Exit and Switching
退出与改接
When a member wants to exit an external arrangement, how is the exit reviewed, and by whom? This paper takes up the three questions handed over by the Theory of the State: how such an exit is to be reviewed, and by whom; whether a rule can also hand to the outside the decision to change that rule itself; and whether a state that has locked its exit in the hands of the outside is still at the state's end. The answer: exit is a change of structure in this state, questioned inside this state, and not decided alone by the position being questioned; the system can review and record, and may require a notice period and a transition period in the covenant, but cannot veto, and the notice period may not be made into a lock. Any arrangement that in fact acquires force over members is a superior, and locking exit uses the same criterion; where a member has set an external consent on its own exit, changing that consent is still its own affair, and the outside cannot stop it except by force. Four steps follow: exit does not write off the account, in three stages; a member is free to leave, but coming back needs consent, and re-accession neither washes the account clean nor lets a state come back bringing a colonization under way; colonizing after first exiting does not count as coming from the system, but there is no exiting, colonizing and then rejoining; the system may expel a member under strict conditions, expulsion does not write off the account and does not change where the colonizing comes from, and its cost is that, for those reached by that state's acts, the road of petition against its acts thereafter is closed within the system. When the system dissolves, it does its best to make follow-up arrangements, and what cannot be arranged is registered as a remainder. The paper opens with the DRP's exit from Article 14 of the Compact while it was being questioned, and draws on Stonegorge's exit and its application to rejoin, a hypothetical case in which the DRP sets an external consent on exit in its own law, a hypothetical case in which Stonegorge enters another state after its exit, and the proposal to expel the UCSE. It interfaces in the text with Grotius, and at the end converses with the "continuously free association" of Appendix II of Kant's Perpetual Peace. The paper has seven propositions (XZ45 to XZ51), 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 13, a court of the Democratic Republic of Purposes (DRP) sentenced two people, one to twelve years and the other to nine, on a charge of "collaboration with the enemy." They had been members of the Wheat Plain Provisional Self-Government Committee. That committee had been selected when the Office of Defense of the United City-States of Ends (UCSE) set up an administration office in the Wheat Plain buffer zone in the winter of Year 9; in the spring of Year 11 the two states signed the Withdrawal Agreement, and after the UCSE withdrew, nine of the committee's eleven members left with the UCSE forces and were granted asylum in the UCSE, while the two who stayed were prosecuted by the DRP (Theory of the State Paper 6, §4, has told this story). The trial was not public, and defense counsel was appointed by the court. In the summer of Year 15, the DRP's Supreme Court dismissed the appeal.
By then the DRP was already a member of the Three-Borders Cooperation System. The system was formed by the Three-Borders Compact (the Compact), which the three states, the UCSE, the Nation Union of Telos (NUT) and the DRP, signed at Three Borders in the spring of Year 13. The Stonegorge Commonwealth (Stonegorge) joined in the autumn of Year 14, as the fourth member. Article 14 of the Compact establishes the Three-Borders Petitions Committee: where a member's acts touch on the matters listed in Article 4 of the Compact and in Annex II, such as life, the person, and detention without trial, those affected may petition after exhausting the remedies within that member. What the Committee gives are opinions, not rulings; the member petitioned against answers in writing within six months, and the answer is made public. A member may declare its exit from this article; the declaration takes effect twelve months after it is made; petitions already submitted before it takes effect are heard and concluded as usual, and those submitted after it takes effect are not taken up. The articles of the Compact, the organs of the system, and the laws of the various states written of below are examples set up by this series; this series does not claim that they are the best design; they are here so that judgment has facts to rest on.
When the DRP's People's Assembly ratified the Compact in the autumn of Year 13, it took a separate vote to accept Article 14: 318 votes to 247. Article 14 took effect for the DRP from the spring of Year 14. In the spring of Year 16, through a lawyer engaged by their families and by one of the nine, the two petitioned the Committee against the DRP; the member of the Committee holding DRP citizenship did not take part in the deliberations. The ruling came before Article 14 took effect for the DRP; the dismissal of the appeal and the detention came after. The Committee took up the petition under clause 6 of Article 14, which allows it to take up acts from before entry into force whose effects continue after it. In the summer of Year 17, the DRP's Foreign Ministry answered in writing with a single sentence: "The trial was conducted in accordance with the laws of the Republic." That autumn, the Committee asked the DRP to submit the trial record and to allow a member of the Committee to visit the two in prison.
In the spring of Year 18, the DRP's Foreign Ministry, with the approval of the DRP President, declared its exit from Article 14 under clause 5 of that article. The declaration read: "Article 14 has been used to interfere in the Republic's administration of justice. The Republic will make no further answer on this petition." The DRP's National Purposes Commission issued an opinion: "Exit is consistent with the national purposes." The People's Assembly took no vote on the exit. Sixty-one members of the Assembly jointly demanded a vote, saying that "accepting Article 14 was voted on by the People's Assembly, and exit should also be voted on by the People's Assembly"; the Presiding Board of the People's Assembly did not put it on the agenda.
In the summer of Year 18, the Conference of Members passed a record by 3 to 0, the DRP not taking part in the vote: "While the Petitions Committee was putting questions to it on a petition, the DRP declared its exit from Article 14. Under clause 5 of Article 14, the declaration takes effect twelve months after it is made; petitions already submitted before it takes effect are heard and concluded as usual." The statement of the DRP's permanent representative was entered in the record: "Exiting an article is a member's right." The Committee went on hearing this petition and three other petitions already submitted against the DRP, and the DRP gave no further answer. In the winter of Year 18, the Committee gave its opinion on the case of the two: it asked the DRP to hold a public retrial and to allow visits. The DRP did not answer within six months; in the summer of Year 19, the Conference of Members recorded that no answer had come. After the exit took effect in the spring of Year 19, the Committee returned seven newly received petitions against the DRP, on the ground of clause 5 of Article 14: "Those submitted after it takes effect are not taken up." The UCSE's Office of External Affairs, through the liaison office at Three Borders, twice raised the situation of the two with the DRP's Foreign Ministry. As of Year 20, the two were still in detention, and one of them had been moved to the prison hospital.
This matter falls on several groups of people: the two from Wheat Plain; the petitioners of the seven petitions returned after the spring of Year 19; and everyone reached thereafter by the DRP's acts who could otherwise have petitioned against the DRP on the matters listed in Annex II. What must be looked at is the fifth of the five oughts: a road within reach by which the DRP can be questioned. Article 14 was exactly such a road, and it is exactly what the DRP exited. Before this, the DRP had accepted Article 14 for four years; the Committee had taken up the petition of the two under it; and the rule of exit was written in clause 5 of Article 14.
In this matter several things lie on top of one another. What the DRP exited was precisely the item under which it was being questioned. What decided the exit was the Foreign Ministry, the very body answering the questions, with the President's approval; the People's Assembly, which had voted to accept the article, did not vote this time. The system made a record and did not stand in the way. The two remain in detention, and the seven later petitions were returned.
The Theory of the State said in Paper 1, §5: "Exiting a treaty, ending or narrowing an arrangement admitting individual petitions, switching to another external body: all are decisions of this state's positions." It went on to ask: "How such decisions are to be reviewed, and by whom, whether by handing them to the outside to judge by rules set in advance, or by having one place at this level judge; whether a rule can also hand to the outside the decision to change that rule itself; whether a state that has locked its exit in the hands of the outside is still at this end of the definition: these are questions of how cooperation between states is arranged; this series acknowledges them as a remainder and hands them to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation." In the same place it established only one sentence, that external questioning cannot be cancelled: this state "can close one channel, but it cannot cancel the questioning of it by other states, by the people of other states, and by those affected" (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5).
This paper takes up these three questions and goes further. §1 asks how exit is reviewed and by whom, and what authority the system has. §2 asks what a system is if it can in fact block exit, and what follows when a rule hands to the outside the authority to review its own repeal. §3 asks where the earlier account lies after exit. §4 asks how a member that has left comes back, and §5 what of one that first exits and then enters another state. §6 asks whether the system can expel a member, and §7 what the system leaves behind when it dissolves itself. §8 is a conversation with Kant.
Where judgment is required, this series speaks in three layers: the normative layer, the rule layer and the judgment layer; how to read them is set out in the Prequel, §11. In each section this paper states which sentence is a norm, which item is a suggested rule or an example, and which step is left to the judgment of those in positions. In judging a matter, this paper reads the facts by the norm, writes only as far as the side the facts point to, and states who made the judgment in that matter; how a particular act is judged under the rules is left to those positions.
§1 Exit Is Questioned Inside; the System Can Review It but Cannot Veto It
When a member wants to leave, who reviews it? The two easiest answers are both wrong. One says that the system reviews it, and that a member which does not pass the review may not leave; then the system holds a lock. The other says that this is the member's own affair, and that the position there which makes the decision to exit has the say; then a position that is being questioned can shut the questioning by exiting. In the DRP's case, both dangers were in plain view.
Exit is an act of this state. The Theory of the State says: "Suspending or exiting a treaty is itself an act of this state" (Theory of the State N24). The original sentence speaks of treaties between two states; a member's exiting an article of a multi-state system is the same kind of act, only the other side has changed from one state to several (own undertaking). Being an act of this state, it is a change of structure in this state, and is questioned inside this state. The road set out in Paper 1 of the Theory of the State applies here as it stands: where a decision concerns the position being questioned, that position does not decide it on its own.
Look at the DRP's exit in this light. The declaration came from the Foreign Ministry, which is precisely the position answering the Committee's questions; it was approved by the President. Acceptance of Article 14 was voted on by the People's Assembly; at the exit, the People's Assembly took no vote. Sixty-one members demanded a vote, and the Presiding Board did not put it on the agenda. Through which positions the decision to exit ought to pass under the DRP's law is not recorded, and this paper does not read the DRP's own law on the DRP's behalf. The facts point to only one thing: the decision to exit was made by the position being questioned; the road that would have had it questioned inside, the joint demand of the sixty-one members, stopped at the Presiding Board. This road is the DRP's internal affair. The system does not answer on behalf of the People's Assembly, nor does it close the road on behalf of the Presiding Board. Three positions made judgments in this matter: the Foreign Ministry and the President made the exit; the Presiding Board decided not to put the demand on the agenda; the Conference of Members recorded, 3 to 0, that the exit took place during questioning, the DRP not taking part in the vote and its statement being entered in the record.
The reason given in the DRP's declaration is that Article 14 "has been used to interfere in the Republic's administration of justice." This says that the covenant has been bent to a wrong use, and that the DRP may therefore cease to be bound by it. Grotius, writing of treaties, set down the same kind of reasoning: "If one of the parties violates a treaty, such a violation releases the other from its engagements. For every clause has the binding force of a condition." (The Rights of War and Peace, bk. II, ch. 15, §12, trans. A. C. Campbell, New York & London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901, Project Gutenberg EBook #46564; that edition is an abridged translation, and the Latin original has not been checked; tier B) He at once leaves a limit: where the parties have agreed otherwise, a treaty is not made void by small grievances and lapses (ibid., same section, paraphrased).
Grotius and this series ask about the same thing: a covenant is held between the parties; when one party says that the other has broken it, is it still bound? On this point the two go in the same direction. A covenant is held between the parties, and there is no court above to decide for them which side broke it first; the party bound may cease to be bound. They part in two places. Grotius says that a violation releases at once; this series says that, whatever the reason, exit is itself an act of this state, questioned inside this state, and that the system may require a notice period and a transition period in the covenant. Further, what is released is only the binding going forward, and procedures already begun are still concluded; that is the business of §3. Whether the "interference" the DRP speaks of took place: the Committee's opinions and the DRP's statements are both in the record, and readers can compare them; this paper does not make that judgment for anyone.
What the system can do. Stonegorge's exit was not entangled with any questioning under way, and so it shows the system's authority clearly.
In the autumn of Year 17, Stonegorge's Commonwealth Chamber was re-elected, and the new majority elected a new Chief of the Commonwealth. On taking office she said: "The system gave us a record, and Lamp Island is still in the Plateau Federation's hands." The sentence speaks of what had happened that spring: the Plateau Federation's fleet entered the Stonegorge Strait, landed on Lamp Island and set up a "sea-lane administration post"; the Conference of Members recorded: "There is a colonizing entry"; the UCSE sent forces to escort shipping and withdrew them after two periods of ninety days; the garrison on Lamp Island stayed (see Paper 5). In the winter of Year 17, the Commonwealth Chamber agreed, by 97 votes to 83, to give notice of exit, and the Chief of the Commonwealth notified the Secretary-General in writing under Article 25 of the Compact.
Article 25 of the Compact provides: written notice takes effect twelve months after it is given, and the six months that follow are a transition period; the accounts for sharing are settled; petitions already submitted are heard and concluded as usual. Clause 3: "Exit does not affect obligations arising from acts before the exit, nor procedures already begun." Clause 4: the Conference of Members may review a notice of exit and make a record, and may not veto it.
The opposition asked the Supreme Tribunal to interpret whether giving notice of exit also required two-thirds. In the spring of Year 18 the Supreme Tribunal replied: "The Fundamental Law prescribes two-thirds only for ratification." In the same season, the Conference of Members made a record by 3 to 0 under clause 4 of Article 25, Stonegorge not taking part in the vote. The record listed the matters under way at the time of notice: two petitions against Stonegorge taken up by the Petitions Committee, one concerning the rules on going out of the Eastfield camp, the other concerning an editor sentenced under the Anti-Division Act; Common Measures No. 1 and No. 2; and the settlement of sharing funds. The UCSE's permanent representative said: "The system cannot keep Stonegorge, nor does it intend to." The DRP's permanent representative said: "Exit is a member's right." The NUT's permanent representative asked whether the Stonegorge Pass Transit Agreement would continue as before after the exit, and Stonegorge answered that it would. The exit took effect in the winter of Year 18; in the autumn of Year 20, Stonegorge applied to rejoin, which is the business of §4.
This matter falls on the people of Stonegorge, including those represented by the eighty-three seats in the Commonwealth Chamber that voted against; on the petitioners in the two petitions; and also on the roughly two hundred ten thousand people in the Eastfield camp, whose sharing and transfer depended on the system's common procedures. The line to look at has two sides. On the system's side, it is the first of the five oughts, that the system's acts cross no line: the system does not act as a superior to its members, and so does not veto exit; and also the fifth: petitions already submitted must have someone to hear and conclude them as usual. On Stonegorge's side, it is that exit is questioned inside the state itself. Before this, there was Article 25 of the Compact, and there was the ratification at Stonegorge's accession: in the autumn of Year 14, the Commonwealth Chamber ratified accession by 121 votes to 59, where the Fundamental Law required one hundred twenty votes.
The direction the facts point to is clear. Inside Stonegorge, the exit went through a vote of the Commonwealth Chamber; the opposing side asked the Supreme Tribunal to interpret the threshold, and the Tribunal replied; the questioning ran its course inside, and the answer rested on Stonegorge's own law. In the system, the Conference of Members reviewed the notice, recorded the matters under way one by one, and did not stand in the way. The questioning inside and the system's review each stayed in its own place, and neither acted on the other's behalf.
A sample constitution in Appendix B of How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) wrote another road for group exit: "The Federal Assembly may not unreasonably refuse an application for exit, but it has the right to negotiate the terms of exit. If negotiation fails, the Constitutional Court determines the terms of exit." (F6, Appendix B, Article 6(c); a working demonstration; used only as an example) There, the terms of exit end up in the hands of a court above. The Theory of the State did not take this road when it spoke of secession within a state; what it required is that "Neither side is final on its own" (Theory of the State N16). Between members and the system there is not even such a court above, and here too the road is not taken.
Conditions may not become a lock. A covenant may set conditions on exit: a notice period, the settling of accounts, a transition period. What if the conditions are not met? On secession within a state, the Theory of the State said: "unsettled matters do not keep exit from taking effect indefinitely" (Theory of the State N16). This sentence is extended to a member's exit from the system, the subject term changed from the seceding unit to the member (own undertaking). If the conditions are not met, the account remains, still recorded and still questioned; the exit still takes effect when its time comes. Where a covenant has no exit clause, the system cannot use "non-recognition" in place of a veto either: to refuse to recognize that a member has left, and then to require it to go on implementing common decisions as before, is the same thing as not letting it leave. Toward a member in the course of exiting, a freeze serves only the account and is not made a condition of exit; this was said earlier (Paper 4, §2; XZ22).
Conditions must also be checked from the opposite direction. The Theory of Government has said that the cost of exit can be high enough to amount to a lock: "'Possible in principle' does not mean 'affordable': exit costs can be high enough to be practically equivalent to lock-in." So "what must be checked is whether the party being left can cancel it on its own, by pricing or by approval" (Theory of Government G39). The original sentence speaks of a person's exiting an arrangement of a level of government; here it is extended to a member's exit from the system (own undertaking). The twelve months of Article 25 and of clause 5 of Article 14 of the Compact both have a fixed end; when the time comes, the exit takes effect, and the Conference of Members cannot extend the notice period indefinitely by approving or not approving. This rules out the kind of lock in which the party being left extends the period on its own; the actual burdens during the notice period, the existing conditions, and whether the matter can pass into a reviewable procedure must still be checked separately, and are not all judged settled because there is an end.
What the notice period did in the DRP's case is also written as it was. Within the twelve months, the Committee heard and concluded the case of the two as usual and gave its opinion; this case did not come to nothing because of the exit. But the notice period could not make the DRP answer: it did not answer within six months, and what the Conference of Members could do was record that. The notice period lets questioning under way run its course; it cannot make the party questioned speak. This is a cost of this system, which Paper 8 writes of (Paper 8, XZ54).
The Theory of the State has a requirement: "For every channel it must be stated who initiates it, which object it affects, whether the party questioned can close it, and how the account is booked when it fails" (Theory of the State N36). At the place of exit it is like this. Who initiates it: positions and persons inside this state; the system reviews and records. The object: exit, as a change of structure. The party questioned can close one channel, but cannot cancel the questioning (Paper 2, XZ11). When it fails, the account falls on the positions and persons that made the exit; if a notice period, a freeze, a condition or "non-recognition" in fact locks exit, it is read by the criterion of the next section.
It may be said that, if the system cannot veto, a member can use exit to evade questioning while it is being questioned, which is exactly what the DRP did; or that members can be pulled away one by one under pressure from outside the system, which is exactly how Stonegorge left. The weight of this objection lies in the facts: the DRP no longer answers, and seven petitions were returned; before Stonegorge left, Lamp Island was in someone else's hands, and after it left, it made a covenant with the Plateau Federation. But a veto could have saved neither. "Exit does not stand in for questioning." (Theory of Government G27) The DRP has left, the petitions already begun are still heard and concluded, and the questioning remains (§3). A veto needs force: if a member is not allowed to leave and there is no force at hand, the veto is only a sentence; with force, the system becomes the member's superior (§2). Members drifting away one by one under pressure is how a system fails in ordinary times; the War Treatise, speaking of preparation for war in ordinary times, asks that the channels of exchange stay open and that mutual recognition not be broken off (War Treatise §10). This failure must be recorded as it is and counted as a cost; it is no reason to give the system a lock.
Conversely, it may be asked whether the notice period itself might become an artificial cost of exit that holds the leaving party back. A notice period is not in itself a lock; nor does a fixed term by itself prove that exit can actually be carried through. Checked by the sentence of the Theory of Government above, these two places state that exit takes effect when the time comes and cannot be extended by the party being left on its own; the other conditions that could decide whether exit can actually be carried through are not set out item by item in the example, and no judgment on them is supplied here.
Some will also infer from this that, since members can exit, the system can be thin. This inference does not hold. Law Series P4 writes of the top level where exit is feasible, where what remains is consensus plus exit (Law Series P4 §2); here it is different: members can walk away from an arrangement, but not from one another. Of a treaty between two states, the Theory of the State says: "the agreement can be exited, the river cannot." (Theory of the State Paper 5, §1) Stonegorge has exited the system; the Stonegorge Strait and Lamp Island are where they were, and the people of the Eastfield camp are still there.
By the three layers of the Prequel, §11, this section divides as follows. No veto; the notice period may not be made into a lock; conditions do not keep exit from taking effect indefinitely: these belong to the normative layer. The twelve months and six months of Article 25 of the Compact, and the twelve months of clause 5 of Article 14, are examples at the rule layer, and this series does not claim that they are the best. How long the notice period and the transition period are to be in a particular covenant is left to the judgment of those in positions.
One thing is left here. Who inside the DRP ought to make the decision to exit for it to accord with the DRP's own law, and what became of the demand of the sixty-one members, is not recorded; the system cannot reach to answer this on the DRP's behalf, and this paper registers it as a remainder.
XZ45 Exit is questioned inside; the system can review it but cannot veto it. Exiting or switching an external arrangement is a change of structure in this state (Theory of the State N24, extended from two states to many; own undertaking); it is questioned inside this state, and is not decided alone by the position being questioned. The system may review and record, and may require a notice period and a transition period in the covenant, but cannot veto; the notice period keeps exit from being used to evade questioning under way, it may not be made into a lock, and a fixed end shows only that it cannot be extended by the party being left on its own. External review of an exit is one kind of external questioning, which this state cannot cancel, and so the system can review (Paper 2, XZ11); only force can block exit, and so the system cannot veto (XZ46). A covenant may set conditions on exit (a notice period, settling); when the conditions are not met, the account remains, still recorded and still questioned, but unsettled matters do not keep exit from taking effect indefinitely (Theory of the State N16, extended from secession to a member's exit; own undertaking); where a covenant has no exit clause, the system cannot use "non-recognition" in place of a veto either. The notice period and the transition period are checked under Theory of Government G39: the party being left cannot cancel exit on its own by pricing or by approval; the actual burdens, the existing conditions, and whether the matter can pass into a reviewable procedure must still be checked separately. Toward a member in the course of exiting, a freeze serves only the account and is not made a condition of exit (Paper 4, XZ22). Exit does not stand in for questioning (Theory of Government G27). How long the notice period and the transition period are is left to the judgment of those in positions.
§2 Whatever Acquires Force over Members Is a Superior
§1 said that the system cannot veto exit. But what if a system can in fact block exit, or a member has itself handed the veto to the system? To answer this, it must first be made clear what force is.
How force is recognized. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. Between the system and its members, the party substituted for is the member; the judgment substituted is whether, at this moment, the member implements a decision, and how. A decision made by majority under a covenant agreed beforehand lands through the member's own law, and whether it lands still rests with the member; what the system can do is question, record and withdraw cooperation, and it is not a superior (Paper 1, XZ1). Only what can force a decision to land over the member's own law is one. Withdrawing cooperation substitutes for no one's judgment: the member still decides for itself, only others no longer cooperate with it (Paper 4, XZ22). The same distinction holds in finance. Withholding part of the funds the system was to disburse to a member is withdrawing cooperation, which is a check; taking the member's own capital is disposing of the member's own things on its behalf, which is force. If an arrangement in fact does this, it is already a superior.
