Mutual Trust
互信
When there is no superior to enforce, how is the account still at the address? This paper asks what the system and its members record, in whose name it is booked, and how to record without characterizing a state and without leaving out a single item; and how the account follows the address through exit, expulsion, re-accession and dissolution. The whole paper starts from one matter: in the winter of Year 17, the draft of the annual sharing report of the Secretariat of the Three-Borders Cooperation System contained a sentence saying what kind of state the DRP is, and saying that its not paying its share is an expression of its nature as a state; the Deputy Secretary-General for Records and Reports deleted the sentence and recorded instead the shares owed, the places not taken up, the full text of the DRP's reasons, the two thousand one hundred people whose case was pending, and another member's late payment. This paper answers: reputation is an account visible from outside, a distributed observation, and the system sets up no centralized identifying authority; records are attributed to positions and persons, the account under the system's name and the account of the member states are booked at both addresses, and a record is a trace, not a verdict; records record only acts, not the names of states, the same kind of act takes the same wording, and the test is that, with the acting party replaced and not one other word changed, the sentence still holds when applied to the same act by another state; deception is discounted, and saying it openly wins over time; mutual recognition in ordinary times is the foundation of cooperation, mutual recognition is not permission, and the system does not achieve mutual trust on the members' behalf; the account follows the address, and does not vanish with exit, expulsion, re-accession or dissolution. Also used are the system's questions about the DRP's citizenship decree and the record of them, the long-term fertilizer contract and the delayed consent, the wording of the two records on Lamp Island and the Outer Sandbars, and the two petitions Stonegorge left unanswered during its period of exit. In §1 the paper interfaces with the Second Definitive Article of Kant's Perpetual Peace: when there is no supreme legislator overhead, what does trust rest on? The test of publicity is pointed to Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, and not redone. The paper has six propositions (XZ16 to XZ21), each stated at the end of its section and listed together at the end.
Writing Declaration: This paper was co-drafted with Claude (Anthropic). All intellectual decisions, framework design, and final editorial judgments were made by the author.
Introduction
In the winter of Year 17, the Admission-Sharing Office of the Secretariat at Three Borders was drafting that year's annual sharing report.
Sharing is one of the common procedures of the Three-Borders Cooperation System. Each year the Conference of Members makes a sharing decision, and the members divide the funds and the transfer places among themselves by the formula in Annex III of the Three-Borders Compact (the Compact): population counts for forty percent, output for forty percent, and the number of people already admitted counts as an offset at twenty percent (Compact, Article 12). The articles of the Compact cited here, like the system's organs and the laws of the several states, are examples set up by this series; this series does not claim that they are the best design. The total sharing funds came to 960 million accounting units for Year 16 and 1.4 billion for Year 17; the shares of the Democratic Republic of Purposes (DRP) were 210 million and 310 million respectively. In the spring of Year 17, the Conference of Members made Sharing Decision No. 3 by 4 to 0: that year thirty thousand people were to be transferred from the Eastfield camp in the Stonegorge Commonwealth (Stonegorge), the DRP's places among them numbering eight thousand. Those living in the Eastfield camp are people who fled across the Grey River from the north of the Republic of the Sandbars (the Sandbars).
By the winter of Year 17, the DRP had paid neither year's share, and not one person had been received against its eight thousand places. The United City-States of Ends (UCSE) had paid its Year 16 share four months late; its own Admission-Sharing Appropriations Act was not passed until the winter of Year 16.
In the autumn of Year 17, the DRP's Foreign Ministry had sent the Secretariat a letter: "While the UCSE continues to freeze the assets of the Republic's state bodies as 'security for the Reedtown compensation,' the Republic will make no payment into a sharing fund to which the UCSE is the largest contributor. The sharing formula counts by population, and takes no account of the fiscal difficulties of the Republic's northern districts." That freeze was originally one item of the sanctions the UCSE imposed on the DRP in the spring of Year 9; after the other items were lifted in Year 11, it stayed on under this new name (Theory of the State Paper 5, §5). Besides the letter there was one more thing: about two thousand one hundred people from the Sandbars had made their own way by sea to ports in the south of the DRP; the DRP gave them temporary residence, and asked that they be counted toward its offset.
An analyst in the Admission-Sharing Office drafted the annual report. Section 3 of the draft contained a sentence: "The DRP is a 14DD state, and will not fulfill its obligations to those outside the system; its failure to pay its share is an expression of its nature as a state."
The Secretary-General, who held DRP citizenship, recused from this report. The Deputy Secretary-General for Records and Reports, who held UCSE citizenship, deleted the sentence under Article 4 of the Secretariat's Rules on Records. The wording of Article 4 is the same as that of Article 9 of the Compact: the Secretariat's reports "record the course of the act, the position that performed the act, and the documents on which it relied." In place of the deleted sentence was written: "The DRP's sharing funds for Years 16 and 17, 520 million accounting units in all: not paid. Its eight thousand transfer places for Year 17: not received. The reasons given in the DRP Foreign Ministry's letter of the autumn of Year 17 are appended (in full). About two thousand one hundred people from the Sandbars reached the DRP by sea, and the DRP gave them temporary residence; whether they are counted toward the offset awaits the decision of the Conference of Members. The UCSE's sharing funds for Year 16 were paid four months late." The revision was entered in the register of changes that the Rules on Records require, which every member can consult.
Before the report went out, the draft was published by a newspaper in the DRP capital. The DRP Foreign Ministry protested: "The Secretariat's people are characterizing the Republic." Stonegorge's permanent representative said in the Conference of Members: "Deleting that sentence lends a veneer to the side that does not pay." The Deputy Secretary-General answered: "The report records the money not paid and the people not received, without leaving out a single item." In the spring of Year 18, the Conference of Members adopted the record of the report by 3 to 0, the DRP not taking part in the vote; at the same time it decided that the two thousand one hundred would count at half toward the DRP's offset. By Year 20, the DRP had paid forty percent of its Year 16 share. In the spring of Year 18 the analyst was transferred to the Cloud River data station; the Secretariat gave the reason as "personal request."
The matter lands on people first. Behind the eight thousand places that Decision No. 3 allotted to the DRP are people in the Eastfield camp who have been registered for six full months and are waiting to be transferred; whether the roughly two thousand one hundred who reached the DRP by sea and were given temporary residence count toward the offset has to wait for the decision of the Conference of Members. The address the record faces is the DRP, a member, and the same report also records the UCSE; the position that made the decision not to pay is the DRP Foreign Ministry. The record has positions of its own as well: the analyst who drafted it, the Deputy Secretary-General who revised it, the Conference of Members that adopted it.
There are two lines to watch. One is the line of the record: the system's record records only the act, the position that performed it and the documents it relied on; it does not characterize a state, and it does not leave out a single item. The other lies on the DRP's side: sharing is something it acknowledged when it ratified the Compact; Sharing Decision No. 1 in the summer of Year 16 and Sharing Decision No. 3 in the spring of Year 17 both passed 4 to 0, and both times the DRP was among those in favor. Whether its reasons for not paying hold is not for the record to judge.
The system has no force; when the DRP does not pay, there is no one who can collect on the system's behalf. That does not mean the account is gone. This paper asks, starting from this matter: when there is no superior to enforce, how is the account still at the address? What is recorded, in whose name is it booked, and how is a state recorded without being characterized and without a single item left out? And how does the account follow the address through exit, expulsion, re-accession and dissolution?
The paper is called Mutual Trust, yet it does not begin from members who already trust one another. Trust here is a result, not a premise: whether members can trust one another depends on an account that is visible from outside, booked at an address that can be named, and able to bear being questioned. The paper goes in six steps. §1 writes that reputation is an account visible from outside, and interfaces there with Kant. §2 writes that records are attributed to positions and persons. §3 writes that records record acts, not the names of states; this is why that sentence was deleted. §4 writes that deception is discounted and that saying it openly wins over time. §5 writes that mutual recognition in ordinary times is the foundation of cooperation. §6 writes that the account follows the address, and does not vanish with exit, expulsion, re-accession or dissolution.
Conventions follow the Prequel of this series. Where judgment is required, this series speaks in three layers, the normative layer, the rule layer and the judgment layer (the Prequel, §11); where this paper uses them, it states which sentence is a norm, which item is a suggested rule or an example, and which step is left to those in positions. This paper writes oughts only for the system and its members; of states outside the system, it writes only how the system and its members deal with them.
§1 An Account Visible from Outside
What use is an account kept by a system that cannot give orders? Look first at a record made three years before the sharing report.
In the summer of Year 14, the system put questions to the DRP about a decree it had issued in the autumn of Year 9. The decree provided that those who left the country during mobilization and did not return within six months would lose DRP citizenship, and that the DRP would not register children born to them abroad. The DRP Foreign Ministry answered that the acquisition and loss of citizenship are the Republic's internal affairs, that the decree predates the Compact, and that Article 4(3) of the Compact does not apply retroactively; the answer also attached a further paragraph turning the question back on the UCSE, about the citizenship the UCSE itself had revoked and about its own citizenship law. In the winter of Year 14, the Conference of Members adopted a record by 2 to 0, the DRP not taking part in the vote. The course of this matter, and on whom it fell, have been set out at the opening of Paper 2; here only the stretch after the record was adopted is looked at.
