My feeling is that peer governance tries to avoid permission first, i.e. eliminate it as much as it can, using consensus where it must, and only formulates democratic rules when the latter is impossible to achieve. The latter can then take a variety of forms, sometimes using arbitrage by trusted leaders, but also can degenerate into forms of personal or collective ‘despotism’. I think the way the Wikipedia deletion process is evolving, may be an example of the latter.

But as you say, this is still quite different from feudalism, as indeed it is not a priori authority relationship based on personal dependence.

“peer governance” is the manner in which peer to peer networks themselves are governed, in which peers negotiate relationship based on mutual configuration of inter-operation.

These comments are unrelated to “peer governance,” bur rather discuss a hypothetical free software project, where neither the structure of which, nor the software produced is necessarily peer-to-peer.

There is also, of course, a major difference between a fork of immaterial property and civil war over real scarce property, which should be obvious to anyone who has witnessed a fork and noticed the lack of death and amputations.

What Joi Ito is struggling to address, a need for open structures, is much better explored in Jo Freeman’s classic feminist essay:

THE TYRANNY of STRUCTURELESSNESS
http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm