The Close
收束
This paper is the last of the SAE Theory of Inter-State Cooperation. It asks four things: whether every arrangement of a system of cooperation that has no superior with force above it, and sets none up, lies under a channel it cannot itself close; what "15DD predominance" is in a system whose members are mixed; where thickness falls, and how international law emerges, when thickness is needed between states but there is no compulsion; and how far the question of "institutions between institutions" left by How Is Institution Possible (F6) is answered at the level between states. A resident of Apple City runs through the whole paper: she has no vote in the system, yet the system's sharing decision and the Cloud River data station have reached her pay slip, and the warning she received on the night of the flood release. The answer goes this far: for each of nine arrangements, covenant, questioning, the account, checks, joint defense, admission, exit, expulsion and suspension, it is stated who initiates it, which object it affects, whether the party questioned can close it, and how the account is booked when it fails; the party questioned is the position that made the arrangement, and "last" refers to level, not to exemption from questioning. "15DD predominance" is recognized by the system's acts; it is a diagnosis, not a threshold; judgment falls on acts: who the acting party is does not change the judgment. This level is not thin; it only lacks compulsory power; its thickness is borne by covenants, external questioning that cannot be cancelled, an account that can be seen, and withdrawing cooperation; what emerges when no superior grows up is international law, piece by piece; the showdown prediction of Law Series P1 is half answered; as to Law Series P4, compulsion has not receded, and what is absent is compulsion above the states. Each of F6's five propositions has a place at this level; mutual recognition and mutual examination can grow into law, piece by piece, and do not grow into a common legislator. The close hands over the interstellar and what lies between civilizations, the law above states, the details of treaty law, the forms of bodies, the place of the person, and real history, and registers the places taken on and not carried through; the remainder left by not compelling is registered as it stands, on a main reason and an auxiliary one. The conversations with the tradition run through the text: Kant's First Definitive Article, and Rawls (paraphrased from a secondary source), part from this series at the threshold; of the two claims in Kant's Second Definitive Article, the claim that the league need not be a state is taken, and the ranking of the world republic is not, the two being read as a hesitation before the antinomy; with Rawls, neither sets up a world state, and the two part at compulsion. The paper has five propositions (XZ52 to XZ56), 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
A resident lives in Orchard Court, in Apple City. The Theory of Government has written that every day she swipes a card to get in and out of her building, that her child is at a municipal primary school, and that the license for her line of work is issued by the Kingdom State; Theory of the State Paper 7 has written how the war reached her, through taxes, through a postponed election, through data from the river. She holds the citizenship of the United City-States of Ends (UCSE), and lives within Apple City, the Kingdom State and the UCSE.
In the winter of Year 13, the Three-Borders Compact, signed in the town of Three Borders by the UCSE, the Nation Union of Telos (NUT) and the Democratic Republic of Purposes (DRP), came into force. With it, the Three-Borders Cooperation System (hereafter the system) came to have a Conference of Members, a Secretariat, and a Three-Borders Petitions Committee admitting individual petitions. The system is not a level she is in: she holds no citizenship of the system, and she has no vote in it; in the system, the vote is the UCSE's.
Still, the system reached her.
In the summer of Year 15, a sluice gate at the Gorge Water power station of the Stonegorge Commonwealth (Stonegorge) failed, and there was an emergency flood release. At two in the morning that night, she received a flood warning by text message from Apple City: the flood crest would arrive in nine hours. The warning rested on the inflow of the Gorge Water across the border, measured at the NUT's Gorgemouth gauging station and passed on through the Secretariat's Cloud River data station. When the crest reached Apple City, the water stood about 0.6 meters below the top of the levee.
From Year 17 on, her pay slip has carried, besides income tax and the West Flats reconstruction tax, one more line: the "Three-Borders sharing surcharge," 0.3 percent. The line comes from the Admission-Sharing Appropriations Act, passed by the UCSE in the winter of Year 16, which raises money for the UCSE's share in the system's admission-sharing. In the spring of Year 17, the news from Lamp Island came onto Apple City's evening news; over the spring and summer, fuel prices in Apple City rose by about eighteen percent. In the summer, in an exchange of fire on the Southern Lane of the Stonegorge Strait, three UCSE sailors were killed, one of them from Willow Ferry. That year, of the people the UCSE received under the system's Sharing Decision No. 3, about three thousand two hundred went first into the Willow Ferry Reception Center, and some of them came to Apple City to work. In the autumn, the municipal primary school her child attends, by arrangement of the Kingdom State Department of Education, took in forty-one children from the Republic of the Sandbars (hereafter the Sandbars).
Under Article 14 of the Three-Borders Compact, once she has exhausted the remedies within the UCSE, she may petition the Petitions Committee about acts of the UCSE that touch the matters listed in the Compact; under clause 3 of the same Article, "persons reached by a decision made under a common procedure" may also petition. She has never brought a petition. The provisions of the Compact, like the system's organs and the laws of each state, are examples set up by this series; this series does not claim that they are the best design.
This matter falls on this resident. There is one line to look at: whether there is a road within reach by which the system itself can be questioned, that is, the fifth ought at the system level (Paper 2, XZ14); and as regards which of the system's acts she is among those whom the system's acts reach. Before this, things looked different: in Years 9 to 12, before the system existed, she had five roads she could take toward the UCSE level: elections, the Inspectorate, the Final Court, the members of the Chamber of Member Units sent by the Kingdom State, and renouncing UCSE citizenship (Theory of the State Paper 7, §2). Apple City's flood warnings used the upstream data that the NUT sent every hour after the arbitration between the two states (Theory of the State Paper 5, Introduction).
Put these things together, and the questions come out. In which places does the system appear in her life? Of these, which are the system's acts, which are the UCSE's, and which are only news? The line of the sharing surcharge: at which level is its account booked? If she has something to ask about one of the system's arrangements, where does she go first, and once there, can she reach it? The nine hours' warning rested on figures measured by another state, and on a covenant that the three parties did not manage to sign, only two of them; what is such an incomplete covenant, by the time it reaches her? Forty-one children came into her child's school: the conditions made for people outside the system, once they land in Apple City, fall on whom?
Asked to the bottom, these questions are one: whether every arrangement of a system that has no superior above it, and does not itself act as a superior, still lies under a channel it cannot itself close. The seven papers before this one have each written of one thing: covenant, questioning, the account, checks, joint defense, admission, exit. This paper, the last of the series, puts them together, and asks three further things at the level of the whole series: what "15DD predominance" is in a system whose members are mixed; where thickness falls when this level needs thickness but has no compulsion, and how international law grows, piece by piece; and how far the question of "institutions between institutions" left by the upstream is answered at the level between states. Finally it sets out what the whole series has handed over, what it has taken on and not carried through, what not compelling leaves behind, and where it stops.
The answer runs in five steps. §1 lists, item by item, under which channel each of the system's arrangements lies, and the resident's matter is judged there; §2 says that "15DD predominance" is a diagnosis, not a threshold; §3, that thickness is needed and there is no compulsion; §4 treats institutions between institutions; §5 closes the whole series, and the overall points of parting with Kant and Rawls are written there. As the final paper, it sets no closing section of its own; the handovers downstream are carried in the Interfaces at its end.
§1 Every Arrangement Lies Under a Channel It Cannot Itself Close
If she wants to ask the system about something, for instance why the sharing of Year 17 was divided as it was, can her question reach it? To answer, one must first know something more general: whether every arrangement of the system lies under a channel it cannot itself close.
One requirement, extended to the system. The Theory of Government has established: "Decisions can be final: a particular matter can be answered and closed. Positions cannot be final: no position may monopolize the power to shut the door"; it also says: "Questioning does not need an unquestionable endpoint"; "a construct's configuration ought to place every position under some channel it cannot itself close" (Theory of Government Paper 6, G36). Theory of the State Paper 7 extended this to the several "lasts" of a state: the supreme rule, the last instance, the last force and the rest each lie, place by place, under channels, and "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 Paper 7, N36). Of these four items, who initiates it, which object it affects and whether it can be closed follow the Theory of Government's three questions for the functions of control: "who can activate it; what actual efficacy it has on reasons, actions, rules, or the holding of office; how the party questioned cannot cancel it on its own" (Theory of Government Paper 6, G36a). The fourth item was added by the Theory of the State itself: at the national level there is no outer layer, and when a channel fails there is no layer outside to take it up, so where the account lands must be stated in advance, lest the failure itself write the account off.
At the level between states there is likewise no outer layer. The requirement holds just the same; only the subject term has changed. In the Theory of the State, what is questioned is a state's position; here, what is questioned is the position that made the arrangement: the positions in a common procedure that vote and execute, and the positions in member states where the arrangement lands (own undertaking). The system is a construct and has no first person; what is done in the system's name is traced back to the positions and votes that made it (the Prequel, §4). So to say that "an arrangement of the system lies under a channel" is to say that these positions lie under channels, not that a subject called "the system" does.
One reading must also be guarded against. The system stands at the top of the level between states: there is no superior above it. Someone might read from this that the questioning of its arrangements stops once it reaches the system. The Theory of the State blocked this reading already in its Prequel: "'Last' refers to level: there is nothing above. It does not refer to exemption from questioning." (the Theory of the State Prequel, §3) So it is with the system. Having no superior overhead shows only where the questions must come from; it does not show that the questioning has stopped. The third clause of the main-line sentence says exactly this, in both directions: the system puts questions to its members, and every one of its own arrangements remains open to questioning.
Item by item. Of the nine items below, the first seven have each been written in the earlier papers, and are put together here; of the two items of expulsion and suspension, Papers 7 and 4 wrote what they are, and here it is added under which channel each lies. The provisions of the Compact cited in the table are all examples, and are marked "or the like." Of these, Article 27 needs one more word: its suspension suspends only the right to vote, which is narrower than this series' direction; its conditions for expulsion are not limited to line-crossing, which is wider than this series' direction (Paper 4, XZ27; Paper 7, XZ50).