An arrangement that is already a superior answers to the requirements the Theory of Government places on a level of government: the multi-branch separation of powers, channels within reach of its internal subjects, and its own openness to questioning. It cannot evade these requirements with "it is only cooperation." This series does not forbid several states from combining into a larger state (the Prequel, §3); what it forbids is carrying force without acknowledging it.
Locking exit. Locking exit uses the same criterion. A lock needs force: when a member wants to leave and the system will not allow it, the only thing that can make it stay is a power that makes this one judgment in its place. An arrangement that locks by force is a superior, and has already reached the level the Theory of Government speaks of. The Law Series says: "Whoever controls exit controls the boundary of law." (Law Series P3 §6) The original sentence speaks of the general relation between law and exit; read between the system and its members, the party that controls a member's exit is deciding the boundary of that member's law, and is already above the member (own undertaking). Power Theory says of cultivating power: "The A of cultivating power likewise invests in maintenance, but does not cancel B's interrupt-right: B can leave" (Power Theory P6 §I). Moral Law P9 says that "institutional features that cannot compel retention establish exit as a right" (Moral Law P9 §4.2). These two sentences originally speak of power and of institutions toward persons; here they are extended to the system toward its members: the system may invest in maintaining cooperation, but cannot cancel a member's leaving (own undertaking).
What, then, is a "lock" that does not rest on force? A system says "we do not agree" to a member that wants to leave, but has no means to make it stay; this "do not agree" is only a question and a record. The member can leave, but it cannot cancel this question. The state is still at the state's end.
A rule that hands to the outside the authority to review its own repeal. Of the three questions handed over by the Theory of the State, the second is the hardest. If a rule can also hand to the outside the authority to review its own repeal, it is as if a layer had been added above this state: whether this rule is changed is, in the end, for the outside to say. The definition of the state's end speaks of having no superior with force overhead; then is a state that hands its own exit to external review still at this end? The answer here comes in two steps.
Step one: external review is one kind of external questioning. The system can review an exit: record it, record the matters under way, and ask its reasons. The system cannot veto. If a member hands to the system a veto over its own exit, the system does not accept it either. A system of cooperation that relies only on questioning, recording and withdrawing cooperation would, in accepting this veto, accept an authority it cannot make good; to really make it good would be force.
Step two: if a member, in its own law, has set an external consent on its own exit, that is its own law. To change it is a change of structure, questioned inside this state (Theory of the State N24). The outside cannot stop it except by force; and an arrangement that carries force is no longer within cooperation as this series speaks of it, but is a level of the Theory of Government. This step extends that sentence of the Theory of the State to an external consent a member sets on itself (own undertaking). Put the two steps together, and that question no longer needs to go outside to find a place whose word is final: questioning runs inside, and also outside; only force can block, and force is not here.
Take a hypothetical case for step two. What follows did not happen; it is only supposed. Suppose that, in the autumn of Year 13, the resolution by which the DRP's People's Assembly accepted Article 14 contained a further sentence: "The Republic's exit from this article requires the consent of the Conference of Members." This sentence is part of the DRP's own resolution, not an article of the Compact; clause 5 of Article 14 of the Compact stays as it is, and says nothing of the consent of the Conference of Members.
The supposed course of events is this. In the spring of Year 18, the People's Assembly amended that resolution by 322 votes to 251, with 27 absent, deleting the sentence. In the same month, the Foreign Ministry, with the President's approval, declared exit under clause 5 of Article 14; the People's Assembly still took no vote on the exit itself. In the summer of Year 18, the UCSE's permanent representative proposed in the Conference of Members a vote on "consent or not," under the sentence the Republic itself had written. He said: "The Republic itself once wrote that the consent of the Conference of Members was required." The DRP's Foreign Minister replied: "That sentence was written by the People's Assembly, and the People's Assembly has deleted it; the exit is under clause 5 of Article 14 of the Compact." The NUT's permanent representative said: "The system cannot use a state's own law to lock that state." The Secretary-General, who held DRP citizenship, was recused; the Deputy Secretary-General acting in that place gave a written opinion: "Clause 5 of Article 14 of the Compact says nothing of the consent of the Conference of Members." Whether it was put to a vote, and what the result was, this paper does not posit.
This hypothetical case falls on the DRP as a construct and on several positions inside it: the People's Assembly, the Foreign Ministry, the President; it also falls on the petitioners reached by the exit from Article 14, who are the people in the DRP's actual case. The line to look at is the one criterion used both for locking exit and for being a superior. Before this, that sentence was written in the DRP's own resolution, and the Compact did not have it; the People's Assembly deleted it by the Republic's own procedure; on the exit itself, the People's Assembly still took no vote.
Read by step two, the facts point this way. That sentence was in the DRP's law; deleting it was a change of structure in the DRP, which the People's Assembly made by 322 votes to 251, and this change was questioned inside the DRP. The exit itself did not pass through the People's Assembly; this point, as in §1, remains a remainder inside the DRP. If the Conference of Members votes on "consent or not," the vote itself is a question, recording what the DRP once wrote and what it later deleted, and this is within the system's authority. If the system used this sentence to block the exit, refusing to recognize that the DRP had left and still requiring it to be bound by Article 14 and to implement the decisions under it, it would be substituting its own judgment for the DRP's judgment on its own affairs: whether the DRP stays in Article 14 is precisely its own affair. If the system had no means to make the DRP comply, this "blocking" would leave only a record; if it did, the system would have acquired force over a member and become the superior it says it is not. Three positions make judgments in the hypothetical case: the UCSE's permanent representative who made the proposal, the Deputy Secretary-General who gave the written opinion, and the members who would vote. This paper posits no vote, and does not make the final judgment on their behalf.
Whether there is an exit clause is not the criterion. The same criterion also makes clear the difference between the Compact and a federal charter. Clause 2 of Article 2 of the Compact reads: "This Compact establishes no organ above the members. No organ of the system may exercise force against a member or against persons within a member's territory." Article 25 permits exit. When the UCSE ratified the Compact in the summer of Year 13, a member of the Chamber of Member Units chosen by the South Bay State said in the debate: "A country can exit the Three-Borders system after twelve months, yet on a State's exiting the UCSE the Charter has not a word." What he said was fact: Article 66 of the UCSE's Charter provides only for how new member units join, and has no provision on exit.
This remark is easily read as saying that one has an exit clause and the other does not, and that this is where the difference lies. But whether there is an exit clause is not the criterion; as §1 said, where a covenant has no exit clause, the system cannot use "non-recognition" in place of a veto either. The criterion is whether an arrangement has, or needs, force to hold members in. The UCSE is the level that carries force over its member units: Article 52 of the Charter establishes the Defense Force, and Article 53 permits the Defense Force to carry out tasks within member units' territory in three circumstances. A State's exiting the UCSE is secession, which takes the road of Paper 3 of the Theory of the State (Theory of the State N16), and is not within this series. The South Bay State's referendum in the spring of Year 11 and the joint committee that followed have been judged in Theory of the State Paper 3, §6, and serve here only as a contrast. Where the system parts from the UCSE is clause 2 of Article 2 of the Compact, not whether an article mentions exit.
It may be said that a system that cannot even block exit binds no one, and that to bind there must be a lock. The weight of this objection is that an arrangement anyone can leave seems to guarantee nothing. But binding does not rest on a lock. It rests on questioning, which the party questioned cannot close; on the account, which exit does not write off; on withdrawing cooperation; and also on coming back needing others' consent. The account and coming back are written in §§3 and 4 below. To want a lock is to want a superior; whoever wants a superior answers under the Theory of Government, and acknowledges it as a superior.
One thing is left here. When an arrangement has "in fact" acquired force, there will be cases at the boundary that are hard to judge. The method of checking follows the Prequel, §2: whether it makes the other party unable to live unless it does as it is told, or in fact takes away the other party's room to bear the cost and not comply; and in the same place it is stated which party, and which judgment, is substituted. How a particular matter is to be judged is left to the judgment of those in positions.
XZ46 Any arrangement that in fact acquires force over members is a superior; locking exit is one case. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs; here the party substituted for is the member, and the judgment is whether, at this moment, the member implements a decision, and how. A decision made by majority under a covenant agreed beforehand lands through the member's own law; the system can only question, record and withdraw cooperation, and is not a superior (Paper 1, XZ1); only what can force a decision to land over the member's own law is one. Withdrawing cooperation does not substitute for judgment (Paper 4, XZ22); withholding from disbursements is a check, and taking a member's own capital is force. An arrangement that has acquired force answers to the requirements the Theory of Government places on a level of government (the multi-branch separation of powers, channels for internal subjects, openness to questioning), and cannot evade them with "it is only cooperation." Locking exit uses the same criterion: a lock needs force, and an arrangement that locks by force is a superior (Law Series P3 §6, Power Theory P6 §I and Moral Law P9 §4.2 extended to the system toward its members; own undertaking); a "lock" that does not rest on force is only an external questioning that the member can walk away from but cannot cancel, and the state is still at the state's end. To a rule that hands to the outside the authority to review its own repeal, the answer comes in two steps: external review is one kind of external questioning; the system can review but cannot veto, and if a member hands the veto to the system, the system does not accept it; if a member, in its own law, has set an external consent on its own exit, that is its own law, and changing it is a change of structure, questioned inside this state (Theory of the State N24); the outside cannot stop it except by force, and what carries force is no longer within this series' domain (own undertaking). Whether there is an exit clause is not the criterion; the criterion is whether force is had, or needed, to hold members in. When an arrangement has in fact acquired force is, at the boundary, left to the judgment of those in positions, and in the same place it is stated which party, and which judgment, is substituted.
§3 Exit Does Not Write Off the Account
The DRP's permanent representative said: "Exiting an article is a member's right." This is not wrong, and the DRP did indeed leave: after the spring of Year 19, the Committee no longer took up new petitions against it. But the two are still in detention, and the Committee's opinion of the winter of Year 18 is still waiting for an answer. After exit, where is the earlier account?
Leaving and the account must be kept apart. What goes away is binding force going forward; the account is earlier acts. Institution Theory says: "past residue is not written off by closing off questioning" (Institution Theory Z35a). F6, speaking of continuity when a member exits, says: "Exit terminates the current answering load that the position supports; it does not by itself clear facts of prior performance, nor cancel other handling positions that have independent grounds." (F6 §3.3) The Conflict Treatise, speaking of two parties after they part, says: "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) These three sentences originally speak of institutions, of member positions, and of two first-person laws; extended to a member's exit from the system, what changes is the subject term, and the step of extension is from "closing off questioning, leaving a position" to "exiting a multi-state arrangement" (own undertaking). The sample charter in Appendix A of the same F6 wrote: "After exit, the civilization is no longer bound by this Charter" (F6, Appendix A, Article 6(b); a working demonstration; used only as an example). Read together with the three sentences above, it speaks only of binding force going forward. Binding force stops going forward; the earlier account is not written off.
That exit does not write off the account is seen in three stages, by time.
Stage one: acts during membership are still recorded. The detention of the two took place in the years when the DRP was a member and Article 14 was in force for it; it is booked under the DRP's name, and exit does not strike it out. Stonegorge was still a member during its notice period, and its acts in that year are still recorded too. In the spring of Year 18, under Article 7(c) of the Compact, it explained publicly that it would no longer take part in Common Measure No. 1, giving as its reason that "Stonegorge is negotiating with the Plateau Federation over Lamp Island"; the Federal Clearing Bureau's assets frozen in Stonegorge's banks were released accordingly, and port services for the Mirror Sea Fleet at the harbor at Gorgemouth were restored. Article 7(c) permits a member not to take part in a given common measure, provided that it explains its reasons publicly to the Conference of Members; Stonegorge took this road, and its reasons were entered in the record. In the same period, the Petitions Committee put questions to it twice on the Eastfield camp petition, and it answered neither time; this was recorded too. The account is booked under Stonegorge's name, and is also booked to the positions that made these decisions.
Stage two: procedures already begun are still concluded. Before the DRP's exit took effect, the Committee went on hearing the case of the two and the three others; in the winter of Year 18 it gave its opinion on the case of the two, asking the DRP to hold a public retrial and to allow visits. The DRP did not answer, and in the summer of Year 19 the Conference of Members recorded that no answer had come. Stonegorge's two petitions were heard and concluded under Article 25, opinions were given in Year 19, and Stonegorge did not answer. The procedures ran their course; the answers did not come. That procedures are still concluded does not guarantee that the party questioned will speak.
Stage three: whether new procedures can be opened after exit on acts during membership follows the acknowledged covenant. Where the covenant permits, the covenant is followed; where it does not, that road within the system is closed, but questions from peers and other channels go on as before, and the account is not written off. Clause 5 of Article 14 of the Compact, "those submitted after it takes effect are not taken up," is a plain case of the covenant not permitting. After the spring of Year 19, seven new petitions were returned, and that road within the system was closed. But the UCSE's Office of External Affairs, through the liaison office, twice raised the two with the DRP's Foreign Ministry, and questions from peers went on as before.
Clause 5 must be read together with clause 6. At the entrance, clause 6 allows the Committee to take up acts from before entry into force whose effects continue after it, and that is how the petition of the two was taken up. At the exit, clause 5 takes up nothing submitted after exit takes effect, no matter when the act took place. The entrance is wide, the exit narrow. This asymmetry is how this example is written, and this series does not claim that it is the best; the stretch it closes is registered as a remainder as it stands, and is not written as though a road remained.
Stage three can also land at the door. Paper 6, §3, wrote a hypothetical case: in the spring of Year 18, a commander of the Stability Squads of the Republic of the Sandbars (the Sandbars), with two of his men, crossed the Grey River, surrendered his weapons to Stonegorge's Coastal Guard and applied for asylum; people in the camp recognized him and said that it was he who had led the burning of villages in the spring of Year 16; the Sandbars' Whitewall government and the Provisional Assembly in the north both demanded him. Suppose that when Stonegorge's exit took effect in the winter of Year 18, his asylum application was still undecided. Read by this section, clause 3 of Article 25 of the Compact says that exit does not affect obligations arising from acts before the exit, nor procedures already begun; the commitment of not pushing back in Article 4(2) of the Compact no longer binds Stonegorge by way of the Compact thereafter. But not pushing back at the door never rested on the Compact; it rests on the unified sentence: those whom this state's refusals of entry and returns reach, and who have no way to avoid them by exiting, are, as regards those acts, in this state's interior (Theory of the State N15). Direction one, which Paper 6, §3, set up on this basis, is that those who have crossed the line are not pushed back when they reach the door either (Paper 6, XZ38). Exit does not change this. How Stonegorge deals with him thereafter, this paper does not posit.
What stops going forward. What stops going forward is the rights newly acquired or exercised as a member; rights and procedures that have already arisen and continue under the covenant follow the original covenant. After exit, a state can no longer initiate new procedures under the covenant as a party to it. Stonegorge's transition period is an instance. The Conference of Members paid in full, as the covenant required, the sharing funds for the Eastfield camp for the first half of Year 19, 240 million accounting units; transfers under Sharing Decision No. 4 were carried out until the summer of Year 19. These continued under the covenant and ran their course under the original covenant. From the winter of Year 18, Stonegorge could no longer, as a member, request that questions be put or open common procedures.
It may be said that exit means no longer being bound by the covenant, and that still requiring a member to answer for earlier matters amounts to not letting it leave. This is just what the DRP's statement meant. The weight of this objection is that, if exit carries endless old accounts with it, leaving remains a name only. But leaving and the account are two things. The DRP's exit took effect on schedule, and the system did not stop it. The case of the two is still concluded; it was submitted before the exit took effect, and under clauses 4 and 5 of Article 14 the DRP must still answer it in writing within six months. If it does not answer, the system records that. The system cannot compel it to answer; this is a cost of this system, not a writing off of the account (Paper 8, XZ54).
It may also be said that, when the covenant does not permit new procedures, this amounts to writing off the account. It does not. What is closed is that one road within the system; the account is still in the record, in the questions of peers, and also in the time when the member wants to come back (§4).
One thing is left here. By what road do the two put their questions from now on? The same goes for the petitioners of the seven returned petitions. In the system, that road is closed; what remains are the channels inside the DRP and the questions of peers. This paper registers this as a remainder as it stands, and does not write it as though a road already existed.
XZ47 Exit does not write off the account. Acts before exit are still recorded, procedures already begun are still concluded, and questioning between peers goes on as before (Theory of the State N38). Past residue is not written off by closing off questioning (Institution Theory Z35a); exit terminates the current answering load, and does not by itself clear facts of prior performance (F6 §3.3); shared resources and procedural obligations are not closed out by departure, and can only pass to arrangement or arbitration (Conflict Treatise §25, originally of two first-person laws after they part, extended to a member's exit; own undertaking). The sample's "no longer bound after exit" speaks only of binding force going forward: binding force stops going forward, and the earlier account is not written off. Three stages (own undertaking): (1) acts during membership are still recorded; (2) procedures already begun are still concluded; (3) whether new procedures can be opened after exit on acts during membership follows the acknowledged covenant: where the covenant permits, the covenant is followed; where it does not, that road within the system is closed, but questions from peers and other channels go on as before, and the account is not written off. What stops going forward is the rights newly acquired or exercised as a member; rights and procedures that have already arisen and continue under the covenant follow the original covenant; after exit, a state can no longer initiate new procedures under the covenant as a party to it. The stretch closed when the covenant does not permit new procedures is registered as a remainder as it stands, and is not written as though a road remained.
§4 Free to Leave; Coming Back Needs Consent
A member is free to leave; can it come back? Stonegorge later wanted to come back. This time the door it knocked on was one it had closed itself.
During the notice period, in the summer of Year 18, Stonegorge and the Plateau Federation signed the Lamp Island Agreement. The Plateau Federation would withdraw its garrison from Lamp Island within sixty days, the administration post would close, and no troops would be stationed on Lamp Island thereafter; the Mirror Sea Fleet would pass through the Southern Lane "on twenty-four hours' advance notice, exempt from registration"; the Plateau Federation would lease a supply wharf at the harbor at Gorgemouth for twenty-five years; "Stonegorge shall not take part in any multilateral economic measures directed against the Plateau Federation"; and the Plateau Federation would revoke External Economic Security Order No. 7, by which it had cut off fuel to Stonegorge, raised tariffs on it and stopped its clearing. The Commonwealth Chamber ratified the agreement by 124 votes to 56. In the autumn of Year 18, the garrison on Lamp Island withdrew and the administration post closed; of the roughly one thousand seven hundred people who had moved out, about one thousand one hundred had returned to the island by Year 19.
In the spring of Year 20, Stonegorge's Commonwealth Chamber passed a motion of no confidence, early elections were held, and the new majority elected a new Chief of the Commonwealth. That autumn, Stonegorge applied to rejoin. Article 26 of the Compact provides that re-accession is a new admission under Article 7(a), and that the members may put forward conditions; Article 7(a) requires the written consent of all members. In the discussion, the UCSE's permanent representative raised three items: how the clause of the Lamp Island Agreement on "not taking part in any multilateral economic measures" was to be dealt with; the two petitions left unanswered during the period of exit; and the relation between the supply wharf at the harbor at Gorgemouth and joint defense. The NUT's permanent representative said: "Conditions are to be written out, with acts as the measure." The DRP's permanent representative said: "No further conditions should be set; leaving is a right, and so is coming back." Stonegorge's representative said: "The Lamp Island Agreement was made with the Plateau Federation, and Stonegorge cannot delete or alter it unilaterally; Stonegorge is willing to explain, item by item, for every future common measure, whether it will take part, and to reply to those two petitions." The Plateau Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared: "Stonegorge's going back to that system is a violation of the Lamp Island Agreement." By the winter of Year 20, the matter was undecided.
On whom this matter falls, §1 has already written. With re-accession, the lines to look at gain the two floors described below; and before this, there is now also Article 26 of the Compact.
Coming back is a new covenant. Setting up new binding requires the consent of every party (Paper 1, XZ1); re-accession is new binding too, and the parties may set conditions. This is a check, not force. A member that does not consent to admitting Stonegorge decides nothing on Stonegorge's behalf on its own affairs; it only declines to make this new covenant with it. Conditions may be set, but being able to set conditions does not mean that anything at all may be set. This series establishes only two floors. One: re-accession does not wash the account clean; acts during the period of exit are still recorded and still questioned. The other: a state may not come back bringing a colonization under way. Conditions above the floor are left to the political leaders of the parties.
No permanent bar is set against the name of a state. What a state did before stays on the account; whether it can come in today depends on its acts today. The Theory of the State says that whether a state's supreme rule thereafter is legitimate is checked by the present, and "is not decided by its origin" (Theory of the State N34). The original sentence speaks of the other side's rule after an occupation; here it is extended to the door of re-accession (own undertaking). A state that applies at first accession with a line-crossing under way, and an observer member's seat, were written of in Paper 1, §9 (Paper 1, XZ7), and are not written again here.
Stonegorge's application read by the two floors. The facts point to three things.
First, the two petitions fall on the first floor. Stonegorge did not answer during the notice period, nor after the opinions came out in Year 19; the account is booked under its name, and does not vanish with re-accession. It says it is willing to answer, which is its response to the account. Whether it must answer before it is admitted, or may answer after admission, is a condition above the floor, and is left to political leaders.
Second, that clause of the Lamp Island Agreement is a covenant from outside the system following a member in and out of the system. Read by the first point of Paper 4, §5: the clause requires Stonegorge to promise in advance that it will take part in no future common measure directed against the Plateau Federation; this fixes "taking part or not" in advance and promises it to the other party to the covenant, so that to take part in any measure thereafter, Stonegorge must first break the covenant or obtain the other party's consent; it has the same form as Article 14, which was deleted from the NUT's agreement, and the facts point to the side of cancelling the interrupt-right. Stonegorge's saying that it is willing to explain, measure by measure, whether it will take part takes another road, one that Article 7(c) of the Compact already provides: a member that does not take part in a given measure explains its reasons publicly, and the reasons are entered in the record. This is the road the NUT took after deleting Article 14 (Paper 1, §6), and its permanent representative has said where the two roads differ: "Article 14 would have been a promise made to the Plateau Federation; not taking part in that item is something explained to the Conference of Members." Whether this clause can become a condition of re-accession, and how it is to be dealt with, is judged by the members who vote on re-accession, and the account falls on the positions and persons that put forward conditions and vote.
Third, the relation between the supply wharf and joint defense lies above the floor, and is left to political leaders.
Those who make the judgment in this matter are the members. Whether each member consents, and what conditions it puts forward, are its own acts, and the account falls on the positions and persons that put forward conditions and vote. The Plateau Federation's declaration entered this process; the Plateau Federation is outside the system, and how its covenant and its declaration are to be read is checked under Paper 4, §5.
First accession is the same. When Stonegorge first applied, in the spring of Year 14, admission likewise required the written consent of all. The DRP delayed its consent for five months; in the meantime the Plateau Federation issued a declaration of opposition, the Federal Clearing Bureau wrote to three of Stonegorge's banks saying that it would conduct a "compliance review" of their clearing, and the Plateau Federation signed a long-term fertilizer contract with the DRP at fifteen percent below the previous year's market price (Paper 1). First accession and re-accession both rest on the consent of the members, and both times the covenants and declarations of a state outside the system came in. Both are checked under Paper 1, XZ1 and Paper 4, XZ25, and no separate doctrine is set up. The hypothetical case for the second floor is in the next section.
The DRP said: "Leaving is a right, and so is coming back." The weight of this objection lies in symmetry: since leaving needs no one's consent, coming back would seem to need none either. But the two are not symmetrical. Leaving is this state's own change of structure, questioned inside this state, and needs no one else's consent (§1); coming back is a new covenant, a matter of states with one another, and needs others' consent. They are asymmetrical precisely because the one is a state's own affair and the other a matter of states with one another. The Law Series says: "Exit is not a failure of law; it is the normal process of law receding and reconstituting when the conditions of its existence change." (Law Series P3 §6.1) Leaving and coming back are read as law's receding and reconstituting when conditions have changed. The covenant of reconstitution settles the one matter it is to settle, and does not rewrite the years of absence: "Consensus does not ratify the past. It closes out this one incompatibility now; it does not rewrite what either party did before." (Conflict Treatise §24) The Conflict Treatise originally speaks of consensus between two laws; here it is extended to the covenant of re-accession (own undertaking).
It may also be said that setting conditions is using re-accession to put pressure on others. Conditions that are written out, that go by acts and the account, and that are not aimed at forms of government or the names of states, are not pressure. Only conditions that require the other party to change an autonomous choice of its own that crosses no line must be checked under the second point of Paper 4, XZ25.
By the three layers: the two floors are at the normative layer. Whether an act counts as a colonization under way is recognized by the act, and at the boundary it is left to the judgment of those in positions. Article 26 of the Compact, which permits members to put forward conditions, is an example at the rule layer. What conditions in particular to put forward, and whether to admit, are at the judgment layer, and the account falls on the positions and persons that put forward conditions and vote.
Two things are left here: where the gauge for conditions above the floor lies, this paper does not set; Stonegorge's application was still undecided as of the winter of Year 20.
XZ48 Free to leave; coming back needs consent. Re-accession is a new covenant, and as a covenant it requires the consent of all parties (Paper 1, XZ1); the parties may set conditions; this is a check, not force: not consenting decides nothing on the other's behalf on its own affairs, but only declines to make a new covenant with it. Two floors: re-accession does not wash the account clean, and acts during the period of exit are still recorded and still questioned; a state may not come back bringing a colonization under way. No permanent bar is set against the name of a state: judgment falls on acts, and is not decided by origin (Theory of the State N34, extended from occupation to re-accession; own undertaking). Conditions above the floor are written out, go by acts and the account, are not aimed at forms of government or the names of states, and are set by the political leaders of the parties; those that require the other party to change an autonomous choice of its own that crosses no line are checked under Paper 4, XZ25. The covenant of re-accession settles the one matter it is to settle, and does not rewrite the acts of the period of exit (Conflict Treatise §24; own undertaking). Line-crossing under way at first accession, and an observer member's seat: see Paper 1, XZ7.
§5 First Exit, Then Colonize
A member first exits, then enters another state by armed force, then applies to come back. How does the system read this sequence? Among the events that have happened there is no such case. What follows is a hypothetical case, written apart from the events above.
The Grey River flows from south to north into the Mirror Sea; its lower course, about one hundred forty kilometers, is the boundary river between the Republic of the Sandbars and Stonegorge, with the Sandbars on the west bank and Stonegorge on the east. From the spring of Year 18, the Provisional Assembly of the Republic, convened at Sandmouth, controlled Sandmouth Province, North Strand Province and the northern half of West Shoal Province, and the Whitewall government fought on in the southern half of West Shoal Province. Suppose that, after Stonegorge's exit took effect, in the autumn of Year 19, about one thousand of Stonegorge's Coastal Guard crossed the Grey River into a ferry-crossing area along the river in the northern half of West Shoal Province, about thirty square kilometers in extent, set up a "Ferry Crossing Administration Post," collected crossing fees, and registered those passing through. The Provisional Assembly in the north protested. In the autumn of Year 20, Stonegorge applied to rejoin with this administration post still in place.
This hypothetical case falls on the people in the crossing area and on those passing through; the fees and the registration both fall on them. There are three lines to look at: a colonizing entry, that is, entering another state by force and deciding on behalf of the people there; where the colonizing comes from (Paper 5, XZ29); and the second floor of re-accession, written in the previous section. Before this, Stonegorge's Coastal Guard was on the east bank of the Grey River, and Stonegorge's exit had taken effect in the winter of Year 18.
Step one: look at where it comes from. The entry took place when Stonegorge was not a member, and does not count as coming from the system. The system's joint defense is divided by where the colonizing comes from, and can be used in three slots: outside the system against a member, member against member, and a member against outside the system (Paper 5, §3); for the system, this entry is outside the system against outside the system, not within the three slots, and joint defense does not take it up. Not taking it up is not doing nothing: putting questions, recording, sanctions, receiving those who leave: these indirect means remain open; how far they are used is left to the political leaders in their positions. Why not reach back? If one reached back, whatever a state that had once been a member did thereafter would forever "come from the system"; leaving would then never have been accomplished, and the freedom to leave spoken of in §1 would come to nothing.
Step two: look at the account. Whatever part was prepared within the system before exit, or made use of the system's arrangements, if there is any, is still booked to the account. Whether the Coastal Guard used any of the system's joint plans in this entry is not recorded. What is recorded is something that actually happened: the prepositioned logistics depot at the harbor at Gorgemouth, which Stonegorge had asked the Joint Defense Coordination Office to remove before its exit took effect, was removed in the winter of Year 18. This section only sets the direction, and does not judge whether there was any such part.
Step three: look at the floor. Applying to rejoin in the autumn of Year 20 with the administration post in place falls on the floor that a state "may not come back bringing a colonization under way." While the administration post is there, the floor blocks the way here, and the matter is not left to political leaders to weigh; only after withdrawal, and after the account has landed, do the conditions for coming back lie above the floor (§4). Whether this entry is a colonizing entry is recognized by the acts: entering by force, setting up an administration post, collecting crossing fees, registering those passing through; how it is recognized at the boundary is left to the judgment of those in positions. Article 4(1) of the Compact is a commitment by members: not to enter the territory or territorial waters of any state by armed force, and not to set up administration within another state. After its exit, Stonegorge is not bound by it; to come back, it must acknowledge it again.
Step four: look at how large the gap is. If a state first exits and then acts, the system's joint defense does not take it up, and this looks like a gap. The gap is narrowed by Paper 5, §5 (Paper 5, XZ30): whichever of the three slots it is in, each participating state that sends forces must have its own first face hold, that is, its own cultivation must be under erosion, and that erosion must come from the same source as the oppression suffered by the side being defended (War Treatise §13, Gate Four); whether a member or not, what differs is only prior coordination and preparation of the kind of joint plans and prepositioned logistics. Membership never automatically gave anyone grounds for starting a war. The matter of the Outer Sandbars, written in §6, serves as a contrast: that entry took place during membership, and so it still counts as coming from the system after expulsion. In both places it is recognized by when the colonizing took place.
It may be said that, if a state first exits and then acts, the system cannot deal with it, and that this is a gap. The weight of this objection is real: that bit of prior coordination and preparation is indeed gone. But the gap has been narrowed; that state cannot come back; the indirect means remain open; and what was borrowed before exit is still booked to the account. Conversely, some say that one should reach back, and that whoever has been in the system counts even after leaving. Step one has answered this: if one reaches back, leaving comes to nothing.
Two things are left here: how far the indirect means are used is left to the political leaders in their positions; whether preparation before exit borrowed the system's arrangements is not recorded in this hypothetical case.
XZ49 Colonizing after first exiting does not count as coming from the system; there is no exiting, colonizing and then rejoining. Joint defense recognizes whether a state was a member when the colonizing took place, and does not reach back; reaching back would make the freedom to leave come to nothing (XZ45). The part prepared within the system before exit, making use of the system's arrangements, is still booked to the account. Colonizing begun after exit is, for the system, outside the system against outside the system; joint defense does not take it up, the indirect means remain open (putting questions, recording, sanctions, receiving those who leave), and how far they are used is left to the political leaders in their positions. Applying to rejoin bringing a colonization under way is blocked at the second floor of re-accession (XZ48), and is not left to political leaders. The gap here is narrowed by Paper 5, XZ30: whichever colonizing entry forces are sent to stop, the sending state's own first face must hold; whether a member or not, the only difference is prior coordination and preparation.
§6 Expulsion
Can the system expel a member? The Theory of the State established one sentence about persons: "no expulsion: the state does not use exclusion by judgment as punishment or elimination" (Theory of the State N14); exclusion by judgment is judging a person out of membership. That was said by the state about its people. Whether a framework of cooperation can expel its member states, the upstream has not established. The matter of the Outer Sandbars put this question before the system.
The Outer Sandbars are an island group of the Republic of the Sandbars, in the Mirror Sea about sixty kilometers north of Sandmouth, with about two thousand three hundred inhabitants, who live mainly by fishing. In the summer of Year 17, the Sandbars withdrew the islands' garrison to the northern mainland, and most of the officials on the islands left with it. In the autumn of Year 17, a meeting of the UCSE's Executive Council decided on deployment by 6 to 3; two vessels and a company landed on Great Outer Sandbar, and the UCSE's Office of Defense set up the "Outer Sandbars Provisional Administration Office." The administration office registered the residents and issued an "Outer Sandbars residence card"; collected fishing fees from boats fishing in Outer Sandbars waters; selected seven residents to form an advisory council; replaced the Sandbars textbooks in the islands' primary school with "provisional textbooks" printed in Rivermouth City; and imposed a curfew at night. A group of fishermen protested on the quay under a banner reading "Island matters are for island people to decide," and three of them were held by the administration office for two days.
In the spring of Year 18, the Conference of Members made its first record: "The UCSE has entered the Outer Sandbars of a state outside the system with military force, set up a provisional administration office, issued residence cards, collected fishing fees, and replaced school textbooks." The vote was 3 to 0, the UCSE not taking part. In the summer of Year 18, the Conference of Members made a second record under clause 1 of Article 18 of the Compact: "There is a colonizing entry." The NUT and Stonegorge voted in favor, and the DRP abstained. That same summer, the DRP proposed suspending the UCSE's right to vote in the Conference of Members. The NUT opposed the proposal, its permanent representative saying: "Suspending its vote will not make the administration office withdraw. The NUT wants it to sit here and answer." Stonegorge abstained, and the proposal did not pass. This course of events has been written in Paper 4, §7, and in Paper 5.
Article 27 of the Compact governs suspension and expulsion. Suspending a member's right to vote in the Conference of Members requires the consent of three-quarters of the other members. Expulsion requires all three of the following: the Conference of Members has made at least two records on the same act of that member; within six months from the first record, the member has not stopped that act; and all the other members consent, the decision stating its reasons. Clause 4: "Suspension and expulsion do not release the member from obligations arising from its earlier acts." This article, like the other articles of the Compact, is an example, and two places where it does not agree with this series' direction must also be pointed out: its suspension suspends only the right to vote, which is narrower than this series' direction (Paper 4, XZ27); its conditions for expulsion are not limited to line-crossing, which is wider than this series' direction.
By the autumn of Year 18, there were two records on the Outer Sandbars, of the spring and of the summer of Year 18, the administration office had not withdrawn, and the first two requirements were met. The DRP proposed expelling the UCSE. The DRP's permanent representative said: "Article 4(1) of the Compact is the first commitment of this covenant. It is also the one the UCSE cited when it replied to the Republic in Year 13." The NUT's permanent representative said: "Once it is expelled, has what it did on the Outer Sandbars nothing more to do with the system? It went in while it was in the system." And further: "Expulsion pushes it outside the system; outside, no one can question it any more." Stonegorge's permanent representative said: "Clause 4 of Article 27 says that expulsion does not release the member from obligations arising from its earlier acts. What expulsion releases it from, and what remains, the Compact does not say." The UCSE's permanent representative said: "Expel a member, and the system becomes the kind of thing it says it is not." At the vote there were three members besides the UCSE: the DRP voted in favor, the NUT against, and Stonegorge abstained. Expulsion requires the consent of all, and it did not pass. The Provisional Assembly at Sandmouth wrote to the Secretary-General asking for expulsion; the Whitewall government declared: "Whether the system expels its own member has nothing to do with the Republic; the Outer Sandbars belong to the Republic." In the spring of Year 19, the UCSE announced that the administration office would "gradually hand civil affairs over to the advisory council." From then until Year 20, no member raised expulsion again, and the administration office remained.
This matter falls on the roughly two thousand three hundred people on the Outer Sandbars, the three fishermen who were held among them; and also on those reached by the UCSE's acts thereafter who can petition against the UCSE under Article 14 of the Compact. There are three lines to look at: the means the system can use toward members, written in Paper 4, XZ27; the fifth of the five oughts, that is, these people's road of petition; and where the colonizing comes from (Paper 5, XZ29). Before this, there were Article 27 of the Compact and its clause 4, and the two records of the spring and the summer of Year 18.
What expulsion is. Expulsion, as this series speaks of it, is directed at the member state as a construct, and means the termination of its membership. People do not go out with it: neither the UCSE's people nor the people on the Outer Sandbars are expelled because the UCSE is expelled. Expulsion, like suspension, is withdrawing cooperation: the system no longer works with the member in common procedures, and decides nothing on its behalf on its own affairs. The affairs of the Outer Sandbars are still decided by the UCSE, and its room to bear the cost and not comply remains. By the criterion of force, expulsion cannot substitute for the UCSE's judgment, and it is not force (the reading of Paper 4, XZ27).
The system may expel a member, and the conditions must be strict; how strict is not something philosophy can answer, and it is left to political leaders. What philosophy can give is the direction of the reasons and two floors.
The direction of the reasons is line-crossing. Line-crossing is of two kinds: colonizing another state; and crossing the line against one's own people, such as massacre, torture, detention without trial, and the driving people out on a large scale. The latter rests on covenants the member has acknowledged, and is aimed at acts, not at forms of government: a coup that is not itself accompanied by line-crossing is not a reason; of the measures taken toward that state, the humanitarian part must be cut out. For reasons other than line-crossing, such as long-standing non-performance, how they are to be handled is not decided by philosophy; it is left to political leaders, under the two floors below. In the matter of the Outer Sandbars, the reason is a colonizing entry, which is within the direction. Of the three conditions of Article 27, the first two look at acts and the last at votes: expulsion is a decision made on acts and landed through votes. This time the vote did not pass; those who made the judgment were three members, and what each said is in the record. The sample charter in Appendix A of F6 allows a member to be expelled by two-thirds of the members present, and that too is only a sample (F6, Appendix A, Article 10(b); a working demonstration; used only as an example).
Two floors. One: expulsion does not write off the account. Provisions of the kind of clause 4 of Article 27 say just this. F6, speaking of elimination, says: "Elimination can therefore only move the account between its aspects; it cannot empty the account." (F6 §2.1, Note) The original sentence speaks of the elimination of persons; here it is extended to moving a member state out of the system: the account only changes place, and the total account remains (own undertaking). The other: expulsion does not change where the colonizing comes from. Colonizing begun before expulsion still counts as coming from the system after expulsion, and joint defense can still be used (Paper 5, XZ29). The NUT's remark, "It went in while it was in the system," says exactly this. The hypothetical case of §5 is the reverse: there the entry took place after exit, and does not count as coming from the system. In both places it is recognized by when the colonizing took place.
The cost of expulsion, written in three layers. The normative layer: those who are protected do not go out with the expulsion, and this means three things. Petitions submitted before expulsion are still concluded; this is stage two of §3. Those reached by the system's acts thereafter, for instance those reached by the system's sanctions or notifications concerning the expelled state, have a road by which to ask, following the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6). Questioning and recording go on as before: the system and peers can still question and record a state outside the system (Paper 2, XZ11).
The cost is written at this layer too: for those reached by that state's acts (its own people, and people outside the system who are under its acts), the road of petition against that state's acts thereafter is closed within the system. This stretch is registered as a remainder as it stands; it is also one of the reasons why the conditions for expulsion must be strict.
The rule layer: Article 14 of the Compact, under which who may petition is drawn by those affected and not by citizenship, is an example; that after expulsion this road closes for acts thereafter is a consequence of this example. The judgment layer: whether to expel must take this cost into account, and is left to political leaders.
The three fishermen of the Outer Sandbars give this cost a face. After they were held, they had a lawyer in Rivermouth City complain to the UCSE's Inspectorate about the holding and the curfew. The Inspectorate replied that the complainants did not hold UCSE citizenship and were not lawfully resident in UCSE territory, and so did not fall within what it could take up. Article 14 of the Compact became the one road left. In the autumn of Year 18, they petitioned the Petitions Committee under clause 2 of Article 14; the member of the Committee holding UCSE citizenship did not take part in the deliberations. In the spring of Year 19, the Committee decided to take up the petition, on the ground that "clause 2 speaks of persons affected by it, and is not drawn by citizenship; the Inspectorate does not take up the complaint, and the petitioners have no other available remedy within the UCSE." As of Year 20, the Committee was still hearing it. Had expulsion passed at that time, this petition, submitted before the expulsion, would still be concluded; but whatever the administration office did to the people on the islands thereafter, they would have had no road in the system.
From this, Stonegorge's question can be answered. What expulsion releases is the UCSE's place in common procedures, and the one road of petition within the system against its acts thereafter; what remains is the earlier account, the petitions already submitted, and the questioning and recording of it by the system and by the states. The NUT's "outside, no one can question it any more" goes too far: the system and peers can still question and record a state outside the system, and what is closed is the one road of Article 14. The NUT's wanting the UCSE, in the matter of suspension, to "sit here and answer" is exactly the shape of this cost: staying inside, the UCSE remains under that road.
One more case must be mentioned. Where a member splits into two parts and the system recognizes one part and "expels" the other, this is read as not recognizing that part as succeeding to the original member's membership. Among the events that have happened there is no split of a member; this case is judged in Paper 5, §11 (Paper 5, XZ34), and the two floors above apply as they stand.
By the four items of Theory of the State N36, the channel of expulsion is written as follows. Who initiates it: the member that proposes it and the positions that vote. The object: the termination of membership and its reasons. The side that proposes and votes cannot close the questioning directed at the expulsion: the party proposed for expulsion can make statements at every stage, which is how Article 7(b) of the Compact is written for a member being questioned; the decision must state its reasons; peers and those affected still ask. When it fails, the account is booked to the positions and persons that proposed and voted (Theory of the State N39).
The UCSE said: "Expel a member, and the system becomes the kind of thing it says it is not." The weight of this objection is that expulsion looks like a ruling handed down by the system from above its members. But expulsion acquires no force over the UCSE: the affairs of the Outer Sandbars are still decided by the UCSE; whether to withdraw or to stay, the system cannot decide in its place; the system only no longer works with it in common procedures. What must be guarded against is something else: expulsion becoming a tool by which a party with great influence removes dissenting members. So expulsion must be aimed at acts, its conditions must be strict, and it must itself be open to questioning. Judgment falls on acts: who the acting party is does not change this judgment. Here the one proposed for expulsion is the UCSE, and the reading above is not changed by a word.
What is left here: how strict is left to political leaders. In the matter of the Outer Sandbars, neither expulsion nor suspension passed; as of Year 20 the administration office remained, and what is left in the system's hands is questioning, recording, and each member's own cooperation. The cost is written as it is.
XZ50 Expulsion: permitted, under strict conditions; it does not write off the account and does not change where the colonizing comes from. The system may expel a member; how strict is not decided by philosophy, and is left to political leaders. Expulsion means the termination of membership and is directed at the member state as a construct; people do not go out with it; the Theory of the State established no expulsion for persons (Theory of the State N14), and established nothing on a framework's expelling a member state. Expulsion, like suspension, is withdrawing cooperation, and acquires no force over the expelled party (Paper 4, XZ27). The direction of the reasons is line-crossing: colonizing another state, or crossing the line against one's own people (massacre, torture, detention without trial, the driving people out on a large scale); the latter rests on covenants the member has acknowledged, and is aimed at acts, not at forms of government; a coup not itself accompanied by line-crossing is not a reason; the humanitarian part is cut out. Reasons other than line-crossing (such as long-standing non-performance) are left to political leaders, under the two floors. Two floors: expulsion does not write off the account, for when a member is moved out the account only changes place (F6 §2.1, Note; own undertaking); colonizing begun before expulsion still counts as coming from the system after expulsion, and joint defense can still be used (Paper 5, XZ29). Expulsion is itself an act, open to questioning: the party proposed for expulsion can make statements at every stage, the decision states its reasons, and the account falls on the positions and persons that propose and vote (Theory of the State N39); it is aimed at acts, not at the names or leanings of states, so that expulsion does not become a tool by which a party with great influence removes dissenting members. In three layers: at the normative layer, those who are protected do not go out with the expulsion, meaning three things: petitions submitted before expulsion are still concluded (XZ47, stage two); those reached by the system's acts thereafter have a road by which to ask, following the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6); questioning and recording go on as before. For those reached by that state's acts (its own people, and people outside the system who are under its acts), the road of petition against that state's acts thereafter is closed within the system; this is the cost of expulsion, registered as a remainder as it stands, and one of the reasons why the conditions are strict. At the rule layer, the article on expulsion and the article under which who may petition is drawn by those affected are examples. At the judgment layer, whether to expel takes this cost into account, and is left to political leaders. When a member splits, "expelling the other part" is read as not recognizing that part as succeeding to that member's membership (Paper 5, XZ34).
§7 Dissolution
The system itself may also break up. The members may all no longer want it, or it may no longer be able to do what it was meant to do. Then, to whom is the earlier account handed?
