Governance Rules Theory: Rule Lifecycle, Consistency Measurement, and Safe Withdrawal Conditions in Multi-Agent Systems

Governance Rules Theory specifies a candidate framework for recursive rule governance across agents, groups, and groups of groups. It connects rule formation, validation, revision, and retirement to evidence for reduced oversight and bounded re-engagement. Version 2.0 defines rule-status constraints, compatibility and unaided-recovery measurements, five-condition withdrawal gates, and a phased oversight procedure. Its principal hypothesis concerns reliability and oversight cost relative to matched adaptive-assurance alternatives. Revised metric normalization and decision logic replace unreproducible illustrative results with prospective evaluation designs. Historical comparative predictions remain unconfirmed, and external mechanism analogues do not validate the complete framework.