Governance theory has always presumed cognitive comparability between governors and governed. This paper identifies that unstated assumption, constructs a framework that makes it testable, and shows that it is load-bearing. The framework specifies necessary conditions along six dimensions (legitimacy, accountability, corrigibility, non-domination, subsidiarity, and institutional resilience), synthesized from political legitimacy theory, principal-agent models, republican political theory, and AI alignment research. Applied first to existing institutions and then to a prospective case of bounded superintelligent authority where capability asymmetry is radical, the framework finds structural failures on four of six dimensions. Among these, two are design-tractable and two are theory-requiring: the public reason problem under cognitive incomprehensibility and the non-domination problem under permanent capability asymmetry demand genuinely new normative frameworks, not better institutional design. A further finding is that dimensions which function as independent checks under bounded asymmetry become correlated failures under radical asymmetry. The analysis contributes to political theory by exposing foundational assumptions that have gone unexamined because, until now, they have always been satisfied.

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