| Arrangement | Who initiates it | Which object it affects | Whether the party questioned can close it | How the account is booked when it fails |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Covenant (Paper 1, XZ1, XZ3, XZ4) | New binding is set up only with the consent of all members (Compact, Article 7(a), or the like); those who put questions about existing covenants are peers and those affected (Paper 2, XZ10) | The one matter that a covenant, or a single vote, settles | It cannot. A covenant settles this matter; it does not close on anyone's behalf a questioning already under way, nor rewrite the earlier account; the decision is final in the case, the positions that implement it are not | What cannot land is recorded against the member that does not implement it and against its positions (Paper 3, XZ17; Theory of the State N39); the part of a covenant that would require a member to cross the line is not carried across, and is recorded against the positions that proposed it and voted for it (XZ4) |
| Questioning (Paper 2, XZ9–XZ13) | Any member or the Secretary-General requests it, and members not concerned open it by a majority (Compact, Articles 7(b) and 8, or the like); those affected petition through a treaty body (Article 14, or the like) | A member's existing acts and its answers | It cannot. The party questioned recuses itself on the matter directed at it, does not vote, and holds no power to close the case; nor does the questioner alone decide the closing; exiting an arrangement can close one channel, and cannot cancel the questioning (XZ11) | What has not been answered is recorded as it stands: the DRP gave no numbers in answer to the questions on citizenship, and made no further answer on the petition of the two people of Wheat Plain, and both are in the record (Paper 2; Paper 7); answering and not answering are questioned within its own channels (Theory of the State N38); if there is no position for closing a case that the questioner does not monopolize, the matter is registered plainly as unsettled |
| The account (Paper 3, XZ16–XZ18, XZ21) | The Secretariat and the Conference of Members make the record (Compact, Article 9, or the like); peers, those affected and the press of each state read it | Acts, and the positions and persons that made them; the system's own record | It cannot. The record is public, and deletions and changes are registered as made and can be checked (the sentence deleted from the annual sharing report, Paper 3, §3); exit, expulsion, re-accession and dissolution do not rewrite the record | What characterizes a state instead of recording acts is changed under the rules on records, and the change is registered (XZ18); where the account stands but cannot land, it is registered as a remainder as it stands (§3 of this paper) |
| Checks (Paper 4, XZ22–XZ25) | Each member withdraws cooperation on its own; a common procedure does it jointly, and members not taking part explain their reasons publicly (Compact, Articles 11 and 7(c), or the like) | The party from which cooperation is withdrawn; those whom the measures reach, following the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6) | The party under pressure cannot close peers' own judgment and their withdrawing of cooperation; nor can the party applying pressure, or the common procedure, close the questions put to them by those whom the measures reach; the end of a measure is not decided by the party applying pressure alone, but is recognized by covenant or award, and where there is nothing to recognize it by, it is reviewed on expiry | Each participating state bears a share, and the common procedure bears a share of its own (XZ24); where the humanitarian carve-out has not landed, this is recorded as it stands; a measure that cuts off the other party's room to bear the cost and not comply has already slid into substituting judgment, and is not done (the Prequel, §2; Paper 4, XZ22); an arrangement that does this to members is, under Paper 7, XZ46, a superior |
| Joint defense (Paper 5, XZ28–XZ33) | Each participating state deploys and withdraws on its own, under its own law and through a determination that is not monopolized; the record of the Conference of Members is a public question and record, not an authorization (Compact, Article 18, or the like) | The colonizing entry; those whom the sending of forces reaches (following the unified sentence); the coordination and preparation done in the system's name | The sending state cannot close the questions put by the system and by the other members about its first face (Paper 2, XZ9; Paper 6, XZ43); an emergency can move being questioned to afterward, and does not withdraw it (XZ32); for the part done in the system's name, those it reaches have a road by which to question it, under XZ14 | The account for starting a war and for expansion lies with each participating state's own positions and persons (Theory of the State N30, N39); the part that crosses the boundary is recorded as it stands; the joint structures of wartime are dismantled after the war |
| Admission (Paper 6, XZ37–XZ41) | Those who come to the door; those affected petition under Article 14 or the like, and a sharing decision itself can be petitioned against (the one hundred three people of the Eastfield camp, Paper 2, §7); the Conference of Members makes the sharing decision | Refusal of entry, return and detention at the door; the part of sharing and transfer that falls on persons | It cannot. Not pushing back at the door is not reduced by covenant (XZ4); destinations do not sort people on their behalf (XZ39) | Where the part that "can" be done has not been taken up, the state at the door receives them under "must," and what has not been taken up is registered as a remainder as it stands; shares long unpaid are recorded as they stand (Paper 3) |
| Exit (Paper 7, XZ45–XZ47) | Positions and persons within the state (parliament, courts, voters); the system reviews and records; peers and those affected | Exit as a change to the structure; acts during the notice period | It cannot. Exit is not decided alone by the position under questioning; it can close one channel, and cannot cancel the questioning; the system does not veto it, nor lock it by freezes, conditions or "non-recognition" | Earlier acts are recorded as they stand, and procedures already begun are concluded; where a covenant does not allow new procedures to be opened, that road is closed, and this is registered as a remainder as it stands; peers' questions go on as before |
| Expulsion (Paper 7, XZ50) | The member that proposes it and the positions that vote (Compact, Article 27, or the like); the party being expelled makes its statement at every stage | The termination of membership and its reasons; it does not reach those whom that state's acts reach | It cannot. Expulsion is itself an act; the decision states its reasons, and the party expelled, peers and those affected question it as usual; it is directed at acts, not at the name of a state or its leaning | The account is not written off, and where the colonizing comes from does not change; the road by which those whom that state's acts reach petition against its later acts is closed within the system, and this is registered as a remainder as it stands; the account is booked to the positions and persons that proposed and voted |
| Suspension (Paper 4, XZ27) | A vote of the Conference of Members (Compact, Article 27, or the like) | A member's vote in common procedures and its place in joint arrangements; it does not suspend the member's right to make statements when questioned, nor the road by which those its acts reach can reach the system | The end of a suspension is not decided alone by the suspending party: when the acts have stopped and the account has landed, the end is recognized by covenant or award | The account is not written off; what continues on the strength of its origin is reviewed on expiry (Institution Theory Z22); the account is booked to the positions and persons that voted |
The table is to be read in this way. In every row, "the party questioned" is the position that made that arrangement, not a subject called "the system." "Cannot close" is read as in Theory of the State Paper 7: the party questioned can make the decision for the case on a matter directed at itself, but cannot decide on its own whether this kind of questioning can be initiated thereafter. What the fourth column checks is whether this kind of questioning can be initiated, whether the party questioned can cancel it on its own, and what effect it actually has; the fifth column records separately how the account is booked when it fails. Neither column guarantees that every matter will be corrected; but "the account is not written off" cannot take the place of the functional conditions of the fourth column. The table holds normative requirements, and also configurations that the examples have delivered or have not yet delivered; each is read as it stands.
The resident: where the system appears in her life. Now back to the Introduction. To read her matter by the fifth ought, one must first sort out whose act each of those things is.
The system's acts are in two places. One is sharing. Article 12 of the Compact requires the Conference of Members to make a sharing decision every year, with costs apportioned among the members by the formula in Annex III; in the spring of Year 17, the Conference of Members made Sharing Decision No. 3, 4 to 0, which gave the UCSE sixteen thousand transfer places. The decision lands in the UCSE. The other is the Cloud River data station. It is run by the Secretariat, with the consent of all members of the Conference of Members; the data passed on to Apple City that night went through it.
The UCSE's acts are in three places. The sharing surcharge comes from the UCSE's Admission-Sharing Appropriations Act; the vote is not recorded. The sending of forces in the spring of Year 17 was submitted by the UCSE Executive Council and approved by the joint session, 189 votes to 122, and renewed in the summer, 171 votes to 148; it used the Joint Defense Coordination Office's joint plan for the strait and the prepositioned depot in the harbor at Gorgemouth; those two were preparations made in the system's name, while whether to send forces, where, and for how long were the UCSE's own decisions (Paper 5, §§6 and 7). The reception at the Willow Ferry Reception Center is an act of the UCSE; the step by which forty-one children came into her child's school was an arrangement of the Kingdom State Department of Education.
The news from Lamp Island is news that reached her. The rise in fuel prices falls on her; the price change itself cannot yet be located in any act of the system, or in any particular act of any state. This paper has no source material for it, and does not book its account.
The line of the sharing surcharge has its account in two places. The Theory of Government says: "The accounts of two constructs are each checked by their own source and are not transferred from one to the other" (Theory of Government Paper 4, G25). The share is a decision of the Conference of Members, and its account lies with the positions that made it and the members that voted; the surcharge is the UCSE's decision on how to raise that share, and what falls on her is an act of the UCSE. If she has something to ask about the surcharge, she asks the UCSE, by the UCSE's roads; if she has something to ask about the share, it is the system she is asking, and there must be a road within reach of the system itself.
Her roads to the system. There are two kinds.
One goes through the UCSE. She can vote for the Chamber of Citizens (once in the autumn of Year 15, once in the autumn of Year 19); the Chamber of Citizens elects the First Executive, and the Executive for External Affairs, in the Executive Council, is the UCSE's head of delegation at the Conference of Members. Article 3 of the Compact requires documents issued in the system's name to state how each member voted, and the record is public on the Secretariat's website; she can see how the UCSE voted. In the election of the autumn of Year 19, the sharing surcharge and the Joint Defense Participation Act were matters that all the candidates spoke about. Read by the four items: those who initiate are she and the other voters; what is affected is who sits in the position of Executive for External Affairs, and how the UCSE votes at the Conference of Members; the Conference of Members cannot close this road; when it cannot be got through, the account lands on the UCSE's positions and persons (Theory of the State N39). This road has two limits. It is periodic, not always open; and it needs a majority: it is a road that goes through only if others are willing too. What Theory of the State Paper 7 speaks of is peers' questions being connected in through the channels inside a state (Theory of the State N38); this road runs the other way: her vote inside the UCSE, through the UCSE's vote at the Conference of Members, connects to the system.
The other is the Petitions Committee. Clause 2 of Article 14 of the Compact allows her, once she has exhausted the remedies within the UCSE, to petition about acts of the UCSE that touch the matters listed in Article 4 and Annex II; members of the Committee serve in their personal capacity, and a member holding UCSE citizenship does not hear the UCSE's matters; clause 7 states that members shall take no adverse measures against petitioners or their relatives on account of a petition. This road she can initiate herself. But what clause 2 reaches is the UCSE's acts, not the system's own decisions. What reaches the system's own is clause 3: "Persons reached by a decision made under a common procedure may also petition." Whether someone who pays a tax counts as a person "reached" by a sharing decision depends on how the Committee reads that word. As for her, the Committee has never read it; she has not petitioned, and the matter is recorded only this far. By the spring of Year 19, the Committee had read Article 14 on who may petition three times. The one hundred three people of the Eastfield camp petitioned against Sharing Decision No. 3 itself, and the Committee took up the petition, 5 to 2; the minority opinion said that to question the Conference of Members is to question each member, and that they should petition against each member separately (Paper 2, §7). The villagers on the western bank of the Grey River are not within the territory of any member, and the Committee took up their petition, 4 to 3; the minority opinion said that their questions should be put by the Sandbars (Paper 2, §6). The three fishermen of the Outer Sandbars do not hold UCSE citizenship and are not lawfully resident in UCSE territory; the Committee took up their petition in the spring of Year 19, on the ground that "clause 2 speaks of persons affected by it, and is not drawn by citizenship" (Paper 7, §6). In the first two, a switch of one or two votes would have reversed the outcome; the vote on the third is not recorded.
Read by the fifth ought up to here, the facts point to this: the system's acts have indeed reached her, in one place through the UCSE onto her pay slip, in another through the data station onto the warning that night; she has one road that runs through the UCSE, is periodic and needs a majority, and one road that she can initiate herself, of which it is not yet certain whether it reaches her. In this matter, no position has made a judgment about her. In the Committee's readings of Article 14, the judgments were made by the Committee, and the dissents in the first two stand; how the matter would be read if it came to her is left to the people in that position.
Where does she go first? The system does not decide for her. Theory of the State Paper 7, speaking of the same resident, wrote: "whether to ask is her own affair." What the system must achieve is that every road can actually be initiated, and that it does not rest only on a road that goes through only if others are willing.
Two objections. It may be said that she has no vote in the system, so the system owes her nothing; she faces only the UCSE, and the system faces only the UCSE. The weight of this objection is that the system's members are indeed states, and voting does indeed take place only between states. But the protected subject has always been the person. How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6), treating extension, established: "Each tier must therefore specify separately: who is the protected subject, who bears public judgment, and which construct serves only as the address of accountability." (F6 §3.2) At the level of the system, the protected are persons, those who bear public judgment are the positions in common procedures, and the system and the member states are only addresses of attribution. Those whom the system's acts reach and who have no way to avoid them by exiting are, as regards those acts, in the system's interior; following the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6), the fifth ought does not lessen with relational thickness, and she must have a road within reach of the system itself. This does not mean that the system looks after her on the UCSE's behalf: the conditions for cultivation are still guaranteed by the UCSE, and the system does not do this in its place. Having a vote and having a road are two things. The Theory of Government has said: "Having the voting-position does not replace being open to questioning; being open to questioning does not replace the voting-position either" (Theory of Government Paper 6, §7).