The record was put on the Secretariat's website, where anyone can see it. In Year 15, a newspaper in the Nation Union of Telos (NUT), two newspapers in the UCSE and one in the DRP capital each published the full text of the record or a summary of it. That summer, the UCSE's Chamber of Citizens amended Article 14 of the Membership Act by 171 votes to 120, removing the condition that the parents of stateless children must have resided lawfully for five full years; by Year 17, three hundred eighty-nine of the children born at the Willow Ferry Reception Center had acquired UCSE citizenship. That autumn, the DRP Foreign Ministry published new registration rules: a child born abroad can be registered if one parent applies in person at a DRP consular office in the NUT or the UCSE and has "completed after the fact the exit formalities for the mobilization period"; the parents' own citizenship is not restored. By the end of Year 16, thirty-seven children had been registered under these rules.
What is the relation between these two things and that record? The record does not speak for anyone. It does not say that the UCSE changed its law because of it, does not say that the DRP's rules were an answer to it, and does not say whether the figure of thirty-seven is enough. Those who read the record read it for themselves.
But there is one thing nobody needs to say: the account is out in the open. Who asked what, who answered what, what went unanswered, in whose name it is booked: all of it is in the record; the record is on the website, and four newspapers have published its full text or a summary. The Theory of the State has said what recognition gives: "To recognize a state is not to endorse its acts: what is acknowledged is that its acts issue from its positions and that the account is booked in its name" (Theory of the State N26). Recognition leaves an address. The Theory of the State speaks of one state recognizing another; here it is extended to the system and its members: what the system's record does is set the account at this address out in the open, where every party can see it (own undertaking).
The War Treatise has said something close to this. It says that of the several judgments a war must pass, the war-party can itself claim to have passed the first three, and they are hard to check from outside; only one is different: "Whether questioning is allowed is directly observable from outside" (War Treatise §16). Whether there are people questioning, whether their questions reach the place where the decision is made, whether those who question are protected, whether anything was changed because of the questions: each of these leaves traces visible from outside. The War Treatise speaks of a war-party's allowing internal questioning. Here it is extended to the system and its members in ordinary times: whether a construct lets itself be questioned, and how it answers when questioned, is visible from outside (own undertaking). The extension holds because the reason for that sentence lies not in war but in the traces that questions and answers leave; in ordinary times, questions and answers leave only more traces.
This account visible from outside is what this paper calls reputation.
For reputation to count, it does not rely on anyone to enforce it. The system has no force: clause 2 of Article 2 of the Compact states that no organ of the system may exercise force against a member or against persons within a member's territory. With no superior to enforce, the account is still at the address; the peers who see the account can adjust their own cooperation by it. The Theory of the State, setting out the channels that cannot be closed, writes this point thus: "what it cannot close is peers judging for themselves on this basis and withdrawing cooperation other than recognition" (Theory of the State N36). How peers withdraw cooperation by the account is the business of Paper 4; this section establishes only the first half: the account is out in the open, and can be seen.
Why should an account set out in the open let states trust one another? This question must be taken to Kant. When there is no supreme legislator overhead, on what can a state rest its trust in its own right? Immanuel Kant asked this question in the Second Definitive Article of Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden). He first says that when a people, in forming a state, sets over itself a supreme legislative, governing and judging power to settle its disputes peacefully, and on that ground says there shall be no war among them, this can be understood. He then says:
"But if this state says: 'There shall be no war between me and other states, although I recognize no supreme legislative power that secures my right to me and whose right I in turn secure,' then it cannot be understood at all on what I would then ground the trust in my right, unless it is the surrogate of the civil social union, namely free federalism." (my translation; Wenn aber dieser Staat sagt: »es soll kein Krieg zwischen mir und andern Staaten seyn, obgleich ich keine oberste gesetzgebende Gewalt erkenne, die mir mein, und der ich ihr Recht sichere,« so ist es gar nicht zu verstehen, worauf ich dann das Vertrauen zu meinem Rechte gründen wolle, wenn es nicht das Surrogat des bürgerlichen Gesellschaftbundes, nämlich der freye Föderalism ist; Zum ewigen Frieden, Second Section, Second Definitive Article, per the first edition, Nicolovius, 1795, Project Gutenberg EBook #46873; compared with the English translation by M. C. Smith, EBook #50922; tier A)
The common question is this: when there is no supreme legislator overhead, what do a state's trust in its own right, and states' trust in one another, rest on? This is exactly the question this paper asks. Kant says in the same article that this league need not be a state of nations (Theory of the State Paper 5, §7, has already checked this point); this series, likewise, sets up no superior with force over the states. Both hold that the absence of such a superior does not mean that nothing at all is needed: the securing of rights and trust in one another still require common arrangements. Kant's answer is free federalism. Within this shared boundary, this series unfolds what counts into consensus, checks and reputation (the Prequel, §7), and reads reputation as an account visible from outside.
One can draft the strongest objection on Kant's behalf: an account set out in the open is too thin; a state that does not care how others see it is not bound by it all the same; for trust to have something to rest on, a lasting league is indispensable. This series accepts half of this. The Three-Borders Cooperation System is itself formed by covenant, and without a covenant there would be no address at which to book an account; nor does reputation count on its own (see below, and Paper 4). What this series does not accept is placing the ground of trust in the form of a league. What it asks is what makes the account count within a system already formed; the answer lies in the account's being visible, booked at an address, and within reach of questions.
Where the two part must also be stated exactly. Kant calls free federalism the "surrogate" (Surrogat) of the civil social union; in the same article, he calls a world republic the positive idea, and the league its negative surrogate. How this series reads that ordering is left to Paper 8; here it takes up only the question Kant asked, and passes no judgment in advance. This is a division of scope under one and the same question, not a refutation.
Whose observation is reputation? One easy road is to make the system the judge: the Secretariat or the Conference of Members determines whether a state keeps faith and what kind of state it is, and every party treats it according to that determination. This series does not take that road. Moral Law, treating how to identify what condition a person is in, wrote down how this is done at the institutional level: "The institutional implementation is distributed observation through reputation networks, not centralized identifying authority." In the same place it also requires "multiple voices in the identification process to prevent dominance by a single perspective" (Moral Law P9 §5.3). There it speaks of identifying a person. Here it is extended to states: how a state's account is read is for each party that sees it to read for itself, and the system sets up no centralized identifying authority (own undertaking). The system's record is one place where this account is kept, and the account lies there; what is read out of it is not for the system alone to decide. As §3 will show, this is one of the reasons that sentence was deleted.
Where questions cannot reach, the account is out in the open all the same. In the spring of Year 14, Stonegorge applied to join. Article 7(a) of the Compact provides that admitting a new member requires the written consent of all members. The UCSE and the NUT gave their written consent that season; the DRP Foreign Ministry wrote to the Secretary-General: "The Republic's consent must be deliberated by the People's Assembly." In the summer of Year 14, the Plateau Federation and the DRP signed a long-term fertilizer contract: five years, at a price fifteen percent below the previous year's market price. The UCSE's permanent representative proposed putting questions to the DRP about the relation between this contract and the DRP's delay in consenting. The Secretary-General, holding DRP citizenship, recused, and the Deputy Secretary-General for Common Procedures acted in that place; the written opinion was: "Admitting a new member is a new covenant. Whether a member consents to a new covenant is that member's own affair, and is not among the 'existing matters' on which questions may be put under Article 7(b)." The UCSE withdrew the proposal. How new covenants are told apart from existing matters has already been set out in Paper 2, §2 (XZ10).
The question was withdrawn; the account was not. The timing and the price of the contract; the People's Assembly's consent to the admission in the autumn of Year 14, by 352 votes to 221; members from the DRP's northern districts saying that the contract "has nothing to do with the Stonegorge matter," and other members saying "the timing is no coincidence": all of this is out in the open, for anyone to see. Whether it was an exchange, the system does not judge on anyone's behalf; each party reads for itself, and bears what it reads. This is what distributed observation looks like when it lands on a matter: there is no center saying "this is an exchange" or "this is not an exchange," yet every party that has to deal with the DRP, or with the Plateau Federation, holds the same set of facts.
Why does reputation count? A state's reputation must be looked at from two sides, kept apart. One side is what its reputation is to itself: whether it cares. This paper does not discuss that side. A party leaning more toward the 14DD direction may not care about reputation, caring only for its own strength; a party leaning more toward the 15DD direction has no need to care about reputation, since it goes on treating people as ends; how others read its account is the business of those who read the account, and that is precisely the other side, which comes next. The other side is what its reputation is to the other parties: other states, the system, and the people of the several states see its account, and on that basis decide whether to trust its covenants, whether to give it cooperation, whether to put questions to it. When this paper says that reputation counts, it speaks only of this side (own undertaking). Whether a state has credit with other states depends on its acts, and its acts are out in the open. Power Theory, treating the holders of power within a state, has also drawn a boundary: reputation is not the sole source of power in modern politics (Power Theory P1 §III). Between states, likewise, reputation is not the whole of what counts.
It may be said that reputation works only on a party that cares about it. A party with great influence that leans more toward the 14DD direction may not care; and among several parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction, reputation can hold up even less. Moral Law has said: "14DDs cannot form mutually sustaining institutional structures with one another" (Moral Law P9 §2.5). The weight of this objection is real, but it speaks of the first side. The counting of reputation that this paper speaks of does not rely on the recorded party's caring: if a state does not care about its own reputation, other states still decide by its account whether to trust its covenants and whether to give it cooperation; if it cares only for its own strength, these decisions land on its strength, and that it does recognize. An account set out in the open becomes a cost only through the parties who read it adjusting what they do by it. Whether this mechanism actually works depends, further, on how the parties reading the account make their decisions by it. That several parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction cannot form mutually sustaining institutional structures does not mean that the parties make no use at all of public records in reckoning their interests; this paper does not derive any such universal negative from that sentence of Moral Law.
But this section has not said that reputation counts on its own. In a system with no superior, more than one thing counts: covenants are in Paper 1, questions in Paper 2, checks in Paper 4. Neither checks nor reputation require the other party first to acknowledge that persons are ends (Paper 4, XZ23). This section establishes only one thing: the account is visible. Being visible is the premise of the rest: without a visible account, by what would peers withdraw cooperation, and where would the questions begin? That sentence of Moral Law shows precisely that the system cannot count on members leaning more toward the 14DD direction to hold up cooperation by themselves; it must rely on the account's being set out in the open, so that every party has something in hand to check against.
This section leaves two points. Reputation is not measured: this paper gives no figure for what a state's account out in the open is worth, nor does it prove that the account works in every matter. A misreading does not change the account: whatever a reader reads out of a record, the item misread is booked to the reader, not to the record, and not to the party recorded.
XZ16 Reputation is an account visible from outside. To recognize a state is to acknowledge that its acts issue from its positions and that the account is booked in its name (Theory of the State N26); the system's record sets the account at this address out in the open (the Theory of the State originally speaks of one state recognizing another; here it is extended to the system and its members; own undertaking). Whether a construct lets itself be questioned, and how it answers when questioned, is visible from outside (War Treatise §16 originally speaks of a war-party's allowing questioning; here it is extended to the system and its members in ordinary times; own undertaking); this paper calls this account visible from outside reputation. When there is no superior to enforce, the account is still at the address, and peers judge for themselves by the account and adjust their cooperation (Theory of the State N36; for withdrawing cooperation, see Paper 4). Reputation is a distributed observation, with no centralized identifying authority (Moral Law P9 §5.3 originally speaks of identifying a person's condition; here it is extended to states; own undertaking); the system's record is one place where this account is kept, and does not read it on the parties' behalf. Reputation counts through the parties who see the account making their decisions by it: whether to trust the recorded party's covenants, whether to give it cooperation (own undertaking); whether the recorded party cares about its own reputation is not within this paper's discussion. Reputation is not the whole of what counts (Power Theory P1 §III). Reputation does not count on its own; it counts together with covenants, questions and checks (Paper 4, XZ23). Reputation is not measured; the account for a misreading is with the reader.
§2 Records Are Attributed to Positions and Persons
The report says that the DRP has "not paid." Who is "the DRP" here?
When a state does not pay, no one took the money out of a pocket and put it back again. Not paying is a decision: it is made by some position and spoken through some document. What the revised report says is: "The reasons given in the DRP Foreign Ministry's letter of the autumn of Year 17 are appended (in full)." The non-payment is attributed to that letter of the DRP Foreign Ministry, which is the position that made the decision and the document it relied on; the record did not dispose of the matter with the single name "the Republic." The same report also recorded the UCSE's late payment.
The Theory of the State has written down the minimum content of booking a state's account: "The minimum content of booking the account (own undertaking): decisions and reasons made public, records attributed to particular positions and persons; those affected can ask about it in an independent channel and receive an answer; a position at fault is subject to stricter confirmation in decisions of the same kind thereafter." (Theory of the State N39) There it speaks of a state toward those its acts reach. Here it is extended to the system and its members: when the system's record records a member's act, it likewise attributes it to the position and person that performed it (own undertaking).
Why attribute to positions? Because a state is only an address. Institution Theory says: "the construct is the address of attribution, not the subject of the act; the address of attribution and the actual actor do not hide each other." (Institution Theory Z7a) The same paper also says: "The construct's name does not shield an individual responsibility that has independent grounds, and the construct's failure is not automatically transferred onto any one person." (Institution Theory Z6) To record "the DRP has not paid" is to record the address; to record "the DRP Foreign Ministry's letter of the autumn of Year 17" is to record which position at that address did this, and on what basis. Both are needed. Record only the address, and those who ask do not know whom to ask; record only the position, and the address's obligation seems to fall on one person, so that when that person changes, the obligation leaves with them.
So too with the system's own name. Nothing made in the system's name was made by "the system" itself. Power Theory, treating the apparatus of power, says: "the apparatus does not exercise power; individuals exercise power by invoking the apparatus." (Power Theory P3 §V.5) There it speaks of the apparatus of power within a state; here it is extended to the system: decisions and documents made in the system's name are traced back to the positions and votes that made them (own undertaking). Article 3 of the Compact writes this as one example of a rule: every document issued in the system's name states the organ that made it, the votes cast and how each member voted. So the account under the system's name is with the system, and also with the member states and positions that voted for it and carry it out. The Theory of Government, treating two levels of government, says: "The accounts of two constructs are each checked by their own source and are not transferred from one to the other (own undertaking)." (Theory of Government G25) It originally speaks of two levels of government within a state; here it is extended to the system and its member states (own undertaking): the account is booked at both addresses, and neither transfers it to the other.
The record is itself an act. This entry in the sharing report has three positions: the analyst who drafted it; the Deputy Secretary-General who made the revision, because the Secretary-General, holding DRP citizenship, had recused; and the Conference of Members that adopted the record by 3 to 0, the DRP not taking part in the vote. The revision was made under Article 4 of the Rules on Records and entered in the register of changes, which every member can consult. Who changed it, on what basis, how it read before and how it reads after: all of it is there. Article 9 of the Compact and the Rules on Records are examples at the rule layer, not the only way to write this; what matters is that the record's own account also falls on positions, and that the places changed can be found. A record that can be quietly changed cannot be trusted in the accounts of others it records either (§4).
A record, again, is a trace, not a verdict. The Conflict Treatise, treating what can be seen of a conflict from outside, keeps cues, criteria and traces apart, and says: "cues are not criteria, and traces are not verdicts" (Conflict Treatise §26). It originally speaks of what a third person sees of a conflict between first persons; here it is extended to the system's record of its members (own undertaking): the record sets down how much the DRP owes and sets down its reasons; it does not judge whether those reasons hold.
The DRP's reasons point to another member: the UCSE still freezes the assets of the DRP's state bodies. The record appends the letter as it stands, neither cutting anything for the DRP nor answering anything for the UCSE. The freeze is an act of the UCSE; to question it, it is questioned separately, by its own object, and the party questioned is the UCSE (Paper 2, XZ12). When one member's reasons for non-performance point to another member, the record books the two accounts each at its own address, and does not set one against the other. Whether the two thousand one hundred are counted toward the offset is a decision of the Conference of Members: in the spring of Year 18 they were counted at half, and the decision and the votes are recorded as they are.
Look at this record by the criterion of force (the Prequel, §2): force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. Whose judgment, and which, has this record substituted? Whether to pay, and on what reasons not to pay, is a judgment the DRP Foreign Ministry made on the DRP's affairs; the record sets down that judgment and its reasons as they stand, and has not altered them on the DRP's behalf. Whether the reasons hold, and how the two thousand one hundred are to be counted, are judgments of the Conference of Members; the record has not made those on the Conference's behalf either. What the record does is let both judgments fall on a visible address. The system does not enforce; it lands in each member; whether it has landed can be checked only once there is a record.
It may be said that attributing to positions and persons turns matters between states into personal matters, and lets the state hide behind persons. The DRP could say that it was one letter from the Foreign Ministry, and that another minister would mean another line; the system, too, could say that the revision was one Deputy Secretary-General's affair, and nothing to do with the members. The weight of this objection is that attribution to individuals can indeed be used to unload the address's account.
But what this section establishes is booking at both addresses, not rebooking. The DRP's account is with the DRP: 520 million not paid, eight thousand places not taken up; this item is booked in the DRP's name, and is not settled because the Foreign Ministry has changed hands. The account for that letter is with the Foreign Ministry, and the position that wrote it is questioned on it thereafter. The system's account is with the system; the account for the revision is with the Deputy Secretary-General and with the Conference of Members that adopted the record. Neither side settles the other's account. Those two sentences of Institution Theory say exactly that neither direction hides the other: the construct's name does not screen the individual, and the individual does not bear for the construct.
What is a norm and what is an example must be kept apart. Recording the act, the position that performed it and the documents it relied on is a requirement of the normative layer. The articles of the Rules on Records, the register of changes, and Articles 3 and 9 of the Compact are examples at the rule layer, which the parties can set otherwise as agreed. How finely an act is recorded is left to the judgment of the positions for records and reports, with changes registered; this step is at the judgment layer.
One point is left here, and it must be pointed out as it is. For the DRP's non-payment, the revised text recorded the sum, the places, the position that made the decision and the document it relied on; for the UCSE's late payment, it recorded only "paid four months late." The UCSE's late payment also came from a position and rested on a document: its Admission-Sharing Appropriations Act was not passed until the winter of Year 16. By the same measure, one item was left unrecorded here; the measure is the same for every member, and does not change according to whether it is the UCSE or the DRP being recorded.
In the spring of Year 18 the analyst was transferred to the Cloud River data station; the Secretariat said it was at the analyst's own request. Whether the transfer had anything to do with that sentence is not recorded, and this paper draws no inference. How the account moves when a position at the address changes hands is written in §6.
XZ17 Records are attributed to positions and persons (carried over from Theory of the State N39 and Institution Theory Z7a). Decisions and reasons are made public, and records are attributed to particular positions and persons (Theory of the State N39 originally speaks of a state; here it is extended to the system and its members; own undertaking). The construct is the address of attribution, not the subject of the act; the address and those who actually made the decision do not hide each other (Institution Theory Z7a). What is made in the system's name is traced back to the positions and votes that made it (Power Theory P3 §V.5; own undertaking); the account under the system's name is with the system, and also with the member states and positions that voted for it and carry it out; it is booked at both addresses, and neither transfers it to the other (Theory of Government G25 originally speaks of two levels of government; here it is extended to the system and its member states; own undertaking). The record is itself an act: its account falls on the positions that drafted, changed and adopted it, and changes are registered. A record is a trace, not a verdict (Conflict Treatise §26; own undertaking): it records acts and reasons, and does not judge whether the reasons hold; when the reasons for non-performance point to another member, the two accounts are each booked at their own address, and that other matter is questioned separately, by its own object. On what happens when a position at the address changes hands, read together with XZ21.
§3 Recording Acts, Not the Names of States
Why must that sentence be deleted?
First put it beside the sentences that remained. The deleted sentence (quoted in the Introduction) says three things: what kind of state the DRP is; that it will not fulfill its obligations to those outside the system; and that its not paying its share is an expression of its nature as a state. The sentences that remained say how much money was not paid, how many places were not taken up, which position made this decision and through which letter, what reasons the letter gave, that two thousand one hundred people were given temporary residence and that whether they count toward the offset is pending, and how late another member paid.
The deleted sentence is wrong in two places.
One is in what it speaks of. The sentences that remained speak of what a state did, on whom it fell, and on what documents; the deleted sentence speaks of what a state is. The former can be questioned: whether 520 million is the figure, whether not one of the eight thousand places has been taken up, whether the letter says this, whether two thousand one hundred people were given temporary residence. The DRP can answer, can ask back, can correct. The latter cannot be questioned: told that it "is" a certain kind of state, a state can only accept it or reject it. The DRP Foreign Ministry's response was exactly a rejection: "The Secretariat's people are characterizing the Republic."
The other is in what it infers. That sentence infers from the state's nature that it "will not fulfill its obligations to those outside the system," and then reads the non-payment as an "expression" of that nature. Yet the same report contains an act that does not fit it: about two thousand one hundred people from the Sandbars, people outside the system exactly, reached the DRP by sea, and the DRP gave them temporary residence. Afterward, by Year 20, it paid forty percent of its Year 16 share. When the next act is inferred from an identity, what is inferred does not fit that state's own acts.
The Theory of the State, treating leaning, set a discipline: "A leaning is a direction, not an identity." It also says: "That a state leans more toward the 14DD direction is no ground for presuming in advance that each of its acts is expansion or oppression; nor is a state's leaning more toward the 15DD direction a ground for presuming in advance that each of its acts is defense." (the Theory of the State Prequel, §7) That sentence breaks both: it writes a direction as an identity, and from the identity prejudges the next act.
There is one more layer. §1 said that the system sets up no centralized identifying authority. Had that sentence stayed in the report, an analyst in the Secretariat would have determined, in the system's name and on behalf of everyone who reads the report, what a state is.
So, by the line of recording acts, that sentence must be deleted. This is the reading at the normative layer. In that matter, the one who made the judgment was the Deputy Secretary-General for Records and Reports, who revised the text under Article 4 of the Rules on Records; the Conference of Members adopted the record by 3 to 0 in the spring of Year 18, the DRP not taking part in the vote; Stonegorge's permanent representative said at the meeting that it lent a veneer, and what the DRP Foreign Ministry protested against was the draft that appeared in the newspaper.
Rewritten as a statement of direction, that sentence still does not go into the record. Changed, say, to "the DRP's direction leans more to one side," it still does not go in. Direction is a diagnosis, and a diagnosis is made by acts (Paper 8, XZ53); the record records only acts, and what direction the parties reading the record read out of the acts is each one's own reading (§1). Of any state, this paper, too, writes only what it did.
The words of Stonegorge's permanent representative must be answered seriously: deleting that sentence lends a veneer to the side that does not pay. The weight of this objection is that if a record, afraid of offending a state, writes its non-performance down lightly, the account is falsified, and from then on no one need care about records.
Compare before and after. The only thing recorded less after the revision is that one characterization. The 520 million owed, the eight thousand places not taken up, the full text of the DRP's reasons: not one item is missing; and two things are recorded in addition: the UCSE's late payment, and the pending matter of the two thousand one hundred. The Deputy Secretary-General's answer was: "The report records the money not paid and the people not received, without leaving out a single item."
Recording acts is not recording less; it is booking the account where questions can reach it. Acts can be questioned, answered and corrected; a characterization can only be accepted or rejected. Record the characterization, and the DRP's response is reduced to protest, a protest against the characterization, while the 520 million recedes into the background. Record the acts, and the questions land on money and places: when the money will be paid, how the places will be taken up, how the matter its reasons point to is to be questioned separately. The forty percent of the Year 16 share paid by Year 20 is booked at the same address; the sixty percent of that year not paid, and the whole of the Year 17 share, are booked at the same address too.
The same question came up twice more in the system's records, this time about the wording for another kind of act.
In the spring of Year 17, ships and forces of the Plateau Federation entered the territorial waters of Stonegorge and Lamp Island, set up the "Lamp Island Sea-Lane Administration Post" on Lamp Island, required ships using the Southern Lane to register with that post, and detained two unregistered freighters. At the extraordinary session on the fourth day, the Conference of Members adopted a record under clause 1 of Article 18 of the Compact, stating "There is a colonizing entry"; the UCSE, the NUT and Stonegorge voted in favor, and the DRP abstained. The DRP's permanent representative said: "The record should read 'armed entry.' The word 'colonizing' is a characterization of the Plateau Federation." His words were entered in the record.
In the autumn of Year 17, two UCSE ships and a company landed on Great Outer Sandbar, in the Republic of the Sandbars, set up the "Outer Sandbars Provisional Administration Office," registered the island's residents and issued them residence cards, collected fishing fees and replaced the school textbooks. The Republic of the Sandbars is not in the system. In the summer of Year 18, the Conference of Members made a second record under the same clause, again writing "There is a colonizing entry"; the NUT and Stonegorge voted in favor, and the DRP abstained. The DRP's permanent representative said: "The Republic said in the matter of Lamp Island that the word 'colonizing' is a characterization, and that the record should read 'armed entry'; the same goes for the Outer Sandbars." Stonegorge's permanent representative said: "On Lamp Island it was called an administration post; on the Outer Sandbars it is called an administration office." The UCSE made a statement under Article 7(b), which was entered in the record: "No one there resisted, and no one died."
Whether the wording was right on these two occasions, this paper does not judge. To judge the wording, the act must be judged first: the Outer Sandbars occasion is judged in Paper 4, §7, and the Lamp Island occasion in Paper 5, §1; those two places also each state who judged that wording under the rules, and how. Here only the general half is answered: by what the wording is to be decided.
Wording follows the act, not the name of the state. The same kind of act takes the same wording, whether the one acting is a state outside the system or a member, and whichever state it is. Judgment falls on acts: who the acting party is does not change the judgment.
The DRP's words must be answered seriously too. It says that the word "colonizing" is itself a characterization. The weight of this objection is real: if a word carries a verdict on a state, writing it into the record is the same kind of error as the deleted sentence.
But "There is a colonizing entry" records an act: entering by armed force, setting up administration there, requiring the people there and passing ships to register. It says what happened on that occasion; it does not say what kind of state the entering party is. Where the two part can be seen by a test: replace the acting party, change not one other word, and the sentence still holds when applied to the same act by another state (own undertaking).
Try it on the deleted sentence. Replace "the DRP" with another state and leave the rest as it is, and the sentence still says what that state "is" and what it "will not" do. There is no act in it to check against; whether it holds of the other state has nothing to do with what that state did, and only to do with how the speaker sees that state. It fails the test, because it is not a sentence about acts at all.
Then try it on the record of the fourth day, testing only how it is written. The record first states where the ships and forces of the Plateau Federation entered, what they set up, whom they required to register and what ships they detained, and then writes "There is a colonizing entry." Replace "the Plateau Federation" with another state, leave the rest as it is, apply it to the same several things done by that other state, and the sentence is still a sentence about those several things. It is held up by acts, not by the name of a state.
This trial shows only that the sentence is a sentence about acts. More than one wording passes the test: "armed entry" is about acts as well. Which word fits those several acts requires judging the acts first, and is then judged by the Conference of Members under the rules; the test does not choose for it.
The test is content of the normative layer, not a criterion to be ticked off. It says what a sentence of record ought to look like; nor does it judge for anyone whether two acts are the same kind of act. On whether Lamp Island and the Outer Sandbars are the same kind, Stonegorge's "administration post" and "administration office," and the UCSE's "no one there resisted, and no one died," each point one way; those are the acts to be judged in Paper 4, §7, and Paper 5, §1.
In three layers. Recording only acts, with wording that bears the test above, is the normative layer. Article 4 of the Rules on Records, the register of changes, the vote under Article 7(b) of the Compact and the "right to require that its statements be entered in the record" are examples at the rule layer. Whether a particular wording writes "armed entry" or "colonizing entry," and how this is judged under the rules, is the judgment layer: it is judged by those in positions in the Conference of Members, and the reasons and dissent are entered in the record. On the Lamp Island occasion, the DRP's dissent was entered; on the Outer Sandbars occasion, the DRP's dissent and the UCSE's statement were both entered. This series does not judge on the Conference's behalf.
One point is left here. The record records acts, and those who read it may still infer identity from acts: reading that 520 million was not paid, someone will still say "just as expected, that kind of state." This layer is beyond the record's reach. What the record can see to is that it does not itself write so; how readers read is theirs, and the account for a misreading is with the reader (§1). The record of non-performance records shares, timing and reasons as they are, and attributes them to the position that made the decision (§2).
XZ18 Recording acts, not the names of states (carried over from the Theory of the State Prequel, §7). The system's reports and records write only the act, the position that performed it, the documents it relied on and on whom it falls, and do not write what kind of state a state is; they do not prejudge a state's next act by its leaning (the Theory of the State Prequel, §7: a leaning is a direction, not an identity). The same kind of act takes the same wording, whether the one acting is a member or a state outside the system, and whichever state it is. The test is this: replace the acting party, change not one other word, and the sentence still holds when applied to the same act by another state (own undertaking). Recording only acts, and this test, belong to the normative layer; the articles of rules on records, the register of changes and the entering of dissent in the record are examples at the rule layer; how a particular wording is judged under the rules is left to those in positions in the Conference of Members, and the reasons and dissent are entered in the record. The record of non-performance records shares, timing and reasons as they are, and attributes them to the position that made the decision.
§4 Saying It Openly Wins over Time
Before the sharing report went out, the draft appeared in a newspaper in the DRP capital. This was a test for the record: the deleted sentence was now visible to everyone; would those who deleted it be said to be hiding something?
The Secretariat gave no further explanation, nor did it need to. The revision had been entered in the register of changes, which every member can check: how it read before, how it reads after, and that the basis was Article 4 of the Rules on Records. The draft and the revised text were both out in the open, and readers could compare them for themselves. The DRP Foreign Ministry protested against the draft; Stonegorge's permanent representative said the revision lent a veneer; both claims faced the same set of texts set out in the open.
Suppose that the revision had not been registered. Once the draft came out, what people would have seen is this: the report had a sentence, the sentence was gone when the report went out, and no one said who had deleted it or on what basis. Then no one could say what else the Secretariat had changed. With every report after that, readers would first have to ask: has this been changed?
The War Treatise has written of this kind of discounting. What it speaks of is yin-mou (scheming) between war-parties: yin-mou relies on the other's not knowing one's true intent, and may work in the short term, but "once seen through, it fails, and the other permanently keeps guard against all one's postures"; "All future cooperation, agreements, and signals get discounted." (War Treatise §12) It also says: "Real structure does not need maintenance (the real is automatically consistent with itself); falsehood requires continuous maintenance" (ibid.). The War Treatise speaks of what lies between war-parties. Here it is extended to multilateral covenants and signals in ordinary times (own undertaking): once a member's explanation to the system, the grounds it explains for sending forces, the share it owes, or its reasons for not paying, is seen through as false, all its later explanations are discounted; the system's own record is the same: once one change is seen through as a covert change, all later reports are discounted. The extension holds because the reason for the discounting lies not in war but in how, once one has been seen through, the other reads every word one says afterward; covenants and signals in ordinary times count precisely by being read in this way.
The register of changes spares the Secretariat from keeping up the pretense that "this report has never been revised": what is true needs no maintenance; what is false must be maintained without end. Whether the record itself is accurate, and whether the revision conforms to its rules, must still be open to questioning.
Now look at the members' side. The DRP does not pay its share, and its reasons are written in its letter, said openly: the UCSE's freeze, and a sharing formula that takes no account of the fiscal difficulties of the northern districts. The record appends the full text of the letter. Whether the reasons are good is for the readers and the Conference of Members to judge; saying it openly, in itself, gives the account somewhere to be checked against. What followed is all booked at the same address: the Conference of Members decided that the two thousand one hundred would count at half toward the offset; by Year 20 the DRP had paid forty percent of its Year 16 share.
The War Treatise pushes saying it openly to its extreme and calls it yang-mou (open strategy): "placing the plan in the open, and even so, the other cannot but follow"; "yang-mou's strength comes not from information asymmetry but from the structural position-differential itself" (War Treatise §12). The DRP's letter is not yang-mou; it only says things openly. But saying it openly and yang-mou share one thing: neither relies on the other's not knowing. Saying it openly puts reasons and stance where questions can reach them, and no longer depends on the other's not knowing to keep them up; whether what is said is true, and whether it is carried out later, must still be verified.
From here the qualified form of reputation and checks can be stated: state the bottom line openly, with real capacity behind it (Paper 4, XZ23). A member that will not pay says openly that it will not pay, and why; one that says it will send forces must have behind it the capacity to send them, and the determination its own state has already carried through. Deterrence is the same. The War Treatise says: "depth of cultivation is the foundation on which any deterrence stays credible over the long run." (War Treatise §10) It originally speaks of the deterrence of war-parties; here it is extended to what members and the system say outward (own undertaking): whether a word is credible over the long run rests on the depth of cultivation within the party that says it, not on how loudly it is said.
It may be said that saying it openly loses in the short term. In saying openly that it will not pay, the DRP as good as admits its non-performance; had it equivocated and put things off again and again, it would have left one handle fewer against itself. The weight of this objection is that in the short term this is indeed so: non-performance said openly lies out in the open word for word, while what is quietly put off appears in the record only as "not paid."
But the account is booked the same way. Whether the non-payment is said openly or kept quiet, the 520 million is booked in the DRP's name; not paid is not paid. The difference between the two lies not in this item but in what follows: the party that quietly delays has what it says later discounted; when the party that said it openly later says "forty percent has been paid," readers hold a claim they can check, and need not first guess what share it is admitting to; whether it really has paid must still be checked against the records of payment and receipt. The War Treatise says: "Yang-mou does not win in the short term; yang-mou wins in time" (War Treatise §12). Where saying it openly wins, too, can be seen only over time.
The measure must be made clear. Saying it openly is the direction of the qualified form; it sets up no separate obligation on members: what a member explains to the system, and how far, follows the covenants it has acknowledged (Paper 2, XZ12). Which of a member's explanations is seen through as false is judged by the peers who read it and by the channels within each state; the system only records, and does not judge who has lied. This step is at the judgment layer.
This section leaves a few points. This series does not judge whether the DRP's reasons hold (§2). Winning over time is a tendency of structure, not a guarantee: the party that tells the truth does not necessarily win in every matter; this is the same measure as the Theory of the State's not guaranteeing peace (Theory of the State Paper 5, §7).
The register of changes lets the revision bear being seen. Bearing being seen is not yet being right. Kant gave a test of publicity in Appendix II of Perpetual Peace; Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, has already checked against it, together with Kant's own statement that this principle is "merely negative," and the sentence saying that one cannot infer the converse, that maxims which can bear publicity are for that reason also just. This paper does not redo the test; it points there.
XZ19 Deception is discounted; saying it openly wins over time (carried over from War Treatise §12). The War Treatise originally speaks of what lies between war-parties: once yin-mou is seen through, all later cooperation, agreements and signals are discounted; real structure needs no maintenance, and falsehood needs continuous maintenance; yang-mou does not win in the short term, but wins in time. Here it is extended to multilateral covenants and signals in ordinary times (own undertaking): once a member's explanation to the system (the grounds it explains for sending forces, its share, its reasons) is seen through as false, all its later explanations are discounted; the system's own record is the same: if changes go unregistered and one is seen through, all later reports are discounted. Stating the bottom line openly, with real capacity behind it, is the qualified form of reputation and checks (Paper 4, XZ23); whether a word is credible over the long run rests on the depth of cultivation, not on how loudly it is said (War Treatise §10; own undertaking). Saying it openly is a direction, and sets up no separate obligation on members; which explanation is seen through as false is judged by the peers who read it and by the channels within each state, and the system only records. Winning over time is a tendency of structure, not a guarantee.
§5 Mutual Recognition in Ordinary Times
A member has not paid its share for two years, and gives another member's doings as its reason. Between the system and that member, what remains besides an account?
The War Treatise, speaking of peacetime, says that not fighting is also preparing for war, and that what is prepared is not military strength but the deepening of cultivation in peacetime. It lists several things, the first two of which are: "One, keep the channels of fa-mou and fa-jiao open." "Two, maintain mutual recognition of subjectivity." It also says: "When cultivation does not keep deepening in peacetime, the foundation in wartime is thin" (War Treatise §10; fa-mou: attacking through strategy; fa-jiao: attacking through diplomacy). It originally speaks of a society and its adversary in peacetime; here it is extended to a system of cooperation and its members in ordinary times (own undertaking): the channels of dealing stay open, and each still treats the other as a party that can be questioned and can also answer; this is the foundation of cooperation. If mutual recognition in ordinary times wears thin, then when the time comes to respond together, the foundation is thin too.
What mutual recognition is must be made clear first, or it will be read as goodwill, or as endorsement. The Conflict Treatise, treating the mutual acknowledgment of two persons where they are incommensurable, says that what is acknowledged is that "neither party has authority to cancel the other's undertaking on their behalf," and goes on: "Only the origin position is acknowledged; no permission for action is issued." "Acknowledgment does not mean their action may therefore be allowed, does not mean I must bear its consequences, does not mean public rules may not limit it, and does not cancel the harm or rights ledgers." (Conflict Treatise §25) The Theory of the State has already extended these sentences to states (Theory of the State N26); here they are extended again, to the system and its members (own undertaking). When the system and the members recognize the DRP, what they acknowledge is that its acts issue from its positions and that the account is booked in its name. This does not permit its non-payment, does not mean that the other members must bear the consequences of the non-payment, does not mean that the Compact and the sharing decisions cannot bind it, and does not cancel the account of the 520 million.
So mutual recognition stands alongside questioning, recording and withdrawing cooperation; they do not exclude one another. The system put questions to the DRP about its citizenship decree, and recorded its non-payment on sharing; if members adjust their cooperation with it by the account, that is the same. None of these is a refusal to recognize it; conversely, recognizing it is not letting these go.
One more thing must be made clear: the system does not presuppose that its members already trust one another. How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6), treating the premises of institutions, keeps the default toward persons apart from the presumption about a particular operation: what evidence can defeat is a presumption about a particular operation, and "On that basis authority may be limited, requirements refused, cooperation suspended, and protection of third parties initiated"; so its proviso "judges operations, not persons." The same place also writes: "the framework's non dubito does not achieve co-construction on the members' behalf." (F6 §2.1) The default there is toward persons; a state is not an end, and this series does not extend that layer of default to states. What is extended are two other things (own undertaking): what evidence defeats is a presumption about a particular act of a state, and it does not license the system to pass an overall judgment on a state on that basis, which is the same line as §3; and the system's framework does not achieve mutual trust on the members' behalf; what it can do is keep open the positions in which members can still question, answer and refuse one another.
What does mutual recognition in ordinary times look like when it lands on a matter? Go back to the questions put about the DRP's citizenship decree. When questioned, the DRP did not walk out. It answered: internal affairs, no retroactive effect. It wrote its counter-question to the UCSE into the answer: in the winter of Year 9 the UCSE had revoked the citizenship of a commentator living in the NUT, and Article 14 of the UCSE's Membership Act still required the parents of stateless children to have resided lawfully for five full years; "The UCSE has not given these children citizenship either." The record entered the answer in full, that paragraph included. The DRP also raised an objection on recusal, saying that the Deputy Secretary-General holding NUT citizenship should have recused as well; the objection, too, was entered in the record. In the summer of Year 15, the UCSE changed its own law. The party questioned asked back, and the party asking was questioned in turn; the channel was open at both ends. This is just what mutual recognition in ordinary times is doing.
The sharing matter is the same. The DRP Foreign Ministry protested that "The Secretariat's people are characterizing the Republic." Deleting the characterization treats the DRP still as a construct whose acts issue from positions, and which can be questioned and can answer (§3); the DRP's protest, too, was spoken within the same channel. Afterward it paid forty percent of its Year 16 share, and the Conference of Members counted the two thousand one hundred at half toward the offset. Both sides are still within this channel.
What does failure look like? In the same section, the War Treatise wrote of what an alliance coming apart in peacetime looks like: "Mutual recognition among the Alliance's members gradually weakened, and interaction among subjects within it diminished." That sentence was originally said of an alliance in a fictional world; this paper does not use that example, and takes only the sentence, as a diagnosis: failure need not be an exit; it can be mutual recognition wearing thinner little by little, fewer questions asked, fewer answered, members drifting away one by one.
It may be said that to speak of mutual recognition toward a member that does not pay, and gives another matter as its reason, is indulgence. The weight of this objection is that if mutual recognition meant letting it off, every further payment by the other members would be one more loss to them.
But mutual recognition is not permission, and does not cancel the account. The account is booked as before, the 520 million in full; cooperation can be withdrawn by the account, and that is a check, not force (Paper 4). Mutual recognition sees to only two things: the channel is not closed, and the other is still treated as a party that can answer. Only a member treated as a party that can answer can be questioned at all; treat it as a party already characterized, and the questions have no object.
This section leaves two points. Mutual recognition is written as a direction, and its depth is not measured; this paper gives no scale for how far members must drift apart before it counts as failure, and leaves that to judgment in positions. Nor does this paper guarantee that mutual recognition will not weaken: a visible account and an open channel are a foundation, not a guarantee.
XZ20 Mutual recognition in ordinary times is the foundation of cooperation (carried over from War Treatise §10). In ordinary times the channels of dealing are kept open and mutual recognition of subjectivity is maintained; when cultivation does not keep deepening in ordinary times, the foundation in wartime is thin (War Treatise §10 originally speaks of a society and its adversary in peacetime; here it is extended to the system and its members in ordinary times; own undertaking). Mutual recognition acknowledges only the origin position, issues no permission for action, and does not cancel the harm or rights ledgers (Conflict Treatise §25; Theory of the State N26 has already extended this to states; here it is extended to the system and its members; own undertaking); so mutual recognition stands alongside questioning, recording and withdrawing cooperation. The system does not presuppose that its members already trust one another: what evidence defeats is a presumption about a particular act of a state, not an overall judgment on a state; the system's framework does not achieve mutual trust on the members' behalf, and only keeps open the positions in which members can still question, answer and refuse one another (F6 §2.1 originally speaks of an institution and its subjects; here it is extended to the system and its member states; own undertaking). What failure in ordinary times looks like is mutual recognition weakening and members drifting away one by one (the diagnosis of War Treatise §10). Mutual recognition is written as a direction, and is not measured; how far the drifting apart must go to count as failure is left to judgment in positions.
§6 The Account Follows the Address
Addresses change. A member can exit, can be suspended or expelled, can apply to rejoin; the system itself can be dissolved. When the status of an address changes, what becomes of the account at that address?
This paper's answer is that none of these rewrites the record. Acts before exit remain on record. Re-accession does not wash the account clean; acts during the period of exit, too, remain on record and remain open to questions. Expulsion does not write off the account. On dissolution, the records are handed, matter by matter, to the member states concerned for safekeeping, and do not vanish along with the system.
