Credible Commitments in Asymmetric Value Circulation: A Discussion of Contestability and Remedy

This exploratory study investigates the conditions under which cooperation can remain defensible when actors possess unequal power over value creation, circulation, and institutional rules. Building on Eglash and colleagues’ generative justice, alongside established work on trust, governance, repair, and peacebuilding, it distinguishes material return from effective influence over the rules governing future value flows. The analysis considers institutional trustworthiness, protected contestation, revision authority, alternative pathways, remedies, and regenerative conditions across multiple governance levels. It argues that cooperation may be supported by enforceable safeguards even when vulnerable participants reasonably withhold trust. Constructed institutional comparisons illustrate the risks of nominal participation, concentrated discretion, displaced ecological burdens, and coercive reconciliation. The proposed evaluation approach separates procedural performance, actual generative effects, legal and normative assessment, and expressed trust; it specifies rival mechanisms and circumstances under which its claims would be weakened. The concluding section develops provisional, refutable propositions concerning pathway-specific protection, revision capacity, regenerative return, and cooperation without trust convergence. These proposals are a research programme, not a validated governance standard or an empirical demonstration of institutional effectiveness.