When the system dissolves, it must do its best to make follow-up arrangements. The arrangements include at least three items: where unsettled matters, petitions and procedures, go; records are handed, matter by matter, to the member states concerned for safekeeping; and the account of each act falls on the states and positions that voted for it and carried it out (Theory of the State N39). The words "do its best" must be read precisely: what cannot be arranged is registered as a remainder, and it is not declared that there is no longer any shortfall. The Theory of the State says: "Every division of membership, whether acquisition, renunciation, revocation, intake or secession, leaves its own shortfall," and further: "neither redrawing the object domain nor running a procedure to its end writes off the account." (Theory of the State N17) Dissolution is a division too, only what is divided off is the whole system; that sentence is extended from membership within a state to the dissolution of the system (own undertaking).
Step one: dissolution is an act of the members. Article 30 of the Compact requires the consent of all in the Conference of Members, and requires follow-up arrangements to be made before dissolution: where unsettled petitions go, archives handed matter by matter to the members concerned for safekeeping, and the accounts for sharing settled. This article too is an example. A party that wants dissolution while others do not consent takes the road of exit (§1). Dismantling a construct is also an act of that construct: "Dismantling is also an act of the construct: the dismantling itself may not cross the line" (Institution Theory Z38). The original sentence speaks of a construct within a state; here it is extended to the system (own undertaking).
Step two: dissolution does not write off the account. Binding force stops going forward, and the earlier account is not written off, on the same principle as exit (§3). F6's sample charter wrote: "After dissolution, this Charter no longer binds any former member civilization." (F6, Appendix A, Article 19; a working demonstration; used only as an example) This sentence too speaks only of going forward. When the system is gone, where does the account fall? 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 system is an address. When the address is withdrawn, the account falls on the member states and positions that voted and carried out acts under that address. The Theory of Government says: "If 'a final bearer' means a position where the accounts are all gathered in and the door is shut, this series does not have it; if it means that every account lands on a position that can be named, it does" (Theory of Government G36). Shared resources and procedural obligations are not closed out by departure, and can only pass to arrangement (Conflict Treatise §25). The Conflict Treatise originally speaks of two parties parting; here it is extended to the dissolution of the system (own undertaking).
Step three: what cannot be arranged is registered as it stands. The system has never dissolved. The transition period when a member exits can be looked at as a small sample. In the six months after Stonegorge's exit took effect, the accounts for sharing were settled as the covenant required, the two petitions were heard and concluded as usual, and transfers under Sharing Decision No. 4 were carried out until the summer of Year 19. The Eastfield camp then held about two hundred ten thousand people. Sharing ended when the transition period expired; in the autumn of Year 19, the UCSE and Stonegorge concluded a separate bilateral agreement to receive four thousand more people. The gap between two hundred ten thousand and four thousand is what it looks like when "do its best" does not reach. It must be registered as a remainder as it stands, and not written as already arranged. If the system dissolves, those whom the system's acts reach, for instance the petitioners of unsettled petitions, those in the course of sharing and transfer, and those written of in the records, are all within this arrangement, following the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6).
By the four items, the place of dissolution is written as follows. Who initiates it: the members, with the consent of all required. The object: dissolution and the follow-up arrangements. The party questioned cannot close the questioning directed at it: dissolution is itself an act, and how unsettled petitions, and people in the course of transfer, are to land is what it must answer. When it fails, the account falls on the member states and positions that voted and carried it out, and what cannot be arranged is registered as a remainder.
It may be said that, once the system has dissolved, there is no address, so to whom is the account booked? Step two has already answered: when the address is withdrawn, the account falls on the member states and positions that voted and carried out acts. It may also be said that dissolution is the states' freedom and needs no arrangements. The weight of this objection is that no one can force a group of states to keep up a system none of them wants. This paper acknowledges this. But dismantling is also an act, and is itself under questioning; the freedom to dissolve does not wipe out unsettled matters at a stroke.
By the three layers: the three items "at least" included, and "it is not declared that there is no longer any shortfall," are at the normative layer; Article 30 of the Compact is an example at the rule layer; how each item is arranged, and to which state it is handed, is left to the judgment of those in positions.
What is left here: whatever cannot be arranged is, without exception, registered as a remainder.
XZ51 When the system dissolves, it does its best to make follow-up arrangements. The follow-up arrangements include at least: where unsettled matters (petitions, procedures) go; records handed, matter by matter, to the member states concerned for safekeeping; and the account of each act falling on the states and positions that voted for it and carried it out (Theory of the State N39). "Do its best": what cannot be arranged is registered as a remainder, and it is not declared that there is no longer any shortfall (Theory of the State N17; own undertaking). Dismantling is also an act of the construct, and the dismantling itself may not cross the line (Institution Theory Z38; own undertaking). Dissolution stops only binding force going forward, and the earlier account is not written off; shared resources and procedural obligations are not closed out by departure, and can only pass to arrangement (Conflict Treatise §25, extended to the dissolution of the system; own undertaking). What cannot be arranged is stated in the procedure, and registered as a remainder as it stands.
§8 With Kant
This paper asks about leaving and coming back, and asked to the bottom it is an old question: can there be, between states, a rightful condition that counts, one that does not rest on a compulsion from above, and in which the states remain free throughout? The most direct connection is with Kant.
In Appendix II of Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden), Kant treats the agreement of politics with morality, and point 2 there treats the right of nations. He says that the right of nations presupposes some rightful condition, and that this condition must arise from some contract; this contract need not, like the one from which a state arises, be founded on laws of compulsion, but "may at most also be that of a continuously free association, like the one mentioned above, of the federality of different states" (my translation; allenfalls auch der einer fortwährend-freyen Association seyn kann, wie der oben erwähnte der Föderalität verschiedener Staaten; Zum ewigen Frieden, Appendix II, point 2, per the first edition, Nicolovius, 1795, Project Gutenberg EBook #46873; compared with the English translation by M. C. Smith, EBook #50922; tier A). In the same place he says further that the contract binds the states "only with the aim of keeping themselves at peace with one another and together toward other states, and by no means in order to make acquisitions" (my translation; daß der Vertrag die Staaten nur in der Absicht verbindet, unter einander und zusammen gegen andere Staaten sich im Frieden zu erhalten, keinesweges aber um Erwerbungen zu machen; ibid., same point). At the end of Appendix II he gathers this point into one sentence: a federative condition of states that aims only at the removal of war is the only rightful condition compatible with their freedom (ibid., final paragraph of Appendix II, paraphrased).
The common question. Kant asks where the rightful condition that the right of nations needs comes from. This paper asks how, in a system of cooperation, leaving and coming back are to be arranged, and how the earlier account is to be reckoned. They do not look like one question. The two meet at one point: can there be, between states, an association that counts, one not founded on laws of compulsion, in which the states remain free throughout? At this point, they are the same question.
Where they agree. The rightful condition that the right of nations needs can arise from a continuously free association not founded on laws of compulsion: on this the two agree. The definition this series gives of the system is precisely that it has no superior with force above it and sets none up; what the system can do is question, record and withdraw cooperation (§2).
Where they part. Kant says "continuously free" without taking it apart. This series sets it down in three things: exit can go through; coming back needs others' consent; after leaving, the earlier account is not written off. Stonegorge's case matches these one by one. It gave notice of exit, and the system made a record and did not stand in the way (§1). It applied to rejoin, which is a new covenant, still undecided as of the winter of Year 20 (§4). Its two petitions from its time in the system were heard and concluded as usual, and in the transition period sharing was settled as the covenant required (§3). The DRP's case adds one more item: for procedures the covenant does not permit to be newly opened, that road within the system has closed, and the account is not written off (§3). Kant's text does not take these three things apart.
This series reads the sentence thus: the association itself is not kept up by compulsion; "continuously" says that the association goes on in freedom, not that members' acts may be exempt from questioning. Leaving, coming back and the account are what this series adds on this reading, and are not booked under Kant's name.
A question drafted on Kant's behalf. Since a continuously free association is still joined by contract, how can existing obligations be kept from being erased by exit, while an unsettled matter is kept from becoming a reason never to allow exit? How can a common procedure with no superior with force above it write both sides in a usable form?
This series answers in three places. Exit is not vetoed by the other side: leaving is this state's own change of structure, questioned inside this state (§1). Re-accession needs the consent of all parties: the association is held with one another, and one party's freedom cannot become forcing its way through another's door; leaving needs no one's consent and coming back needs consent, and only the two together make both sides free (§4). Earlier acts are not exempt from the account: the account is earlier acts, not binding going forward; F6, speaking of continuity, says that exit "does not by itself clear facts of prior performance" (F6 §3.3). The account remains, yet unsettled matters do not keep exit from taking effect indefinitely (§1). It is not that Kant wanted freedom without reckoning old accounts, and that only this series brings the account in; in Kant, the association arises from contract to begin with. On this shared difficulty, this series separates the period of membership, procedures already begun, and procedures newly opened after exit (§3), and states which consents re-accession requires. This is an unfolding, and does not claim to refute Kant.
This section does not extend in two directions. As for the half-sentence in the same point, "only with the aim of keeping themselves at peace," this series takes anti-colonization as its main line and does not guarantee peace; this place of parting has been written in the Prequel, and is not set against Kant again here. The test of publicity has been set against Kant in Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, and is not set against him again here either.
Where This Paper Stops
This paper has proved these things. Exiting or switching an external arrangement is a change of structure in this state, questioned inside this state, and not decided alone by the position being questioned; the system can review, can record, and can require a notice period and a transition period in the covenant, but cannot veto; the notice period may not be made into a lock, and a fixed end shows only that it cannot be extended by the party being left on its own. Any arrangement that in fact acquires force over members is a superior, and locking exit uses the same criterion; when a rule hands to the outside the authority to review its own repeal, the answer comes in two steps, and the state is still at the state's end. Exit does not write off the account, in three stages: acts during membership are still recorded, procedures already begun are still concluded, and whether new procedures can be opened after exit follows the acknowledged covenant. A member is free to leave, coming back needs consent, and re-accession has two floors. Colonizing after first exiting does not count as coming from the system; there is no exiting, colonizing and then rejoining. The system may expel a member under strict conditions; expulsion does not write off the account, and does not change where the colonizing comes from. When the system dissolves, it does its best to make follow-up arrangements.
What it has not proved: how long the notice period and the transition period are; the particular conditions for re-accession, expulsion and suspension, which are left to political leaders; the detailed rules of exit procedure in treaty law.
The remainder it leaves: through which positions a member's exit must be made, inside the member, to accord with its own law, under which the DRP's exit is registered; the stretch closed when the covenant does not permit new procedures, within which fall the two in the DRP and the seven returned petitions; the road of petition that expulsion closes; and what cannot be arranged at dissolution. These are registered as remainders as they stand, and are not written as though a road already existed. Stonegorge's re-accession was still undecided as of the winter of Year 20, and the administration office on the Outer Sandbars was still there as of Year 20; the record runs to this point and stops.
Handed to Paper 8: once a member is free to leave, coming back needs consent, and the account is not written off, the question that remains is whether every arrangement still lies under questioning.
