Really interesting, thanks!
If that is the case, they can probably get away with “blackboxing” local chapters (“you guys set up your own rules for how you do things locally”), and focusing on a protocol of interaction between chapters. This should be relatively lightweight because it’s not where most of the action is. It would be the NELIS equivalent of Edgeryders’s project sovereignty: a few rules to make sure the brand (seen as a common good) is not abused, and to help people stay within line of sight of each other, but other than that the local chapter is trusted to get it more or less right. It looks like this trust is there, anyway, so it does not look like too much of a stretch. Correct?