answer to and what they must answer for. The person owed the duty need not be the person to whom they answer.
Someone is answerable to someone for something.
Power and authority
Someone has the capacity to make a decision or take an action.
Someone is permitted to do something.
Someone is entitled to do, receive, or require something.
Someone may exercise judgement among permitted choices when deciding a matter.
Only a specified person or body may make a particular decision.
Someone places someone in a role.
Someone with power to grant authority gives someone else authority to exercise a function.
Someone with authority permits someone else to perform an act.
Decisions and contributions
Someone gives someone information or judgement about a matter to help them decide.
Someone puts to someone that something be done.
Someone determines what is to be done, accepted, or required about a matter.
A body formally decides something under the applicable rules.
Someone with authority consents to something proceeding, taking effect, or being accepted.
Someone with authority instructs someone to do or refrain from something.
Someone seeks people's views or information about a matter to inform a decision.
Someone gives someone an account of something.
Governance arrangements
An arrangement provides for the exercise of power within a group, organisation, or society.
Apply this guidance to your own arrangement or an example.
Plain Governance, developed by Dr Julien Maréchal. © 2026 The Governance Practice.
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