Nor am I sure how familiar you are with the pretty extensive literature on rules, and on authority, and on the rule of law.
Taking this out of order. As I just told someone else - if a specific literature reading list is required to be part of a conversation, a public messageboard is not the place for that conversation.
Rule of law is what we apply to bad actors. The analogy for games would be dealing with cheaters, which I am pretty sure isn't the realm in question here.
I think this is overly simplistic. I'm not sure what you have in mind in making your claim, nor quite what you mean by "personal authority" (are you including judges in that category, or only tyrants?).
This is a messageboard about games. Discussion of real-world societal governance is not only off topic, but generally frowned upon by the rules - says a person with authority to administer those rules
I refer to "personal authority" to distinguish that from the agreed upon authority of the rules themselves. If you are playing chess, reminding the other player that their bishop moves on the diagonal is not exerting personal authority, they are referring to the authority of the agreed rules. I reject Lanefan's assertion that people require authoritative enforcement to play a game. Humans are perfectly capable of staying within rules if they want to.
I would normally use chess or checkers to make this argument, but I foresee a reductive linguistic approach to a counter, so let us consider.... mancala. A game with shared pieces and play space.
Assume players who know the rules and are willing to stay within those rules. The rules denote all legal moves of all participants in the game, and the only authority needed in the game is that of those rules to dictate play.
This, as contrasted with D&D, in which the book of rules is very clear that the rules
are not complete, and should not be considered prescriptive of all moves that should be considered "legal" in the game. D&D, and RPGs in general, required players to be given various forms of authority to decide on the legality and sometimes resolution of declarations not in the prescription.