The Conflict Treatise, treating mutual acknowledgment between two persons, wrote of the side of leaving: "Where shared resources, third-party responsibility or procedural obligation remain, departure does not close those accounts and can only pass to arrangement or arbitration." (Conflict Treatise §25) It originally speaks of two persons after each has gone their own way; here it is extended to a member's leaving the system (own undertaking): when a member exits, the acts it performed while in the system, the obligations arising from them, and the procedures already begun are not settled because it has gone. The clause in the same section, that acknowledgment "does not cancel the harm or rights ledgers," applies here as it stands. The Theory of Government says: "Decisions can be final: a particular matter can be answered and closed. Positions cannot be final: no position may monopolize the power to shut the door" (Theory of Government G36). Exit is a state's decision; what it settles is that state's position in the system from then on; it cannot by itself close the earlier accounts along with it.
The Compact writes this into several articles, all of them examples at the rule layer. Clause 3 of Article 25: "Exit does not affect obligations arising from acts before the exit, nor procedures already begun." Clause 4 of Article 27: "Suspension and expulsion do not release the member from obligations arising from its earlier acts." Article 30: before dissolution, follow-up arrangements are made, unsettled petitions are given a destination, the archives are handed, matter by matter, to the members concerned for safekeeping, and the sharing accounts are cleared. Article 27 does not fully agree with this series' direction: its suspension suspends only the right to vote, which is narrower than this series' direction; its conditions for expulsion are not limited to line-crossing, which is wider than this series' direction (Papers 4 and 7).
One matter shows where these words land. In the winter of Year 17, Stonegorge gave notice of exit under Article 25, to take effect in the winter of Year 18. During the notice period, the Three-Borders Petitions Committee twice put questions to Stonegorge on the petition concerning the rules on going out of the Eastfield camp, and Stonegorge answered neither time. This petition, and another petition against Stonegorge, the Committee heard and concluded as usual under Article 25, giving its opinions in Year 19; Stonegorge did not reply. In the autumn of Year 20, Stonegorge applied to rejoin. In the discussion, the UCSE's permanent representative listed the two petitions left unanswered during the period of exit as an item to be dealt with; Stonegorge's representative said that Stonegorge was willing to state, for every common measure from then on and item by item, whether it would take part, "and to reply to those two petitions."
The principle and this matter must be written separately. The principle is: questions not answered are not settled when exit takes effect (Paper 7, XZ47). How these facts are judged, and where Stonegorge's not answering during the notice period, and its not answering after the exit took effect, each land, is in Paper 7, §§1, 3 and 4; what conditions to set on re-accession in view of these two petitions is the business of Paper 7, XZ48. Here only one thing is looked at: as of the autumn of Year 20, those two petitions were still booked at the address of Stonegorge. The UCSE could list them because the record was there.
Positions at an address also change hands. Stonegorge changed its Chief of the Commonwealth twice in these years. In the autumn of Year 17 there were elections to the Commonwealth Chamber; the new majority chose a new Chief of the Commonwealth, and she said on taking office: "The system gave us a record, and Lamp Island is still in the Plateau Federation's hands." Stonegorge then gave notice of exit. In the spring of Year 20, after the Commonwealth Chamber passed a motion of no confidence, early elections were held, and a new majority again chose a new Chief of the Commonwealth; Stonegorge then applied to rejoin. The failure to answer during the notice period took place during the term of the Chief of the Commonwealth chosen in the autumn of Year 17; from which position's decision the non-answer came is not recorded. The one who said Stonegorge was willing to reply was the permanent representative at the time of the Year 20 application.
How is the account divided? The address's obligation stands as before: that the two petitions must be answered is a matter for the address of Stonegorge, and is not settled because the Chief of the Commonwealth has changed. A person's account goes with the person: if the non-answer came from the decision of some person in some position, that item is booked to that position and that person (§2). Suspension is the same: once a suspension is lifted, what is restored is that address's rights in the common procedures; what those in positions did during the suspension is not thereby settled. Theory of the State N39 attributes the account to positions and persons, speaking of what lies within a state; here it is extended to the members of the system, and to the times when a position at the address changes hands (own undertaking). The address does not change; what changes is the person in the position; so the address's account and the person's account must go separately. How these matters are judged is in Paper 7, §3.
The sharing matter is the same. By Year 20 the DRP had paid forty percent of its Year 16 share; the rest remains booked in the DRP's name. Whether those in the positions of the DRP Foreign Ministry changed in these years is not recorded; changed or not, the share is booked at the address, and the letter at the position that wrote it.
It may be said that re-accession is a new covenant, that a new covenant starts on a new page, and that old accounts should not be carried into it. The weight of this objection is that re-accession is indeed a new covenant: under Article 26 of the Compact, re-accession is a new admission under Article 7(a), requiring the consent of all parties, and each member may put forward conditions (Paper 1, XZ1; Paper 7, XZ48). The DRP's permanent representative said as much on the Stonegorge occasion: "No further conditions should be set; leaving is a right, and so is coming back."
But what a new covenant covenants for is what comes after. Settling one matter does not settle everything (Paper 1, XZ3): a new covenant settles this one matter, and does not rewrite what any party did before. Re-accession can be made without any conditions at all, and the two petitions remain booked in Stonegorge's name all the same: whether the account is there, and whether coming back requires conditions, are two separate things.
Here, too, things are said separately. That the account is not written off by exit, expulsion, re-accession or dissolution is a norm; Articles 25, 27 and 30 of the Compact are examples at the rule layer; what conditions to set on re-accession in view of old accounts is left to the judgment of the parties' political leaders, as agreed, and the account falls on the positions and persons that make the judgment (Paper 7, XZ48); this step is at the judgment layer.
This section leaves two points. That the account is booked is not the same as its having landed: the forty percent has been paid, the rest not yet; whether it has landed is recognized by covenant or by award, not decided by one party alone (Paper 4, XZ22). What cannot be provided for on dissolution is registered as a remainder, as it is, and it is not declared that there is no longer any shortfall (Paper 7, XZ51). How exit is reviewed, the floor for re-accession, the conditions for expulsion: the procedural side of all of these is in Paper 7.
XZ21 The account follows the address (carried over from Conflict Treatise §25 and Theory of Government G36). Exit, expulsion, re-accession and dissolution do not rewrite the record: acts before exit remain on record; re-accession does not wash the account clean, and acts during the period of exit remain on record and open to questions; expulsion does not write off the account; on dissolution, the records are handed, matter by matter, to the member states concerned for safekeeping. Recognition does not cancel the harm or rights ledgers; nor does leaving close shared resources, third-party responsibility or procedural obligation, which can only pass to arrangement or arbitration (Conflict Treatise §25 originally speaks of two persons; here it is extended to members and the system; own undertaking). Decisions can be final; positions cannot be final (Theory of Government G36). For the procedural side, see Paper 7. Read together with XZ17: when a position at the address changes hands, the address's obligation stands as before; a person's account goes with the person, and is booked to the position and person that made the decision; once a suspension is lifted, what is restored is that address's rights in the common procedures, and the person's account is not thereby settled (own undertaking).
Where This Paper Stops
This paper has proved only these things: when there is no superior to enforce, the account is still at the address. Reputation is an account visible from outside, a distributed observation, and the system sets up no centralized identifying authority. Records are attributed to positions and persons; the account under the system's name and the account of the member states are booked at both addresses; the record is itself an act, and changes to it are registered; a record is a trace, not a verdict. Records record only acts, not the names of states; the same kind of act takes the same wording, and the test is that, with the acting party replaced and not one other word changed, the sentence still holds when applied to the same act by another state. Deception is discounted; saying it openly wins over time. Mutual recognition in ordinary times is the foundation of cooperation; mutual recognition is not permission, and the system does not achieve mutual trust on the members' behalf. The account follows the address, and does not vanish with exit, expulsion, re-accession or dissolution; when a position at the address changes hands, the address's account and the person's account go separately.
What it has not proved: how reputation is measured; the test of publicity itself, which Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, has already checked against Kant, and to which this paper points. Whether the wording of the two records, on Lamp Island and on the Outer Sandbars, was right: this paper answers only by what it is to be decided; the two acts are judged in Paper 5, §1, and Paper 4, §7, and who judged the wording under the rules, and how, is also written in those two places. The procedural side of exit, expulsion, re-accession and dissolution is in Paper 7. Whether the account has landed, and how peers withdraw cooperation by the account, is in Paper 4. Kant reads the league as the negative surrogate of a world republic; how this series reads that ordering is in Paper 8.
The remainder it leaves: how readers read a record is beyond the record's reach, and the account for a misreading is with the reader. How far mutual recognition must weaken before it counts as failure is not measured, and is left to judgment in positions. Whether the DRP's reasons for not paying hold, this paper does not judge. For the UCSE's late payment, the sharing report recorded only the length of the delay, and left out the position and the document; this is pointed out as it is; whether the analyst's transfer had anything to do with that sentence is not recorded.
Once the account is visible, how peers withdraw cooperation by the account is taken up in Paper 4.
