About Plain Governance
Plain Governance is an approach to designing, explaining, and assessing the arrangements for the exercise of power within a group, organisation, or society.
Development and ownership
Plain Governance™ was developed by Dr Julien Maréchal. The framework is owned by The Governance Practice (TGP).
Acknowledgements
The development of Plain Governance draws on J. L. Austin’s How to do things with words (1975) and Philosophical papers (1979).
The framework also draws on Fillmore’s account of frame semantics (1982) and the Berkeley FrameNet project (Baker, Fillmore, and Lowe, 1998).
References
- Austin, J.L. (1975) How to do things with words: the William James lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. 2nd edn. Edited by J.O. Urmson and M. Sbisà. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198245537.001.0001.
- Austin, J.L. (1979) Philosophical papers. 3rd edn. Edited by J.O. Urmson and G.J. Warnock. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/019283021X.001.0001.
- Baker, C.F., Fillmore, C.J., and Lowe, J.B. (1998) ‘The Berkeley FrameNet project’, in 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Volume 1. Montreal, Quebec: Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 86–90. doi: 10.3115/980845.980860.
- Fillmore, C.J. (1982) ‘Frame semantics’, in The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.) Linguistics in the morning calm: selected papers from SICOL-1981. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Company, pp. 111–137.
Using and acknowledging the materials
Except where otherwise indicated, the original Plain Governance framework text, diagrams, application guidance, and learning activities on this website are licensed by The Governance Practice under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).
You may copy, share, and adapt these materials, including for commercial purposes, under the licence terms.
When sharing these materials, including adaptations, credit Dr Julien Maréchal and The Governance Practice, provide the source and licence details, and indicate any changes, in a manner reasonable for the medium and context.
Suggested attribution
Plain Governance, developed by Dr Julien Maréchal. © 2026 The Governance Practice. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Where reasonably practicable, include a link to the relevant Plain Governance page with this credit.
We also welcome acknowledgement when you apply the approach in your work, including where attribution is not legally required.
This licence excludes the Plain Governance and TGP logos, third-party material, and website software.