The Seven Propositions of This Paper
XZ45 Exit is questioned inside; the system can review it but cannot veto it. Exiting or switching an external arrangement is a change of structure in this state (Theory of the State N24, extended from two states to many; own undertaking); it is questioned inside this state, and is not decided alone by the position being questioned. The system may review and record, and may require a notice period and a transition period in the covenant, but cannot veto; the notice period keeps exit from being used to evade questioning under way, it may not be made into a lock, and a fixed end shows only that it cannot be extended by the party being left on its own. External review of an exit is one kind of external questioning, which this state cannot cancel, and so the system can review (Paper 2, XZ11); only force can block exit, and so the system cannot veto (XZ46). A covenant may set conditions on exit (a notice period, settling); when the conditions are not met, the account remains, still recorded and still questioned, but unsettled matters do not keep exit from taking effect indefinitely (Theory of the State N16, extended from secession to a member's exit; own undertaking); where a covenant has no exit clause, the system cannot use "non-recognition" in place of a veto either. The notice period and the transition period are checked under Theory of Government G39: the party being left cannot cancel exit on its own by pricing or by approval; the actual burdens, the existing conditions, and whether the matter can pass into a reviewable procedure must still be checked separately. Toward a member in the course of exiting, a freeze serves only the account and is not made a condition of exit (Paper 4, XZ22). Exit does not stand in for questioning (Theory of Government G27). How long the notice period and the transition period are is left to the judgment of those in positions.
XZ46 Any arrangement that in fact acquires force over members is a superior; locking exit is one case. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs; here the party substituted for is the member, and the judgment is whether, at this moment, the member implements a decision, and how. A decision made by majority under a covenant agreed beforehand lands through the member's own law; the system can only question, record and withdraw cooperation, and is not a superior (Paper 1, XZ1); only what can force a decision to land over the member's own law is one. Withdrawing cooperation does not substitute for judgment (Paper 4, XZ22); withholding from disbursements is a check, and taking a member's own capital is force. An arrangement that has acquired force answers to the requirements the Theory of Government places on a level of government (the multi-branch separation of powers, channels for internal subjects, openness to questioning), and cannot evade them with "it is only cooperation." Locking exit uses the same criterion: a lock needs force, and an arrangement that locks by force is a superior (Law Series P3 §6, Power Theory P6 §I and Moral Law P9 §4.2 extended to the system toward its members; own undertaking); a "lock" that does not rest on force is only an external questioning that the member can walk away from but cannot cancel, and the state is still at the state's end. To a rule that hands to the outside the authority to review its own repeal, the answer comes in two steps: external review is one kind of external questioning; the system can review but cannot veto, and if a member hands the veto to the system, the system does not accept it; if a member, in its own law, has set an external consent on its own exit, that is its own law, and changing it is a change of structure, questioned inside this state (Theory of the State N24); the outside cannot stop it except by force, and what carries force is no longer within this series' domain (own undertaking). Whether there is an exit clause is not the criterion; the criterion is whether force is had, or needed, to hold members in. When an arrangement has in fact acquired force is, at the boundary, left to the judgment of those in positions, and in the same place it is stated which party, and which judgment, is substituted.
XZ47 Exit does not write off the account. Acts before exit are still recorded, procedures already begun are still concluded, and questioning between peers goes on as before (Theory of the State N38). Past residue is not written off by closing off questioning (Institution Theory Z35a); exit terminates the current answering load, and does not by itself clear facts of prior performance (F6 §3.3); shared resources and procedural obligations are not closed out by departure, and can only pass to arrangement or arbitration (Conflict Treatise §25, originally of two first-person laws after they part, extended to a member's exit; own undertaking). The sample's "no longer bound after exit" speaks only of binding force going forward: binding force stops going forward, and the earlier account is not written off. Three stages (own undertaking): (1) acts during membership are still recorded; (2) procedures already begun are still concluded; (3) whether new procedures can be opened after exit on acts during membership follows the acknowledged covenant: where the covenant permits, the covenant is followed; where it does not, that road within the system is closed, but questions from peers and other channels go on as before, and the account is not written off. What stops going forward is the rights newly acquired or exercised as a member; rights and procedures that have already arisen and continue under the covenant follow the original covenant; after exit, a state can no longer initiate new procedures under the covenant as a party to it. The stretch closed when the covenant does not permit new procedures is registered as a remainder as it stands, and is not written as though a road remained.
XZ48 Free to leave; coming back needs consent. Re-accession is a new covenant, and as a covenant it requires the consent of all parties (Paper 1, XZ1); the parties may set conditions; this is a check, not force: not consenting decides nothing on the other's behalf on its own affairs, but only declines to make a new covenant with it. Two floors: re-accession does not wash the account clean, and acts during the period of exit are still recorded and still questioned; a state may not come back bringing a colonization under way. No permanent bar is set against the name of a state: judgment falls on acts, and is not decided by origin (Theory of the State N34, extended from occupation to re-accession; own undertaking). Conditions above the floor are written out, go by acts and the account, are not aimed at forms of government or the names of states, and are set by the political leaders of the parties; those that require the other party to change an autonomous choice of its own that crosses no line are checked under Paper 4, XZ25. The covenant of re-accession settles the one matter it is to settle, and does not rewrite the acts of the period of exit (Conflict Treatise §24; own undertaking). Line-crossing under way at first accession, and an observer member's seat: see Paper 1, XZ7.
XZ49 Colonizing after first exiting does not count as coming from the system; there is no exiting, colonizing and then rejoining. Joint defense recognizes whether a state was a member when the colonizing took place, and does not reach back; reaching back would make the freedom to leave come to nothing (XZ45). The part prepared within the system before exit, making use of the system's arrangements, is still booked to the account. Colonizing begun after exit is, for the system, outside the system against outside the system; joint defense does not take it up, the indirect means remain open (putting questions, recording, sanctions, receiving those who leave), and how far they are used is left to the political leaders in their positions. Applying to rejoin bringing a colonization under way is blocked at the second floor of re-accession (XZ48), and is not left to political leaders. The gap here is narrowed by Paper 5, XZ30: whichever colonizing entry forces are sent to stop, the sending state's own first face must hold; whether a member or not, the only difference is prior coordination and preparation.
XZ50 Expulsion: permitted, under strict conditions; it does not write off the account and does not change where the colonizing comes from. The system may expel a member; how strict is not decided by philosophy, and is left to political leaders. Expulsion means the termination of membership and is directed at the member state as a construct; people do not go out with it; the Theory of the State established no expulsion for persons (Theory of the State N14), and established nothing on a framework's expelling a member state. Expulsion, like suspension, is withdrawing cooperation, and acquires no force over the expelled party (Paper 4, XZ27). The direction of the reasons is line-crossing: colonizing another state, or crossing the line against one's own people (massacre, torture, detention without trial, the driving people out on a large scale); the latter rests on covenants the member has acknowledged, and is aimed at acts, not at forms of government; a coup not itself accompanied by line-crossing is not a reason; the humanitarian part is cut out. Reasons other than line-crossing (such as long-standing non-performance) are left to political leaders, under the two floors. Two floors: expulsion does not write off the account, for when a member is moved out the account only changes place (F6 §2.1, Note; own undertaking); colonizing begun before expulsion still counts as coming from the system after expulsion, and joint defense can still be used (Paper 5, XZ29). Expulsion is itself an act, open to questioning: the party proposed for expulsion can make statements at every stage, the decision states its reasons, and the account falls on the positions and persons that propose and vote (Theory of the State N39); it is aimed at acts, not at the names or leanings of states, so that expulsion does not become a tool by which a party with great influence removes dissenting members. In three layers: at the normative layer, those who are protected do not go out with the expulsion, meaning three things: petitions submitted before expulsion are still concluded (XZ47, stage two); those reached by the system's acts thereafter have a road by which to ask, following the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6); questioning and recording go on as before. For those reached by that state's acts (its own people, and people outside the system who are under its acts), the road of petition against that state's acts thereafter is closed within the system; this is the cost of expulsion, registered as a remainder as it stands, and one of the reasons why the conditions are strict. At the rule layer, the article on expulsion and the article under which who may petition is drawn by those affected are examples. At the judgment layer, whether to expel takes this cost into account, and is left to political leaders. When a member splits, "expelling the other part" is read as not recognizing that part as succeeding to that member's membership (Paper 5, XZ34).
XZ51 When the system dissolves, it does its best to make follow-up arrangements. The follow-up arrangements include at least: where unsettled matters (petitions, procedures) go; records handed, matter by matter, to the member states concerned for safekeeping; and the account of each act falling on the states and positions that voted for it and carried it out (Theory of the State N39). "Do its best": what cannot be arranged is registered as a remainder, and it is not declared that there is no longer any shortfall (Theory of the State N17; own undertaking). Dismantling is also an act of the construct, and the dismantling itself may not cross the line (Institution Theory Z38; own undertaking). Dissolution stops only binding force going forward, and the earlier account is not written off; shared resources and procedural obligations are not closed out by departure, and can only pass to arrangement (Conflict Treatise §25, extended to the dissolution of the system; own undertaking). What cannot be arranged is stated in the procedure, and registered as a remainder as it stands.
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). What a State Is Not (SAE Theory of the State, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584292
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Rule (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584315
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Exit (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584325
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). The Last Resort (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584352
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). 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). To Whom the Ought Is Addressed (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23269635
Qin, H. (2026). Open to Questioning (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23271324
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). 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). National Law — Azeroth: A Negative Thought Experiment on the Structural Necessity of Law (SAE Law Series, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19548596
Qin, H. (2026). Interstellar Law and Grand Closure — The Recession of Coercive Law (SAE Law Series, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19549018
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 Severing of Power · Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20647463
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
III · External works (public-domain translation, tier B)
Grotius, H. (1901). The Rights of War and Peace, Including the Law of Nature and of Nations. Trans. A. C. Campbell. New York & London: M. Walter Dunne. Project Gutenberg, EBook #46564. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46564 (abridged translation; Latin original not checked)
Interfaces
Main upstream: the Theory of the State (Paper 1, §5; Paper 3, N14 to N17; Paper 5, N24 and §§1, 4; Paper 6, N34 and §4; Paper 7, N36, N38, N39); the Theory of Government (Paper 4, G27; Paper 6, G36, G39); Institution Theory (Paper 1, Z7a; Paper 6, Z35a, Z38); F6 §3.3, §2.1, Note (extended to a member's exit and to the dissolution of the system; own undertaking); the Conflict Treatise §24, §25 (extended to the covenant of re-accession and to the dissolution of the system; own undertaking).
Also used: Law Series P3 §6, §6.1; Law Series P4 §2 (only to mark the boundary); Power Theory P6 §I; Moral Law P9 §4.2; War Treatise §10 (paraphrased, only as a contrast for failure in ordinary times), §13 (Gate Four, §5); F6, Appendix A, Articles 6(b), 10(b) and 19, and Appendix B, Article 6(c) (a working demonstration; used only as an example).
Interfacing: Kant (Perpetual Peace, Appendix II, point 2; tier A, per the first edition of 1795, compared with Smith's English translation; the closing section); Grotius (The Rights of War and Peace, bk. II, ch. 15, §12; tier B, per Campbell's abridged English translation; in the text, §1).
This series: the Prequel (the criterion of force; the three layers; not acting as a hidden superior); Paper 1, XZ1, XZ6, XZ7; Paper 2, XZ11 and §6; Paper 4, XZ22, XZ25, XZ27 and §7; Paper 5, XZ29, XZ30, XZ34; Paper 6, XZ38; Paper 8, XZ54.
Handed to Paper 8: once a member is free to leave, coming back needs consent, and the account is not written off, the question that remains is whether every arrangement still lies under questioning.