The Six Propositions of This Paper
XZ16 Reputation is an account visible from outside. To recognize a state is to acknowledge that its acts issue from its positions and that the account is booked in its name (Theory of the State N26); the system's record sets the account at this address out in the open (the Theory of the State originally speaks of one state recognizing another; here it is extended to the system and its members; own undertaking). Whether a construct lets itself be questioned, and how it answers when questioned, is visible from outside (War Treatise §16 originally speaks of a war-party's allowing questioning; here it is extended to the system and its members in ordinary times; own undertaking); this paper calls this account visible from outside reputation. When there is no superior to enforce, the account is still at the address, and peers judge for themselves by the account and adjust their cooperation (Theory of the State N36; for withdrawing cooperation, see Paper 4). Reputation is a distributed observation, with no centralized identifying authority (Moral Law P9 §5.3 originally speaks of identifying a person's condition; here it is extended to states; own undertaking); the system's record is one place where this account is kept, and does not read it on the parties' behalf. Reputation counts through the parties who see the account making their decisions by it: whether to trust the recorded party's covenants, whether to give it cooperation (own undertaking); whether the recorded party cares about its own reputation is not within this paper's discussion. Reputation is not the whole of what counts (Power Theory P1 §III). Reputation does not count on its own; it counts together with covenants, questions and checks (Paper 4, XZ23). Reputation is not measured; the account for a misreading is with the reader.
XZ17 Records are attributed to positions and persons (carried over from Theory of the State N39 and Institution Theory Z7a). Decisions and reasons are made public, and records are attributed to particular positions and persons (Theory of the State N39 originally speaks of a state; here it is extended to the system and its members; own undertaking). The construct is the address of attribution, not the subject of the act; the address and those who actually made the decision do not hide each other (Institution Theory Z7a). What is made in the system's name is traced back to the positions and votes that made it (Power Theory P3 §V.5; own undertaking); the account under the system's name is with the system, and also with the member states and positions that voted for it and carry it out; it is booked at both addresses, and neither transfers it to the other (Theory of Government G25 originally speaks of two levels of government; here it is extended to the system and its member states; own undertaking). The record is itself an act: its account falls on the positions that drafted, changed and adopted it, and changes are registered. A record is a trace, not a verdict (Conflict Treatise §26; own undertaking): it records acts and reasons, and does not judge whether the reasons hold; when the reasons for non-performance point to another member, the two accounts are each booked at their own address, and that other matter is questioned separately, by its own object. On what happens when a position at the address changes hands, read together with XZ21.
XZ18 Recording acts, not the names of states (carried over from the Theory of the State Prequel, §7). The system's reports and records write only the act, the position that performed it, the documents it relied on and on whom it falls, and do not write what kind of state a state is; they do not prejudge a state's next act by its leaning (the Theory of the State Prequel, §7: a leaning is a direction, not an identity). The same kind of act takes the same wording, whether the one acting is a member or a state outside the system, and whichever state it is. The test is this: replace the acting party, change not one other word, and the sentence still holds when applied to the same act by another state (own undertaking). Recording only acts, and this test, belong to the normative layer; the articles of rules on records, the register of changes and the entering of dissent in the record are examples at the rule layer; how a particular wording is judged under the rules is left to those in positions in the Conference of Members, and the reasons and dissent are entered in the record. The record of non-performance records shares, timing and reasons as they are, and attributes them to the position that made the decision.
XZ19 Deception is discounted; saying it openly wins over time (carried over from War Treatise §12). The War Treatise originally speaks of what lies between war-parties: once yin-mou is seen through, all later cooperation, agreements and signals are discounted; real structure needs no maintenance, and falsehood needs continuous maintenance; yang-mou does not win in the short term, but wins in time. Here it is extended to multilateral covenants and signals in ordinary times (own undertaking): once a member's explanation to the system (the grounds it explains for sending forces, its share, its reasons) is seen through as false, all its later explanations are discounted; the system's own record is the same: if changes go unregistered and one is seen through, all later reports are discounted. Stating the bottom line openly, with real capacity behind it, is the qualified form of reputation and checks (Paper 4, XZ23); whether a word is credible over the long run rests on the depth of cultivation, not on how loudly it is said (War Treatise §10; own undertaking). Saying it openly is a direction, and sets up no separate obligation on members; which explanation is seen through as false is judged by the peers who read it and by the channels within each state, and the system only records. Winning over time is a tendency of structure, not a guarantee.
XZ20 Mutual recognition in ordinary times is the foundation of cooperation (carried over from War Treatise §10). In ordinary times the channels of dealing are kept open and mutual recognition of subjectivity is maintained; when cultivation does not keep deepening in ordinary times, the foundation in wartime is thin (War Treatise §10 originally speaks of a society and its adversary in peacetime; here it is extended to the system and its members in ordinary times; own undertaking). Mutual recognition acknowledges only the origin position, issues no permission for action, and does not cancel the harm or rights ledgers (Conflict Treatise §25; Theory of the State N26 has already extended this to states; here it is extended to the system and its members; own undertaking); so mutual recognition stands alongside questioning, recording and withdrawing cooperation. The system does not presuppose that its members already trust one another: what evidence defeats is a presumption about a particular act of a state, not an overall judgment on a state; the system's framework does not achieve mutual trust on the members' behalf, and only keeps open the positions in which members can still question, answer and refuse one another (F6 §2.1 originally speaks of an institution and its subjects; here it is extended to the system and its member states; own undertaking). What failure in ordinary times looks like is mutual recognition weakening and members drifting away one by one (the diagnosis of War Treatise §10). Mutual recognition is written as a direction, and is not measured; how far the drifting apart must go to count as failure is left to judgment in positions.
XZ21 The account follows the address (carried over from Conflict Treatise §25 and Theory of Government G36). Exit, expulsion, re-accession and dissolution do not rewrite the record: acts before exit remain on record; re-accession does not wash the account clean, and acts during the period of exit remain on record and open to questions; expulsion does not write off the account; on dissolution, the records are handed, matter by matter, to the member states concerned for safekeeping. Recognition does not cancel the harm or rights ledgers; nor does leaving close shared resources, third-party responsibility or procedural obligation, which can only pass to arrangement or arbitration (Conflict Treatise §25 originally speaks of two persons; here it is extended to members and the system; own undertaking). Decisions can be final; positions cannot be final (Theory of Government G36). For the procedural side, see Paper 7. Read together with XZ17: when a position at the address changes hands, the address's obligation stands as before; a person's account goes with the person, and is booked to the position and person that made the decision; once a suspension is lifted, what is restored is that address's rights in the common procedures, and the person's account is not thereby settled (own undertaking).
References
All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. The version records used for sentence-by-sentence verification are given in the accompanying audit table.
I · This system
Qin, H. (2026). How Is Institution Possible: From Inter-Ontological Remainder to Co-Constructive Framework (SAE Foundational Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19328662
Qin, H. (2026). To Whom the Ought Is Addressed (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23269635
Qin, H. (2026). Levels (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413192
Qin, H. (2026). Questioning and Bearing (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413511
Qin, H. (2026). What a State Is Not (SAE Theory of the State, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584292
Qin, H. (2026). One Another, with No Superior (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584346
Qin, H. (2026). Questioning the Last Layer (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584356
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). SAE War Treatise: How Cultivation Is Not Swallowed by War Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19656617
Qin, H. (2026). The Institutional Architecture of Mixed Reality: The Phase-Transition Evolution of Cultivation and Colonization (SAE Moral Law, Paper 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20262737
Qin, H. (2026). On the Origin of Power · Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20370224
Qin, H. (2026). On the Recognition of Power · Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20480134
II · External works (public-domain originals, tier A)
Kant, I. (1795). Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf. Königsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius. Project Gutenberg, EBook #46873. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46873
Kant, I. (1917). Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay. Trans. M. Campbell Smith (1st ed. 1903; 3rd impression). London: George Allen & Unwin. Project Gutenberg, EBook #50922. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922
Interfaces
Main upstream: the Theory of the State Prequel, §7, and Theory of the State N26, N36, N39; Institution Theory Z6, Z7a; Theory of Government G25, G36; Conflict Treatise §25, §26; War Treatise §10, §12, §16 (for each extension, see the text).
Also used: Moral Law P9 §2.5, §5.3; Power Theory P1 §III and P3 §V.5; Theory of the State Paper 5, §5, §7; F6 §2.1.
Interfacing: Kant (Perpetual Peace, Second Section, Second Definitive Article, in the text, in §1; tier A, per the first edition of 1795, compared with Smith's English translation). For the publicity of Appendix II, the paper points to Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, and does not redo it.
This series: the Prequel, §2 (the criterion of force), §7, and §11 (the three layers); Paper 1, XZ1, XZ3; the opening of Paper 2, Paper 2, §2 (XZ10), and XZ12; Paper 4, XZ22, XZ23 and §7; Paper 5, §1; Paper 7, §§1, 3 and 4, and XZ47, XZ48, XZ51; Paper 8, XZ53 and its interfacing.
Handed to Paper 4: once the account is visible, peers withdraw cooperation by the account.