The other objection says: so many roads, and so indirect, amount to none. This objection sees how things really are: to get to the system she must pass through an election, an Executive Council, and a committee's reading. But what must be checked is not the number of roads; it is the four items of each road: who initiates it, what it can move, whether it can be closed, and where the account lands when it cannot be got through. These have been written out above, road by road; whether a road reaches is checked by function, and what has not been checked is registered as a remainder as it stands.
What remains is one place: what the system's own fifth ought actually looks like when it is built. Whether clause 3 reaches someone who pays a tax, and how a body admitting individual petitions should be set up, this paper does not fix; it is handed to specific theories of institutions, and registered in §5.
XZ52 Every arrangement lies under a channel it cannot itself close. Theory of Government G36 says that questioning does not need an unquestionable endpoint, and that a construct's configuration ought to place every position under some channel it cannot itself close; Theory of the State N36 extends this to the several "lasts" of a state; here it is extended to every arrangement of a system of cooperation, and the subject term changed is the party questioned: from a state's position to the position that made the arrangement, that is, the positions in a common procedure that vote and execute, and the positions in member states where it lands (own undertaking). Item by item: a covenant settles one matter, not everything (XZ3); in questioning, the party questioned recuses itself (XZ10); the account lands on positions and persons (XZ17); checks are themselves acts (XZ22); in joint defense, each state makes its own determination and is questioned afterward (XZ30, XZ32); in admission, there is no pushing back at the door, and those affected can petition (XZ38, XZ14); exit is questioned inside and questioned outside (XZ45); expulsion is itself an act, and open to questioning (XZ50); the end of a suspension is not decided alone by the suspending party (XZ27). For every channel four items are stated: who initiates it, which object it affects, whether the party questioned can close it, and how the account is booked when it fails; who initiates it, which object it affects and whether it can be closed follow the three questions of Theory of Government G36a; how the account is booked when it fails follows Theory of the State N36 (this item was added by the Theory of the State itself). "Last" refers to level, not to exemption from questioning (the Theory of the State Prequel, §3): the system stands at the top of the level between states, and is not exempt from questioning on that account; it puts questions to its members, and every one of its arrangements lies under questioning too.
§2 "15DD Predominance" Is a Diagnosis, Not a Threshold
A system of cooperation is truly effective only when 15DD predominates in it; otherwise it becomes a large construct whose direction leans heavily toward 14DD, colonizing other states in the name of cooperation. The Prequel, §4, said that "15DD predominance" is a direction and a diagnosis; this section finishes saying it. But the system's members are mixed: their leanings differ, and they also change with their acts. What, then, does "15DD predominance" refer to? There are two readings. One reads it as a threshold: only states that already lean more toward the 15DD direction may come in, all who come in qualify, and the system then counts as one in which 15DD predominates. The other reads it as a diagnosis: one looks at what the system has done, and recognizes from its acts which way it is going. This section takes the latter.
Recognized by acts, not by the names of members. Moral Law P8 says that a community can enter, as a collective, into 15DD's operation of recognition while its members remain mixed inside; it also says that "a community is not a 15DD identity entity," that "15DD is community-level behavioral operation (doing)," "not community identity label (being)" (Moral Law P8 §2.1, §2.6). It originally speaks of communities; here it is extended to the system of cooperation as a construct (own undertaking). The system too can only be recognized in this way: it is a "doing," not a "being." A system does not have 15DD predominating in it because the members on its list are all states of a certain kind, nor fail to have it because among its members there is one whose direction leans toward 14DD.
What does the diagnosis look at? Moral Law P8 gives a signature: the unique topological signature of collective 15DD is "the community's refusal to use external others as bargaining chips for the community's own survival (or maximization of community interest)." (Moral Law P8 §2.4) Extended to the system: the system does not trade people outside the system for its own continued existence or interest. This is a diagnosis, not a duty. No requirement of the kind "member states must admit at the price of their own survival" can be derived from it; read that way, a criterion for recognizing a direction would be turned into an order. What the system must do for people outside the system, Paper 6 has already divided into "must" and "can" (Paper 6, XZ41), and nothing further is added here.
What the slide looks like. Sliding toward 14DD predominance does not require an army. A member with great influence using the conditions of the system's sanctions, recognition or aid to press other states: that is such a slide. Institution Theory has said: "Once a condition carries the demand 'accept this direction of development,' it becomes ghostwriting by an outsider." (Institution Theory Paper 4, Z27) When a direction is slipped into the conditions of a common measure, the system is ghostwriting other states' direction on behalf of the party with great influence; it then has the form of an institution, and is doing the work of colonization. Another form: if, among the members, two are both sliding toward the 14DD direction and are attacking one another as well, this in itself shows that something has gone wrong with the system (Paper 5, §10).
These two forms point to one thing: whether something is an institution, and whether it is a structure of domination or colonization, must be judged separately. F6 has established that the determinations are to be kept apart: "whether a thing is an institution; whether it realizes the framework's non dubito; whether it is some dominative or colonial structure." It also says that "two situations must be allowed: an arrangement with institutional identity that proclaims non dubito while its protections have been hollowed out" (F6 §2.2). The system has a Compact, organs and records; it has institutional identity; this does not guarantee that in its acts it has not slid into being an extension of the strong. So the system cannot use "15DD predominance" to exempt itself from questioning either. Institution Theory says that an institution "may not close off the conditions of questioning and correction on the grounds that it claims to cultivate, that it has already reformed, or that its aims are right; structures can change, but the three conditions cannot be withdrawn." (Institution Theory Paper 6, Z37) What kind of system it claims to be is no reason; the system's arrangements lie, just the same, under the nine channels of §1 (Paper 2, XZ15).
The matters of the earlier papers. If the diagnosis is to look at acts, it must look at the matters the earlier papers have written about. The judgments have all been made in those papers; here only the facts are taken, to see how they show what "recognized by acts" means.
The matter of the Outer Sandbars. In the autumn of Year 17, two UCSE naval vessels and a company of about one hundred fifty troops landed on the Sandbars' Great Outer Sandbar and set up the Outer Sandbars Provisional Administration Office: it issued residence cards to the island's roughly two thousand three hundred residents, collected fishing fees, replaced the primary school's textbooks with "provisional textbooks" printed in Rivermouth City, and imposed a curfew at night. In the spring of Year 18, the Conference of Members made its first record, 3 to 0, recording these acts; in the summer of that year, a wharf and a radar station were completed, the administration office announced that it would continue until the Sandbars "has a government able to administer the Outer Sandbars," and the Conference of Members, under clause 1 of Article 18 of the Compact, made its second record: "There is a colonizing entry." The NUT and Stonegorge voted in favor, the DRP abstained, and the UCSE, under Article 7(b) of the Compact, did not take part in the vote; it made a statement, "No one there resisted, and no one died," and the statement was entered in the record. More than a year earlier, the forces of the Plateau Federation had set up a sea-lane administration post on Lamp Island, and what the Conference of Members recorded then was the same sentence. Stonegorge's permanent representative said at the meeting: "On Lamp Island it was called an administration post; on the Outer Sandbars it is called an administration office." The wording of the record follows the acts. Judgment falls on acts; who the acting party is does not change the judgment (Paper 4, §7; Paper 7, §6). That the system records an entry coming from its own member in just the same way is one place where the diagnosis can be seen.
The matter of the annual sharing report. In the winter of Year 17, the draft of an analyst in the Admission-Sharing Office contained a sentence characterizing the DRP: it said what kind of state the DRP is, and that it would therefore fail to perform. The Deputy Secretary-General for Records and Reports deleted this sentence under the Secretariat's rules on records, and recorded instead the DRP's shares unpaid for two years, the places it had not taken up, and the reasons given in the DRP's letters, and recorded as well that the UCSE had paid four months late in Year 16; the deletion and change were entered in the register of changes (Paper 3, §3). The diagnosis writes "doing," not "being"; not even "direction" goes into the record: direction is a diagnosis made from acts, and the record records only acts.
The matter of the standing force. In the summer of Year 16, Stonegorge's Commonwealth Chamber asked the Conference of Members to amend the Compact to set up a standing force of six thousand that "may deploy upon a determination by the Secretary-General." On whether to enter the amendment procedure, Stonegorge voted in favor, the UCSE abstained, and the NUT and the DRP voted against; amendment requires the consent of all members, and the procedure was not entered. At the same meeting, the Conference of Members decided, 4 to 0, to add one more site of prepositioned logistics in the harbor at Gorgemouth, and one more joint exercise each year in the Stonegorge Strait. The Anti-Division Act that Stonegorge passed that same year lapsed on its expiry date in the summer of Year 18, and the Commonwealth Chamber did not renew it (Paper 4, §6). Whether the system has slid toward the likeness of its opponent is also recognized from these acts.
The matter of re-accession. In the autumn of Year 20, Stonegorge applied to rejoin; the UCSE's permanent representative raised three matters to be dealt with, the NUT's permanent representative said, "Conditions are to be written out, with acts as the measure," and the DRP's permanent representative said that no further conditions should be set (Paper 7, §4). The conditions of re-accession are exactly a place where "using conditions to press other states" must be watched: when conditions are written out, with acts as the measure, they can be seen; when a direction is slipped in, it is ghostwriting.
Two members both sliding toward the 14DD direction and attacking one another as well: this has not happened in this series' examples. That diagnosis is only set up, with no example given.
Where the tradition parts: at the threshold. The reading as a threshold is found in the tradition. The First Definitive Article that Kant, in Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden), sets down for perpetual peace requires that the civil constitution of every state be republican (Die bürgerliche Verfassung in jedem Staat soll republikanisch seyn.; Zum ewigen Frieden, Second Section, First Definitive Article, per the first edition, Nicolovius, 1795, Project Gutenberg EBook #46873; compared with the English translation by M. C. Smith, EBook #50922; tier A; paraphrased). By republican he means the separation of the executive power from the legislative, which is not the same as democracy (ibid., same article, paraphrased). According to the summary in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry "John Rawls" (by L. Wenar, revised 2025), Rawls assumes that no tolerable world state could be stable, and so the law of peoples is international, not cosmopolitan; his "realistic utopia" requires that all societies be well-ordered internally (tier C, paraphrased, per the introduction to §5 of that entry). This series reads this as a requirement on the inside of each society. What the Prequel, §4, read is the side of the same threshold that bears on membership: liberal peoples and decent peoples are members, and outlaw states are outside the door. The two sides are not opposed; one looks at the inside of each society, the other at who may come in.
The common question is whether, for arrangements among many states to count, there must be a condition on the inside of the members. Both put the members' form of government first: Kant makes every state's being a republic the first condition of perpetual peace, and Rawls makes every society's being well-ordered internally the goal. This series sets no such threshold, and members can be mixed; "15DD predominance" is recognized by the system's acts, and is a direction and a diagnosis. The point of parting is the threshold itself, not the assessment of forms of government: this series does not say that republics and well-orderedness are not good; it says only that membership of the system is not conditional on them. This is a division of scope, not a refutation.
Two objections. It may be said: with no threshold, how does the system keep from being carried off by members that lean more toward the 14DD direction? The question is a real one: a threshold at least puts up one barrier at the door. But a threshold stops names, and what carries a system off is acts. Acts are to be stopped at the level of acts: questioning, recording, withdrawing cooperation, suspension, expulsion, and joint defense against a colonizing entry (Paper 4, XZ27; Paper 7, XZ50; Paper 5). A state whose direction leans heavily toward 14DD, and that wants only to dominate other states, cannot get the tools of domination here, and has no reason to join; this is a structural judgment, not a label stuck on the door (the Prequel, §4).
The other objection says: without a threshold, "15DD predominance" is an empty phrase. It is not empty, because it has a signature that can be looked at, and forms of failure that can be looked at: whether people outside the system are traded for the system's own interest; whether conditions are used to press other states; whether the record follows acts or the names of states. What is looked at is, each time, what the system has done.
Here this paper speaks in three layers (the Prequel, §11). The normative layer goes only this far: "15DD predominance" is recognized by acts; it is a diagnosis, and does not serve as a threshold. The rule layer is examples: the record under Article 9 of the Compact, the wording of records under Article 18, and the conditions written out at re-accession are each only one way of doing it. The judgment layer is left to positions: whether a particular condition counts as using the system to press another state, and how a sentence of the record is worded, are judged under the rules by the people in positions at the Conference of Members, and the account falls on positions and persons. The direction changes with acts, and is not signed off; Institution Theory says that the Kingdom of Ends is a direction, not a state to be signed off as achieved, and the measure here is the same (Institution Theory Z39).
XZ53 "15DD predominance" is a diagnosis, not a threshold. It is recognized by the system's acts, not by the names of its members: collective 15DD is a "doing," not a "being"; what the diagnosis looks for is that the system does not trade external others for its own survival or interest (Moral Law P8 §2.1, §2.4, §2.6; it originally speaks of communities, extended to the system of cooperation as a construct; own undertaking). This is a diagnosis, not a duty of the kind "member states must admit at the price of their own survival." Sliding toward 14DD predominance does not require an army: a member with great influence using the conditions of the system's sanctions, recognition or aid to press other states is such a slide; two members both sliding toward the 14DD direction and attacking one another as well shows that something has gone wrong with the system. Whether something is an institution, and whether it is a structure of domination or colonization, are judged separately (F6 §2.2): a system can have institutional identity and in its acts slide into being an extension of the strong. The system does not exempt itself from questioning by calling itself one in which "15DD predominates" (Paper 2, XZ15; Institution Theory Z37). Where the diagnosis comes down to a particular place, it is left to the judgment of positions; the direction changes with acts, and is not signed off.
§3 Thickness Is Needed; There Is No Compulsion
Law Series P3 has a thickness function: the harder exit is, the denser the collisions and the thinner the shared identity, the thicker law must be. It says: "The three variables combine: exit is hardest, collisions are densest, shared identity is thinnest. The thickness of law reaches its peak at the national scale." (Law Series P3 §4) Between states all three variables are present: states cannot exit from one another, collisions are dense, and shared identity is thin as well. By this function, what this level needs will not be little. But this series fixed at its outset that the system has no superior with force above it, and sets none up. So this level stands in an anomalous position, which the Prequel, §8, called "thickness is needed; there is no compulsion." There the formulation was set up, separating thickness from compulsion; this section answers where thickness falls, and what kind of law such a level gives rise to.
First, one misreading must be blocked. This does not say that more thickness is needed between states than within a state; that sentence of Law Series P3 says that thickness peaks at the national scale, and this series does not go beyond it. It says only that this level must not be written thin because there is no superior above it.
What thickness is, and what bears it. This level is not thin; it only lacks compulsory power, and it can be very thick. "Thickness" means the density of negative boundaries, of the structure of questioning and of records, not compulsion. Separating thickness from compulsion in this way is this series' own step, which the upstream did not give (own undertaking). Such thickness is borne not by a superior but by several things written in the first four papers, taken together: covenants land through each party's own law, in Paper 1; external questioning cannot be cancelled, in Paper 2; reputation is an account visible from outside, in Paper 3; checks are withdrawing cooperation, in Paper 4. Consensus, checks and reputation are the things by which matters count at this level; the other thing handed over by the Theory of the State is that external questioning cannot be cancelled, and that questions from outside are connected into the channels within a state (Theory of the State Paper 7, N38).
Two things are not counted into the thickness of this level. One is each state's own first face: stopping a colonizing entry is the sending state's own starting of a war (Paper 5). The other is each state's implementation within its own territory: a member's implementing, under its own law, the covenants it has acknowledged is its own affair. These two fall on the level below and on the outward side. To count them in would be to speak of the states' compulsion as the system's thickness, and that is exactly what this level does not have.
The emergence of law, piece by piece. Law Series P3 says of two parties on one continent that cannot exit from one another: "But between the two factions there is no law, only intermittent peace agreements (consensus) and cyclical wars (showdowns)." This cycle is to continue until exit is restored, "or law emerges (institutionally constraining both sides' 14DD)" (Law Series P3 §6.2). When Theory of the State Paper 5 cited this sentence, it read it only as a picture of that one case; the same section still leaves open the possibility that law emerges. Here the answer is given to what emerges when no superior grows up.
What emerges is international law between states, piece by piece: negative boundary structures that land through each party's own law and are questionable and modifiable, together with external questioning that cannot be cancelled. It has no compulsory power, and it counts by cooperation and mutual checks; it is stronger than no law. It is not a whole body of international law backed by compulsion, and that is not the answer given here either. That it is law rests on the definition of Law Series P1: "Law: when the remainder of collision cannot not be processed, the resulting structure is a questionable, modifiable, negative boundary. All four base layers are present." (Law Series P1 §7) There is no compulsion in this definition.
The pieces along the Cloud River grew in exactly this way, one after another. In the winter of Year 10, an arbitral award between the UCSE and the NUT required hydrological data from upstream to be passed downstream within one hour; in the spring of Year 11, the NUT began passing the data every hour (Theory of the State Paper 5, Introduction). In Year 14, the Secretariat drafted the Cloud River Basin Protocol, under which real-time data from the Cloud River and the Gorge Water would be passed to the data station and made open to the three states. At the signing in the spring of Year 15, the UCSE and the NUT signed, and Stonegorge refused: it produced a clause of the loan contract for its power station under which operating data may not be given to third parties without the lender's written consent; the lender was the Plateau Federation's Federal Development Bank. New binding requires the consent of each party concerned, and the three-party protocol did not come into being. In the summer of that year, the UCSE and the NUT signed instead a bilateral supplementary protocol: the NUT's hourly data, together with the inflow of the Gorge Water across the border measured at its Gorgemouth gauging station, would be passed at the same time to the data station; the Conference of Members agreed, with the consent of all members, that the Secretariat would run the data station. That same summer came the release from the Gorge Water. Stonegorge notified the NUT only forty minutes after the release began; two villages in the NUT's Northern District were flooded, and one person died. Invoking the existing duty of notification under Article 5 of the Compact, the NUT requested questioning; the Conference of Members opened it, 3 to 0, with Stonegorge not taking part in the vote, and Stonegorge answered. In the winter of that year, Stonegorge and the NUT agreed bilaterally on a procedure for advance telephone notification of releases; operating data are still not provided (Paper 1, §3).
Each piece landed through the parties' own law: the arbitration through the two states' compliance, the protocol through each of the two states' signature, the data station through the consent of all members of the Conference of Members, the telephone notification through bilateral agreement between the two states. No piece went past any party's consent, and none rested on compulsion. What reached the resident was a nine hours' warning. The Introduction asked what such an incomplete covenant is, by the time it reaches her. It is a piece of law of this kind: the three parties did not manage to sign, the operating data of the upstream power station are still outside the covenant, and two villages downstream were still flooded; but where it could reach, it gave nine hours.
Check this piece against the definition of Law Series P1. The remainder of collision cannot not be processed: the Gorge Water was released, two villages downstream were flooded, and this could not go unprocessed. The negative boundary is there: the duty of notification under Article 5 of the Compact, which Stonegorge had long since acknowledged, and which does not rest on the unsigned protocol. Questionability is there: the NUT requested questioning under Article 5, the Conference of Members opened it, 3 to 0, Stonegorge did not take part in the vote and answered, and the record is public. Modifiability is there too: when the three-party protocol was not signed, a bilateral one was signed instead; after the release, Stonegorge and the NUT agreed bilaterally on advance telephone notification as well. All of this can be seen, and so it is said to be a piece of law; the one thing that cannot be seen is written down too: the operating data are still outside the covenant, and there is no position that can compel them to be handed over.
Another place can be looked at as well. In the winter of Year 14, the Conference of Members adopted a record on the DRP's decree of the autumn of Year 9 under which those who left the country lost their citizenship; afterward, in the summer of Year 15, the UCSE's Chamber of Citizens amended its own Membership Act, 171 votes to 120, deleting the condition that the parents of a stateless child must have been lawfully resident for five full years; by Year 17, three hundred eighty-nine of the children born at the Willow Ferry Reception Center had acquired UCSE citizenship. In the autumn of Year 15, the DRP published new registration rules, and by the end of Year 16 thirty-seven children had been registered under them (Paper 2). What relation these two matters bear to that record, this paper does not determine. Both landed through each state's own law; that the record came first and the changes afterward has been recorded.
The cost lies in the absence of compulsion, not in thinness. Questioning and the account can be made very thick; landing by compulsion cannot be done. The part that cannot be done is written down as a cost, as it stands.
The two people of Wheat Plain were sentenced by a DRP court in the winter of Year 13 for "collaboration," to twelve years and nine years, after a trial closed to the public. In the spring of Year 16 they petitioned the Petitions Committee; in the winter of Year 18, the Committee gave its opinion, asking the DRP to hold a public retrial and to allow visits. The DRP had declared in the spring of Year 18 its exit from Article 14, and made no answer within six months; in the summer of Year 19, the Conference of Members entered this failure to answer in the record. By Year 20, both were still in custody, one of them moved to a prison hospital (Paper 7, §§1 and 3). The question was put, it was recorded, and it could not land.
The two petitions against the UCSE, by the families of the dead of Junction Town and by the farmers of Wheat Plain, landed in part. The Committee's opinions of the winter of Year 15 landed through the UCSE's own law: the Chamber of Citizens amended the act on the compensation fund, 158 votes to 139, to include civilians whom the UCSE's acts reached and who were outside its territory; the Office of Defense settled the granary receipts, at Year 9 grain prices, and the farmers' representative said, "at Year 9 prices, it amounts to paying thirty percent less"; the target memorandum was not made public, and the families received only an abridged summary; in Year 17, nineteen of the twenty-seven households received compensation and eight were rejected, on the ground that "whether the dead were civilians cannot be determined" (Paper 2, §5).
All of this is written down as it stands, not hidden. The thickness lies in questioning and the account, and that was achieved; the lack lies in compulsion, and is registered as a remainder, item by item.
To Law Series P1: half answered. Law Series P1 has a showdown prediction: "In any scenario where two 14DDs coexist without exiting, if no negative boundary structure (law) is present, both parties will eventually enter a showdown or standoff. No third stable equilibrium exists." (Law Series P1 §11) The premise of this prediction is that there is no negative boundary structure between the two parties. At the level between states, the premise does not hold: law, piece by piece, is there; it carries no compulsion, meets the conditions above, and is law. This is the half that is answered. Law Series P1 originally speaks of two 14DDs that coexist without exiting; here it is extended to states that cannot exit from one another (own undertaking).
The half not answered is whether such law is stable among parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction. The upstream leans toward its not being stable. Moral Law P9 says: "14DDs cannot form mutually sustaining institutional structures with one another, because mutual sustenance requires mutual-chiseling positive sum, and the colonizing posture of 14DD structurally excludes such positive sum." (Moral Law P9 §2.5) Law Series P3 says: "The thin law of 15DD (consensus plus exit) cannot withstand violent 14DD collision." (Law Series P3 §6.3) This series gives no warrant that it is stable. It is stable while cooperation and checks still count; when they fail, this is written as it stands as a showdown or standoff, and registered as a remainder. Where there is only a halt to fighting, with no return to fa-mou (attacking through strategy) and fa-jiao (attacking through diplomacy), that too is written as it stands: "A truce looks like peace; in substance it permanentizes the wartime state and keeps cultivation under the continuous suppression of wartime logic." (War Treatise §20)
There is one more condition. Law Series P1 says that "being law" requires all four base layers to be present: cannot not exist, cannot not develop, cannot not be negative, cannot not be questionable. How the fourth is realized at the level between states, the upstream has not given. Law Series P4 lists the various scales: "dyadic law relies on exit, group law on questioning delegates, national law on multi-branch separation of powers, interstellar law returns to exit and symmetric negotiation." (Law Series P4 §7) States, which cannot exit from one another and set up no superior with separated powers, are not in this list. This series answers with several propositions of Paper 2 (XZ10–XZ15): questioning does not require the consent of the party questioned; external questioning cannot be cancelled; bodies admitting individual petitions; the system's own fifth ought; the system's arrangements can be chiseled. Finding that it "is law" is conditional on these having landed.
To Law Series P4: compulsion has not receded; what is absent is compulsion above the states. Law Series P4 says: "The recession condition of coercive law is not the arrival of 15DD. It is the restoration of exit plus the convergence of one-laws." It also says that "law depends only on collision conditions (exit cost, collision density, shared-identity thickness). When collision conditions change, the thickness of law changes automatically." (Law Series P4 §2) States cannot exit from one another; this condition has not arrived; by its account, coercive law will not recede.
This series' answer is that compulsion has indeed not receded; it falls on the level below and on the outward side (own undertaking). Each state's implementing, within its own territory and under its own law, the covenants it has acknowledged is that state's own compulsion; stopping a colonizing entry is each state's own starting of a war (Paper 5, XZ30). What is absent is a compulsion above the states. What counts at this level is therefore divided between two places: at the level of the system, it is the density of boundaries, of questioning and of the account, and this is the thickness of this level; at the level of landing, it rests on each state's own compulsion, which is not the system's, and is not counted into the thickness of this level. When a state will not implement, there is no compulsion at the level of the system to make up for it; the matter of the two people of Wheat Plain is exactly this part.
Two objections. It may be said, following Law Series P1, that arrangements without compulsion cannot hold, and sooner or later come to a showdown or standoff. Among parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction this objection has its weight, and that has been acknowledged above: that half is not answered, and failure is written as it stands. But it cannot be pushed as far as "between states there can only be showdown or standoff": the premise of that prediction is that there is no negative boundary structure, and here there is one.
Another may say, following Law Series P4: "15DD predominance" cannot replace collision conditions, and you have exchanged compulsion for a direction. This series does not say so. It does not say "15DD predominates, so compulsion can be done without"; compulsion has not receded, it is only not above the states. "15DD predominance," in §2, is a diagnosis, not the reason this level has no compulsion; the reason this level has no compulsion lies in the definition: a superior carrying force is a larger state (the Prequel, §§3 and 6).
Two places remain. Whether it is stable is not warranted; the parts that cannot land are registered item by item.
XZ54 Thickness is needed; there is no compulsion: what bears thickness, and how international law emerges (own undertaking). This level is not thin; it only lacks compulsory power, and it can be very thick; thickness means the density of negative boundaries, of the structure of questioning and of records. The need for thickness is borne not by a superior but by covenants (landing through each party's own law), external questioning that cannot be cancelled, an account visible from outside, and withdrawing cooperation, taken together (Papers 1 to 4; Theory of the State N38); each state's own first face, and its implementation within its own territory, fall on the level below and on the outward side, and are not counted into the thickness of this level. What emerges when no superior grows up is international law between states, emerging piece by piece: negative boundary structures that land through each party's own law and are questionable and modifiable, together with external questioning that cannot be cancelled; it has no compulsory power, counts by cooperation and mutual checks, and is stronger than no law (this is the answer to the sentence "law emerges" in Law Series P3 §6.2); the answer is not that a whole body of international law backed by compulsion already exists. The cost lies in the absence of compulsion, not in thinness: questioning and the account can be made very thick, landing by compulsion cannot be done, and the part that cannot be done is written down as a cost, as it stands, and registered as a remainder. The showdown prediction of Law Series P1 §11 is half answered: the kind that carries no compulsion and meets the conditions above is law, and the premise of that prediction, "no negative boundary structure," does not hold here (it originally speaks of two 14DDs that coexist without exiting, extended to states; own undertaking); the half not answered is whether such law is stable among parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction, of which this series gives no warrant, and when it fails, this is written as it stands as a showdown or standoff, and registered as a remainder. "Being law" requires all four base layers to be present (Law Series P1 §7); how questionability is realized between states, the upstream has not given (Law Series P4 §7); this series answers with Paper 2, XZ10–XZ15, and the finding is conditional on these having landed. As to Law Series P4 §2: compulsion has not receded; what is absent is compulsion above the states (own undertaking). Each state's implementing, within its own territory and under its own law, the covenants it has acknowledged is that state's own compulsion; stopping a colonizing entry is each state's own starting of a war (XZ30); when a state will not implement, there is no compulsion at the level of the system to make up for it, and this part is written down as a cost, as it stands.
§4 Institutions Between Institutions
At its close F6 lists several open questions. The second is: "Do these 'institutions between institutions' (international law, trade agreements, regulatory frameworks) follow the same five propositions?" (F6 §7) F6 does not write where this question is to go. Institution Theory, in Paper 0, §10, divides it: the part relative to the interior of one particular construct, together with nesting above and below, Institution Theory delivers itself; "conflict among all institutions, the outermost layer" it hands to the Theory of the State (Institution Theory Paper 0, §10). The Theory of the State, in its final paper, in turn handed multi-state systems of cooperation on to this place (Theory of the State Paper 7, N40). So this question has passed through two hands before reaching this series; it is not newly raised by this series.
This series answers for only one level of it: between states, the level of systems of cooperation. "Institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, this series does not take up.
Where each of the five stands. At this level, each of F6's five propositions has a place where it lands.
Proposition I is Premise Invariance. In this series it has become the writing discipline of the whole series, namely role mapping: the protected subject is always the person, those who bear public judgment are positions, and the state and the system are only addresses of attribution (the Prequel, §11). Every extension passes through this check, and states the subject term that has been changed.
Proposition II is Institutional Variability: the premises do not change, and institutions are set according to conditions. The conditions between states are that states cannot exit from one another, that they have no superior above them, and that the members are mixed; what these conditions give is the institutions of this level, which set up functions only, need thickness and have no compulsion (the Prequel, §9).
Proposition III is the Thickness Constraint: the scale of a construct cannot by itself give the number and granularity of institutional provisions. On what bears thickness, the Prequel, §8, set up the formulation, and §3 of this paper gives the answer.
Proposition IV is the Necessity of Self-Chiseling: the channel of chiseling is independent of the party chiseled, members can actually initiate it, and initiating it brings no retaliation. Its extension to the system level is in Paper 2, §8 (XZ15).
Proposition V is Minimization: matters that need not be borne by common rules are not taken in as institutional requirements, and a newly added rule states which matter it solves and what its cost is. This is in Paper 1, §5 (XZ5).
Each of the five has a place at the level between states. What has changed is the subject term: the members are states, not persons; the protected are always persons. F6's question is answered at this level this far: each of the five has a place, and each must pass through role mapping; if any one of them does not pass, this is marked as it stands, and not forced through.
Whether mutual recognition and mutual examination can grow into common legislation. The final paper of Institution Theory says that the Kingdom of Ends is a direction, and leaves a question: "What the same passage goes on to ask, namely whether mutual recognition and mutual examination can grow into common legislation, this series does not answer." (Institution Theory Paper 6, Z39) This series' mutual covenant and mutual questioning come right up to the edge of this question. Members make covenants with one another, put questions to one another, keep accounts of one another; as these grow denser and denser, will they one day grow into a common legislation?
The answer goes this far: they can grow into international law that emerges piece by piece; they do not grow into a common legislator. The first half is in §3: negative boundaries that land through each party's own law and are questionable and modifiable, one piece after another. The second half is in Paper 1 (XZ1): with no superior, new binding can come only through the consent of each party. The Conflict Treatise established long ago: "Consensus does not automatically generate a third first-person legislator." It also says: "But that rule's binding force must pass separately through each party's own law, or come from a procedure both have acknowledged. It is not a third law above the two." (Conflict Treatise §24) The Conflict Treatise speaks of two first persons; the Theory of the State extended it to two states, and Paper 1, §1, to many states. Institution Theory itself does not answer this question; that this series answers it this far at the level between states is borne by this series itself (own undertaking), and it is not presented as Institution Theory's having already answered it.
Two matters can be read side by side. In the winter of Year 13, after the Compact came into force, a newspaper in the NUT ran an editorial titled "Above the Three States." The Secretariat's first bulletin said: "Above the Compact there is nothing above the three states; documents issued in the system's name state the votes cast and how each member voted (Compact, Article 3)." Not growing into a common legislator lands in a place that can be checked: every sentence spoken in the system's name is traced back to which positions, and which votes (the Prequel, Introduction and §4). The three-party protocol of the spring of Year 15 required the consent of each party concerned; Stonegorge did not sign, and so it did not come into being; the bilateral one that the UCSE and the NUT signed instead binds only the two that signed it (Paper 1, §3). Law is growing, but no piece of it has gone past any party's consent.
What form what grows takes, this series does not fix. Moral Law P9 says that "institutional architecture in fact emerges from community fabric," that "it cannot be prescribed from theoretical articulation" (Moral Law P9 §8.2). This series sets up functions only: what each arrangement solves, under which channel it lies, where its account lands; the Compact, the Conference of Members and the Petitions Committee are all examples, and form is handed to specific theories of institutions.
One objection. It may be said that as mutual recognition and mutual examination grow denser, they will in the end grow into a common legislator, and that to say they do not is dogmatic. The weight of this objection lies in history: the five units along the Cloud River at first had only a loose compact, and later, through constitution-making, grew into the UCSE (the Prequel, §3). But what must be told apart is not how dense they are; it is whether there is a position that can compel members without passing through their several decisions. That is the criterion of force (the Prequel, §2). What has grown into a common legislator carrying force has left this series' domain, and answers by the Theory of Government's requirements for a level of government; it cannot escape by saying it is "only cooperation" (Paper 7, XZ46); merging into a larger state is not itself forbidden; what is forbidden is carrying force and not acknowledging it. Under this series' premises, what grows is law, piece by piece, whose binding passes through each party's own law, not through a superior.
What remains is one place: "institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, this series does not take up; where they go is registered in §5.
XZ55 "Institutions between institutions" at the level between states. The second open question of F6 §7, whether these "institutions between institutions" follow the same five propositions, has passed through two hands, Institution Theory Paper 0, §10, and Theory of the State N40, to this series; this series answers only for the level between states, the level of systems of cooperation. Each of the five has its place: Proposition I, Premise Invariance, serves as the writing discipline of the whole series (role mapping); Proposition II, Institutional Variability, is in the Prequel, §9; Proposition III, the Thickness Constraint, is in the Prequel, §8, and §3 of this paper; Proposition IV, the Necessity of Self-Chiseling, is in Paper 2, XZ15; Proposition V, Minimization, is in Paper 1, XZ5. What has changed is the subject term (the members are states); the protected are always persons. The question Institution Theory Z39 leaves, "whether mutual recognition and mutual examination can grow into common legislation," is answered this far: they can grow into international law that emerges piece by piece (XZ54), and do not grow into a common legislator (XZ1; Conflict Treatise §24); Institution Theory itself does not answer this question, and this answer is borne by this series itself (own undertaking). The form of bodies emerges from community fabric and is not prescribed by theory (Moral Law P9 §8.2); this series sets up functions only. "Institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, are not taken up, and where they go is registered as a remainder.
§5 Where the Series Stops
This paper is the last of the series. The close comes in three parts: what has been handed over, and what has been taken on and not carried through; what not compelling leaves behind; and where the whole series stops.
Handed over. The following things this series does not write; each has its destination:
- The interstellar and what lies between civilizations, and "the law above states" discussed under the top-level condition in which exit is already feasible, are handed to Law Series P4. The premise there is that exit is feasible; the premise here is that states cannot exit from one another and can exit only from a particular arrangement; the two are divided by premise, not by the name "international law" (the Prequel, §6).
- How a superior carrying force is to be designed belongs to a level in the Theory of Government. This item is a boundary, not a handover: an arrangement that has in fact acquired force over members is a superior, and answers by the Theory of Government's requirements for a level of government; it cannot escape by saying it is "only cooperation" (Paper 7, XZ46).
- The details of treaty law are handed to specific law. This item was handed expressly to this place by Theory of the State Paper 5, in its Where This Paper Stops. What this series gives is direction: for how law between states emerges piece by piece, and on what it counts, see §3; the part of a covenant on extradition and judicial assistance that would require a state to hand a person over to a place where he would be detained without trial is not carried across (Paper 1, XZ4).
- The forms of bodies and provisions are handed to specific theories of institutions: the Compact, voting, common procedures, treaty bodies, secretarial organs, the coordination and preparation of joint defense, and observer members' seats. Everything this series has written of these is an example, and it does not claim that they are the best design.
- "Institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, are not taken up; where they go is registered as a remainder (§4).
- The place of the person is handed to the Critiques: those who leave, the journalist, the resident and the soldiers each have their own law, and this series writes no ought for them.
- Real history and real cooperation are handed to essays.
Taken on, not carried through. The following places this series has taken on, and carried one step only. They are registered as they stand, not written as already delivered:
- The scales of the notice period and of re-accession, expulsion and suspension: how long, how many votes, how they are reviewed (Paper 7; Paper 4, XZ27).
- The length of the observation period, and which things are looked at during it (Paper 1, XZ7; Paper 6, XZ44).
- The cost of expulsion: the road by which those whom that state's acts reach (its own people, and people outside the system who are under its acts) petition against that state's later acts is closed within the system; see Paper 7, XZ50. When expulsion was debated in the autumn of Year 18, the NUT's permanent representative said: "Expulsion pushes it outside the system; outside, no one can question it any more." If this sentence means that outside no one at all can question it any more, its range is too wide. The loss that really exists here is that the road of Article 14 of the Compact no longer opens to new petitions against that state's later acts; peers' questioning, procedures already begun, and the roads of questioning for those whom the system's own later acts reach are kept, as in Paper 7, §§3 and 6.
- How far the part that "can" be done is used: in sharing, destinations and records, how much more the system can do (Paper 6, XZ41).
- Boundary cases of armed intervention and assistance: judgment follows control, control is a matter of what is actually the case, and how the cases at the edge are to be divided (Paper 6, XZ43).
- The line between checks and erosion (Paper 4, XZ25).
- What the system's own fifth ought actually looks like when it is built (Paper 2, XZ14; §1 of this paper).
- Sometimes no party can be found to stand alongside, and the cost is written as it stands. The War Treatise has said: "Sometimes there is no ally to be found" (War Treatise §19). In the matter of the Outer Sandbars, the member that entered was the UCSE; by Year 20, none of the other members had provided the residents of the Outer Sandbars with aid of the kind of supplies, admission or passage, nor had any member proposed aid of this kind. At such times the cost is written as it stands, and no side door is opened.
That stretch: the account is settled here. The Theory of the State says in its Prequel that the definition of the state's end of the range names an extreme, and: "What the stretch between the two is like, this series acknowledges as a remainder, and leaves to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation to come." (the Theory of the State Prequel, §6) The final paper of the Theory of the State says further: "Actual states can have treaty mechanisms above them that carry no force, and so stand at some distance from this end; how far they lie from it changes how much external routes can make up" (Theory of the State Paper 7, §5). Of that stretch, one end is the state's end, with nothing at all above it; the other end is where a superior carrying force already stands above. What this series has written is the external routes themselves within this stretch: covenant, questioning, the account, checks, joint defense, admission, exit. Where real cooperation falls within this stretch, this series does not judge on the reader's behalf.
The companion study to the Theory of the State, The Reverse Phase Transition, handed over several more things: "whether a real state should adopt a rule for recognizing that the slide has taken hold, and where; common questioning, recording, suspension and common procedures among several states; how a system of cooperation in which 15DD predominates keeps its distance from a member once it has recognized that the slide has taken hold there; who sits in that state's seat in common procedures; and a peer's pursuing, under its own law, the people in that state's positions: these are handed to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation." (The Reverse Phase Transition, Where This Paper Stops) The first, whether a real state should adopt a rule for recognizing that the slide has taken hold, and where, is a matter for the rule layer: at the system level this series sets up only a reading, and whether the slide has taken hold each member recognizes for itself (Paper 4, §8); whether states adopt such a rule, and where, is handed to each state's own law and to specific theories of institutions. Common questioning, recording, suspension and common procedures among several states are in Papers 2 to 4. The last three have also been taken up: how the system keeps its distance from a member once it has recognized that the slide has taken hold there, and who sits in that state's seat in common procedures, in Paper 4, §8; a peer's pursuing, under its own law, the people in that state's positions, in Paper 6, §3.
At its close the Theory of the State wrote: "With this, the four steps on the side of institutions have completed this round of unfolding: F6, Institution Theory, the Theory of Government, the Theory of the State; this does not mean that all the questions of institutions have been settled." (Theory of the State Paper 7, N40) This series comes after these four steps, and writes of what lies between many constructs with no superior above them. With this step completed, this round of unfolding is completed too; and likewise this does not mean that all the questions of institutions have been settled. The Theory of Government has said: "An address being fixed is not the same as being settled" (Theory of Government Paper 6, §8).
What not compelling leaves behind. The Prequel, §1, laid out this antinomy, each side having its reasons. Thesis: without compulsion, what if some state is "wrong"? Antithesis: with compulsion, what if the compelling party is "wrong"? This series takes not compelling.
The criterion of force was written out in full in the Prequel, §2: force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. Compulsion here substitutes for a member state's judgment on its own affairs: how its law is to be changed, how it is arranged inside, which direction it goes in; what is substituted in the end is the judgment of the people in that state.
Having taken not compelling, this series must acknowledge the cost on the side of the thesis, and not hide it: some states will do wrong, the system cannot compel them to change, and the problems will happen there and go on. This item is registered as a remainder.
There is a main reason and an auxiliary one. The main one was established already in the Prequel, §1: even if the compelling party is right, compulsion is not cultivation; only what has grown of itself is most its own. What grows is that state's construct and the people in that state, and in the end it falls on persons.
The auxiliary one: the errors on the two sides are not symmetrical. If the compelling party is wrong, there is no higher compeller above it to guarantee correction. This does not cancel the questioning of it by peers, by those affected and by the channels inside it; "last" refers to level, not to exemption from questioning. But it has acquired the capacity to decide for others and to carry the decision out, and its error may at the same time compress the other party's room to refuse, to exit and to correct. Without compulsion, the party in the wrong still lies under external questioning, checks, reputation, and joint defense that stops a colonizing entry; not compelling may also let the error go on, and what cannot be done is registered as a remainder as it stands.
What is left is room for growth, not room for colonizing other states. Not compelling means not governing members from above, and not setting the direction for other states; against a colonizing entry, joint defense stops it as before, and questioning and recording go on as before (the Prequel, §1; Paper 5).
With Kant: having no superior is not second best. The tradition has thought about this antinomy. What connects to it most directly is the Second Definitive Article of Kant's Perpetual Peace. Two claims are made there.
One claim: the league need not be a state. Kant says that it is a league of nations, "but it need not be a state of nations" (my translation; Dies wäre ein Völkerbund, der aber gleichwohl kein Völkerstaat seyn müßte; Zum ewigen Frieden, Second Section, Second Definitive Article, same source). This league seeks to acquire no power of the state, "without these states on that account needing to subject themselves, like human beings in the state of nature, to public laws and to a compulsion under them." (my translation; ohne daß diese doch sich deshalb (wie Menschen im Naturzustande) öffentlichen Gesetzen, und einem Zwange unter denselben, unterwerfen dürfen; ibid., same article)
The other claim: a world republic is right in principle. By reason, states ought, as individual persons do, to submit to public laws of compulsion and form a state of nations; by their idea of the right of nations the states do not want this, and so they reject in hypothesi what is right in thesi (was in thesi richtig ist, in hypothesi verwerfen; ibid., same article, paraphrased). So, "if all is not to be lost," what takes the place of the positive idea of a world republic "is only the negative surrogate of a league that averts war, endures, and keeps on expanding" (my translation; an die Stelle der positiven Idee einer Weltrepublik (wenn nicht alles verlohren werden soll) nur das negative Surrogat eines den Krieg abwehrenden, bestehenden, und sich immer ausbreitenden Bundes; ibid., same article).
The particular wording of the two claims has already been compared in Theory of the State Paper 5, §7; it is not redone here, and only the overall point of parting is written. The common question is whether the absence of a common legislator between states is a deficiency to be overcome, or what this level is by its nature. The question is the same one.
This series takes the first claim, and does not take the ranking in the second. Having no superior is not second best, and not a deficiency; it is what this level is by its nature; cooperation, and international law emerging piece by piece, count within this level (§3). That at the top there is no superior does not mean that there is no law. This series reads the two claims as Kant's hesitation before this antinomy: he saw the side of not compelling, and saw also the place of compulsion in principle, and did not settle between the two. It does not read this as his not having thought it through.
The point of parting is written with a main and an auxiliary reason. Main: even if a world republic is right in principle, compelling states into it is not cultivation; states, and the people in them, must grow to that point themselves, and cannot be put there. Auxiliary: if such a republic is wrong, there is no higher compeller above it to correct it; the state of nations Kant envisaged would in the end take in all the peoples of the earth (der zuletzt alle Völker der Erde befassen würde; ibid., same article, paraphrased). To leave it, there would be no peer to go to, and the road of exit would be gone too; the Theory of the State Prequel, §6, has said that exit can only be lateral. This is a division of scope, not a refutation: on the league of peace that Kant proposed for reality, the two go in the same direction; they part only on the ranking of that positive idea.
With Rawls: neither sets up a world state; they part at compulsion. Rawls can be compared only through a secondary source. According to Wenar's summary, Rawls too sets up no world state, on grounds of stability (tier C, paraphrased, per the introduction to §5 of the Wenar entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). He also allows well-ordered peoples to take measures of compulsion against outlaw states, to stop violations of human rights (ibid., §5.5). This series reads this as follows: no world state is set up, yet the function of compulsion can, through blocs of states, return to operate at the level between states; this reading is this series' summary, not Rawls's words.
This series parts here: the system does not authorize the use of armed force; the system's determinations are public questions and records, and constitute no ground for any state to start a war (Paper 2, XZ9; Paper 6, XZ43). Stopping a colonizing entry is each state's own starting of a war, going no further than stopping it (Paper 5). The reasons here too are a main and an auxiliary one. Main: changing another state's internal order by compulsion, even if the direction is right, is not cultivation. Auxiliary: if the compelling bloc is wrong, there is no higher compeller above it to guarantee correction, and the compelled party's room to refuse, to exit and to correct has already been compressed. Both points of parting rest on the words cited above; they are not overall judgments on the tradition.
One objection. It may be said that not compelling amounts to indulging states that are in the wrong. The weight of this objection is that the cost on the side of the thesis is real: some wrongs will go on, some people will suffer for it, and the system will watch it happen. This series does not hide this item, and registers it as a remainder as it stands. But not compelling is not doing nothing: the party in the wrong still lies under questioning, the account and withdrawing cooperation; a colonizing entry still has joint defense to stop it; those who come to the door are still received. Nor does the main reason rest on effects: even if compulsion is effective, compulsion itself is not cultivation.
Where it stops. Back to the main-line sentence:
A system of cooperation stands against colonization, toward its member states and toward what lies outside it alike: it does not itself act as a superior, and it tolerates no state's colonizing another; toward people outside the system, it creates conditions for cultivation, and does not enter other states to decide on behalf of the people there; it puts questions to its members, and every one of its own arrangements remains open to questioning.
That it does not itself act as a superior is in Paper 7, XZ45 and XZ46; that it tolerates no state's colonizing another, in Paper 4, XZ27, Paper 5, XZ29, and Paper 7, XZ50; that it creates conditions for the cultivation of people outside the system, in Paper 6, XZ37–XZ41; that it does not enter other states to decide on behalf of the people there, in Paper 6, XZ42–XZ44; that it puts questions to its members, and that every one of its own arrangements remains open to questioning, in Paper 2, XZ9–XZ15, and XZ52 of this paper.
The main-line sentence of the Theory of the State is: "Toward its internal subjects, a state holds to anti-colonization and strives for cultivation; outwardly, it does not colonize, and does not decide on behalf of the people of other states; each of its 'lasts' remains open to questioning." The division of work between the two sentences was written in the Prequel, §5: the interior of a state is subjects, one by one, and the members of the system are states, one by one; the two levels follow one and the same rule, each level stands against colonization toward its own interior, and whoever holds subjects in its interior does the work of cultivating them.
The direction is the Kingdom of Ends. Institution Theory says: "The Kingdom of Ends is a direction; it is not an ought, nor a state to be signed off as achieved." (Institution Theory Paper 6, Z39) So it is with the system: it cannot make it on persons' behalf, nor can it declare it made.
This series stops at the level between states. It does not judge, on the reader's behalf, the system the reader lives in. Where the resident of Apple City goes first is for her to decide (§1).
The administration office on the Outer Sandbars was still there in Year 20. The Petitions Committee is still hearing the petition of the three fishermen. Stonegorge's application to rejoin was still undecided in the winter of Year 20. The two people of Wheat Plain are still in custody. In the election of the autumn of Year 19, all the candidates spoke of that line of surcharge on the pay slip of the resident of Apple City. None of the nine papers of this series can make the system a good person: it has no first person. What they have written down are the few things that a system with no superior above it, which does not itself act as a superior, must keep to: new binding comes through the consent of each party, and questioning existing matters does not need the consent of the party questioned; the account is recorded against positions and persons, not against the names of states; withdrawing cooperation is a check, not force; a colonizing entry is stopped, going no further than stopping it; there is no pushing back at the door; one is free to leave, and the account is not written off; for every arrangement there is still someone who can ask, and once the question is asked, the account has somewhere to land. Whether this has been done must be asked, place by place.
XZ56 Where the series stops. Handed over: the interstellar and what lies between civilizations, and "the law above states" discussed under the top-level condition in which exit is already feasible, to Law Series P4; how a superior carrying force is to be designed belongs to a level in the Theory of Government, and this is a boundary, not a handover (XZ46); for the details of treaty law, this series has given direction (how law between states emerges, and on what it counts, XZ54; the part of a covenant on extradition and judicial assistance that would require a state to cross the line is not carried across, XZ4), and the details are handed to specific law; the forms of bodies and provisions, to specific theories of institutions (this series' examples do not claim to be the best design); "institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, are not taken up, and where they go is registered as a remainder; the place of the person, to the Critiques; real history and real cooperation, to essays. What has been taken on and not carried through is registered as it stands, not written as already delivered: the scales of the notice period and of re-accession, expulsion and suspension; the length of the observation period, and what is observed; the cost of expulsion, namely that the road by which those whom that state's acts reach (its own people, and people outside the system who are under its acts) petition against that state's later acts is closed within the system (XZ50); how far the part that "can" be done is used; boundary cases of armed intervention and assistance; the line between checks and erosion (XZ25); the form in which the system's own fifth ought is realized (XZ14); sometimes no party can be found to stand alongside, and the cost is written as it stands (War Treatise §19). The remainder left by not compelling: the side of the thesis in the antinomy, without compulsion, what if some state is "wrong"; this series takes not compelling, does not hide the cost on this side, and registers it as a remainder as it stands. There is a main reason and an auxiliary one: main, even if the compelling party is right, compulsion is not cultivation, and only what has grown of itself is most its own; auxiliary, the errors on the two sides are not symmetrical: if the compelling party is wrong, there is no higher compeller above it to guarantee correction; this does not cancel the questioning of it by peers, by those affected and by the channels inside it, but it has acquired the capacity to decide for others and to carry the decision out, and its error may at the same time compress the other party's room to refuse, to exit and to correct. Without compulsion, the party in the wrong still lies under external questioning, checks, reputation, and joint defense that stops a colonizing entry; not compelling may also let the error go on, and what cannot be done is registered as a remainder as it stands. With this step completed, this round of unfolding is completed, and this does not mean that all the questions of institutions have been settled.
Where This Paper Stops
This paper has proved five things (XZ52 to XZ56): each of the system's nine arrangements ought to lie under a channel it cannot close on its own, and what is questioned is the position that made the arrangement; whether, in the examples, each actually reaches, what it can affect and how it fails are checked separately against the table of §1 and the seven earlier papers, and the single item of keeping the account does not establish that all the channels are effective; the resident has two kinds of road to the system, one periodic and needing a majority, the other one she can initiate herself, whose reach still depends on how the Committee reads "reached"; "15DD predominance" is a diagnosis, not a threshold; this level needs thickness and has no compulsion, and what grows is international law, piece by piece; each of F6's five propositions has a place at this level, and mutual recognition and mutual examination do not grow into a common legislator.
What it has not proved: whether international law, piece by piece, is stable among parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction, which is not warranted; what the system's own fifth ought looks like when it is built, which is handed to specific theories of institutions; the scales of the notice period, the observation period, expulsion and suspension, which are left to the judgment of positions; where real cooperation falls within that stretch, which is not judged on the reader's behalf; how a superior carrying force is to be designed, which belongs to a level in the Theory of Government; "institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, which are not taken up. For where each item goes, see §5 and the Interfaces at the end.
The series stops here. On what grounds an institution stands is F6's affair; what an institution is for is Institution Theory's; to whom, and for what, a government's judgments must answer is the Theory of Government's; how a construct with no higher level above it guards the line at its several "lasts," and how they remain open to questioning, is the Theory of the State's; how those who leave, the journalist, the resident and the soldiers fare is each one's own law, and how one person treats another is the affair of the Critiques; the top level where exit is already feasible is the affair of Law Series P4. What this series writes is:
How states that cannot exit from one another, and that have no superior with force above them and set none up, cooperate through consensus, checks and reputation; how they tolerate no state's colonizing another, and do not let the system become an extension of the strong; how they create conditions for the cultivation of people outside the system without entering other states to decide on behalf of the people there; how every arrangement remains open to questioning.
The Five Propositions of This Paper
XZ52 Every arrangement lies under a channel it cannot itself close. Theory of Government G36 says that questioning does not need an unquestionable endpoint, and that a construct's configuration ought to place every position under some channel it cannot itself close; Theory of the State N36 extends this to the several "lasts" of a state; here it is extended to every arrangement of a system of cooperation, and the subject term changed is the party questioned: from a state's position to the position that made the arrangement, that is, the positions in a common procedure that vote and execute, and the positions in member states where it lands (own undertaking). Item by item: a covenant settles one matter, not everything (XZ3); in questioning, the party questioned recuses itself (XZ10); the account lands on positions and persons (XZ17); checks are themselves acts (XZ22); in joint defense, each state makes its own determination and is questioned afterward (XZ30, XZ32); in admission, there is no pushing back at the door, and those affected can petition (XZ38, XZ14); exit is questioned inside and questioned outside (XZ45); expulsion is itself an act, and open to questioning (XZ50); the end of a suspension is not decided alone by the suspending party (XZ27). For every channel four items are stated: who initiates it, which object it affects, whether the party questioned can close it, and how the account is booked when it fails; who initiates it, which object it affects and whether it can be closed follow the three questions of Theory of Government G36a; how the account is booked when it fails follows Theory of the State N36 (this item was added by the Theory of the State itself). "Last" refers to level, not to exemption from questioning (the Theory of the State Prequel, §3): the system stands at the top of the level between states, and is not exempt from questioning on that account; it puts questions to its members, and every one of its arrangements lies under questioning too.
XZ53 "15DD predominance" is a diagnosis, not a threshold. It is recognized by the system's acts, not by the names of its members: collective 15DD is a "doing," not a "being"; what the diagnosis looks for is that the system does not trade external others for its own survival or interest (Moral Law P8 §2.1, §2.4, §2.6; it originally speaks of communities, extended to the system of cooperation as a construct; own undertaking). This is a diagnosis, not a duty of the kind "member states must admit at the price of their own survival." Sliding toward 14DD predominance does not require an army: a member with great influence using the conditions of the system's sanctions, recognition or aid to press other states is such a slide; two members both sliding toward the 14DD direction and attacking one another as well shows that something has gone wrong with the system. Whether something is an institution, and whether it is a structure of domination or colonization, are judged separately (F6 §2.2): a system can have institutional identity and in its acts slide into being an extension of the strong. The system does not exempt itself from questioning by calling itself one in which "15DD predominates" (Paper 2, XZ15; Institution Theory Z37). Where the diagnosis comes down to a particular place, it is left to the judgment of positions; the direction changes with acts, and is not signed off.
XZ54 Thickness is needed; there is no compulsion: what bears thickness, and how international law emerges (own undertaking). This level is not thin; it only lacks compulsory power, and it can be very thick; thickness means the density of negative boundaries, of the structure of questioning and of records. The need for thickness is borne not by a superior but by covenants (landing through each party's own law), external questioning that cannot be cancelled, an account visible from outside, and withdrawing cooperation, taken together (Papers 1 to 4; Theory of the State N38); each state's own first face, and its implementation within its own territory, fall on the level below and on the outward side, and are not counted into the thickness of this level. What emerges when no superior grows up is international law between states, emerging piece by piece: negative boundary structures that land through each party's own law and are questionable and modifiable, together with external questioning that cannot be cancelled; it has no compulsory power, counts by cooperation and mutual checks, and is stronger than no law (this is the answer to the sentence "law emerges" in Law Series P3 §6.2); the answer is not that a whole body of international law backed by compulsion already exists. The cost lies in the absence of compulsion, not in thinness: questioning and the account can be made very thick, landing by compulsion cannot be done, and the part that cannot be done is written down as a cost, as it stands, and registered as a remainder. The showdown prediction of Law Series P1 §11 is half answered: the kind that carries no compulsion and meets the conditions above is law, and the premise of that prediction, "no negative boundary structure," does not hold here (it originally speaks of two 14DDs that coexist without exiting, extended to states; own undertaking); the half not answered is whether such law is stable among parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction, of which this series gives no warrant, and when it fails, this is written as it stands as a showdown or standoff, and registered as a remainder. "Being law" requires all four base layers to be present (Law Series P1 §7); how questionability is realized between states, the upstream has not given (Law Series P4 §7); this series answers with Paper 2, XZ10–XZ15, and the finding is conditional on these having landed. As to Law Series P4 §2: compulsion has not receded; what is absent is compulsion above the states (own undertaking). Each state's implementing, within its own territory and under its own law, the covenants it has acknowledged is that state's own compulsion; stopping a colonizing entry is each state's own starting of a war (XZ30); when a state will not implement, there is no compulsion at the level of the system to make up for it, and this part is written down as a cost, as it stands.
XZ55 "Institutions between institutions" at the level between states. The second open question of F6 §7, whether these "institutions between institutions" follow the same five propositions, has passed through two hands, Institution Theory Paper 0, §10, and Theory of the State N40, to this series; this series answers only for the level between states, the level of systems of cooperation. Each of the five has its place: Proposition I, Premise Invariance, serves as the writing discipline of the whole series (role mapping); Proposition II, Institutional Variability, is in the Prequel, §9; Proposition III, the Thickness Constraint, is in the Prequel, §8, and §3 of this paper; Proposition IV, the Necessity of Self-Chiseling, is in Paper 2, XZ15; Proposition V, Minimization, is in Paper 1, XZ5. What has changed is the subject term (the members are states); the protected are always persons. The question Institution Theory Z39 leaves, "whether mutual recognition and mutual examination can grow into common legislation," is answered this far: they can grow into international law that emerges piece by piece (XZ54), and do not grow into a common legislator (XZ1; Conflict Treatise §24); Institution Theory itself does not answer this question, and this answer is borne by this series itself (own undertaking). The form of bodies emerges from community fabric and is not prescribed by theory (Moral Law P9 §8.2); this series sets up functions only. "Institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, are not taken up, and where they go is registered as a remainder.
XZ56 Where the series stops. Handed over: the interstellar and what lies between civilizations, and "the law above states" discussed under the top-level condition in which exit is already feasible, to Law Series P4; how a superior carrying force is to be designed belongs to a level in the Theory of Government, and this is a boundary, not a handover (XZ46); for the details of treaty law, this series has given direction (how law between states emerges, and on what it counts, XZ54; the part of a covenant on extradition and judicial assistance that would require a state to cross the line is not carried across, XZ4), and the details are handed to specific law; the forms of bodies and provisions, to specific theories of institutions (this series' examples do not claim to be the best design); "institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies, are not taken up, and where they go is registered as a remainder; the place of the person, to the Critiques; real history and real cooperation, to essays. What has been taken on and not carried through is registered as it stands, not written as already delivered: the scales of the notice period and of re-accession, expulsion and suspension; the length of the observation period, and what is observed; the cost of expulsion, namely that the road by which those whom that state's acts reach (its own people, and people outside the system who are under its acts) petition against that state's later acts is closed within the system (XZ50); how far the part that "can" be done is used; boundary cases of armed intervention and assistance; the line between checks and erosion (XZ25); the form in which the system's own fifth ought is realized (XZ14); sometimes no party can be found to stand alongside, and the cost is written as it stands (War Treatise §19). The remainder left by not compelling: the side of the thesis in the antinomy, without compulsion, what if some state is "wrong"; this series takes not compelling, does not hide the cost on this side, and registers it as a remainder as it stands. There is a main reason and an auxiliary one: main, even if the compelling party is right, compulsion is not cultivation, and only what has grown of itself is most its own; auxiliary, the errors on the two sides are not symmetrical: if the compelling party is wrong, there is no higher compeller above it to guarantee correction; this does not cancel the questioning of it by peers, by those affected and by the channels inside it, but it has acquired the capacity to decide for others and to carry the decision out, and its error may at the same time compress the other party's room to refuse, to exit and to correct. Without compulsion, the party in the wrong still lies under external questioning, checks, reputation, and joint defense that stops a colonizing entry; not compelling may also let the error go on, and what cannot be done is registered as a remainder as it stands. With this step completed, this round of unfolding is completed, and this does not mean that all the questions of institutions have been settled.
References
All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. The version records used for sentence-by-sentence verification are given in the accompanying audit table.
I · This system
Qin, H. (2026). How Is Institution Possible: From Inter-Ontological Remainder to Co-Constructive Framework (SAE Foundational Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19328662
Qin, H. (2026). Institution Theory and the Tradition: The Address of the Ought (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23272468
Qin, H. (2026). Guarding the Line (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23270766
Qin, H. (2026). Conditions (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23270922
Qin, H. (2026). Open to Questioning (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23271324
Qin, H. (2026). Levels (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413192
Qin, H. (2026). Questioning and Bearing (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413511
Qin, H. (2026). What a State Is Not (SAE Theory of the State, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584292
Qin, H. (2026). One Another, with No Superior (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584346
Qin, H. (2026). 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). The Reverse Phase Transition (SAE Theory of the State, Companion Study) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23779070
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). One's Law Meets One's Law: The Structural Origin of Law from 14DD Showdown (SAE Law Series, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19548237
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). Collective 15DD and the Four-Stage Evolution of Community Form (SAE Moral Law, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20218248
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
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 (secondary sources underlying tier C)
Wenar, L. John Rawls. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (substantive revision of September 3, 2025). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/
IV · External works (cited at second hand)
Rawls, J. (1999). The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (original not consulted; paraphrased from the Wenar entry; tier C)
Interfaces
Main upstream: the Theory of Government (Paper 6, G36, G36a); the Theory of the State (the Prequel, §§3 and 6; Paper 7, N36, N38, N40); Institution Theory (Paper 6, Z37, Z39); F6 (§2.2, §3.2, §7); Conflict Treatise §24 (through Paper 1, XZ1); Law Series P1 §7, §11; Law Series P3 §4, §6.2; Law Series P4 §2, §7; Moral Law P8 §2.1, §2.4, §2.6.
Also used: Theory of Government Paper 4, G25, and Paper 6, §§7 and 8; Institution Theory Paper 3, Z22, Paper 4, Z27, and Paper 0, §10; Theory of the State Paper 5, the Introduction, §7 and Where This Paper Stops, Paper 6, N30, and Paper 7, §2, §5 and N39; the companion study to the Theory of the State, The Reverse Phase Transition, Where This Paper Stops (the several things handed over, taken up in Paper 4, §8, and Paper 6, §3); Moral Law P9 §2.5, §8.2; Law Series P3 §6.3; War Treatise §19, §20.
Interfacing: Kant (Perpetual Peace, Second Section, First Definitive Article, in the text, parting at the threshold; the two claims of the Second Definitive Article, "the league need not be a state" and "the world republic, the negative surrogate," the overall point of parting, with the particular wording pointed back to Theory of the State Paper 5, §7; tier A, per the first edition of 1795, compared with Smith's English translation); Rawls (The Law of Peoples, per the introduction to §5 and §5.5 of the Wenar entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; tier C, paraphrased only, without quotation marks).
This series: the close. The nine items of §1 each point back to Papers 1 to 7 (Paper 1, XZ1, XZ3, XZ4; Paper 2, XZ9–XZ14; Paper 3, XZ16–XZ18, XZ21; Paper 4, XZ22–XZ25, XZ27; Paper 5, XZ28–XZ33; Paper 6, XZ37–XZ41, XZ43; Paper 7, XZ45–XZ47, XZ50); the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6); §2 also points to Paper 4, §§6 and 7; the Prequel, the Introduction (what is said in the system's name traced back to positions and votes), §1 (the antinomy, and the main reason for not compelling), §2 (the criterion of force), §3 (not a superior), §4 ("15DD predominance" as direction and diagnosis), §5 (the main-line sentence and the division of work), §6 (the domain), §8 (thickness is needed; there is no compulsion), §9 (F6's five propositions), §11 (role mapping and the three layers).
Handovers downstream (the series' final paper): the last row is not a handover; it is a remainder left to the judgment of positions, registered as it stands.
| Handed to | What is handed | Where in this series |
|---|---|---|
| Law Series P4 | The interstellar and what lies between civilizations; "the law above states" discussed under the top-level condition in which exit is already feasible | The Prequel, §6; §5 of this paper; XZ56 |
| A level in the Theory of Government (a boundary, not a handover) | An arrangement that has in fact acquired force over members is a superior, and answers by the requirements for a level of government; how a superior carrying force is to be designed, this series does not write | The Prequel, §§3 and 6; Paper 7, XZ46 |
| Specific law | The details of treaty law (this series has given direction: how law between states emerges, and on what it counts); the details of extradition and judicial assistance (the part a covenant does not carry across has been set up); how covenants made by a colonizer on behalf of the colonized are inherited; to whom the proceeds of frozen assets belong | Paper 1, XZ1, XZ4; Paper 4, XZ22; Paper 6, XZ38; §3 of this paper |
| Specific theories of institutions | The forms of bodies and provisions: the Compact, voting, common procedures, treaty bodies, secretarial organs, the coordination and preparation of joint defense, observer members' seats; what the system's own fifth ought looks like when it is built | Paper 1, XZ5; Paper 2, XZ14, XZ15; §§1 and 4 of this paper |
| The Critiques | The place of the person: the own law of each of those who leave, the journalist, the resident and the soldiers | The Prequel, §11; §5 of this paper |
| Essays | Real history and real cooperation; the direction must be written so that real readers can recognize it and put it to use | The Prequel, §11; §5 of this paper |
| Not taken up (where they go registered as a remainder) | "Institutions between institutions" between companies, and between states and companies | The Prequel, §9; §4 of this paper; XZ55 |
| Political and military leaders in positions (a remainder, not a handover) | The scales of the notice period, the transition period, re-accession, expulsion and suspension; how long the observation period is, and which things are looked at; how far the part that "can" be done is used; the boundaries of division by place, and the boundary between armed intervention and assistance; who is "only guarding" and who is also expanding; how far indirect means toward those outside the system are used | The Prequel, §11; Paper 1, XZ7; Paper 4, XZ27; Paper 5, XZ29, XZ35; Paper 6, XZ41–XZ44; Paper 7, XZ45–XZ50; §5 of this paper |