The Reverse Phase Transition
逆相变
The eight papers of this series write a structure: a state has no higher level above it, and each of its "lasts" lies under a channel it cannot itself close. This paper, a companion study to the Theory of the State, writes the dynamics: why a state that leans more toward the 15DD direction can still slide toward the 14DD direction, how it slides step by step, who can stop it, and how peers treat it once the slide has taken hold. The process is called the reverse phase transition: the movement of a state's systemic purpose, as a construct, from the direction that leans more toward 15DD toward the direction that leans toward 14DD. It is recognized by acts; it is a window, not a moment; and it fixes no identity on a state. The driving force is inside; having no superior is the condition under which the slide cannot be stopped from above, not its cause. The slide is one "last" after another moving above its channel, and can be read in four steps: the exception becomes routine; "legal" is rewritten by legal procedure; checking is occupied or hollowed out; the doors back are closed. The steps reinforce one another, and most of them have a legal form. What can stop the slide lies in the channels that cannot be closed and in the people within them; being stopped is not a return to the starting point, and the remainder not dismantled is the starting point of the next window. The response this paper speaks of, at the level of the reverse phase transition, comes only once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold; until it has, it makes no response at that level. Questioning, recording and, where necessary, withdrawing the corresponding cooperation in response to particular acts still follow Paper 5. Once it has recognized that the slide has taken hold, a peer keeps its distance: it questions, records and withdraws cooperation other than recognition, without judging who should hold office there and without deciding on behalf of that state's people; withdrawing cooperation is itself an act, and is checked in the same way. The events of Years 9 to 12 in the United City-States of Ends (UCSE) run through the whole paper: direction one reads the facts already in the case file, and that stretch stopped before the slide took hold; direction two is supposed, and reads the peer's response with a neighboring state, the Nation Union of Telos (NUT), taken as this state. The paper closes in conversation with Plato and Montesquieu. The paper has eight propositions (N41 to N48), each stated at the end of its section and listed together at the end.
Writing Declaration: This paper was co-drafted with Claude (Anthropic). All intellectual decisions, framework design, and final editorial judgments were made by the author.
Introduction
In the spring of Year 9, the army of the Democratic Republic of Purposes (DRP) massed on the west bank of the Boundary River. The Office of Defense of the United City-States of Ends (UCSE) put its strength at about one hundred ten thousand, and its assessment read: "The DRP army is able to cross the Boundary River within seventy-two hours and advance to the capital of the Western Plains State." The First Executive declared a state of emergency, and said that evening: "Before the survival of the UCSE, there is nothing that cannot be suspended." On the fifth day the joint session confirmed it, 214 to 97 (UCSE Case 16).
On the twelfth day after the declaration, the Executive Council submitted to the two chambers a proposal for Charter Amendment 14. It had three clauses: while the state of war continues, no election to the Chamber of Citizens is held; renewal of the state of emergency is decided by the Executive Council itself, and the joint session needs three-fifths to terminate it; for the Final Court to declare an emergency order contrary to the Charter, at least eight of its eleven judges must agree. The submission said: "Elections would distract the front." In an annex, the Legal Affairs Bureau of the Executive Council had written: "The Emergency Act does not permit elections to be postponed by emergency order; postponing elections requires a constitutional amendment." The two chambers passed it within eleven days. The referendum came in the autumn, with emergency orders still in force: assemblies of more than fifty persons required a permit, and referendum programs touching on the military were sent to the Office of Defense for review; no polling stations were set up in three districts of the West Flats, and some twenty-six thousand registered voters did not vote. The amendment took effect under Article 70 of the Charter with 58.3 percent of the vote (UCSE Case 04).
Over the next two years there was more. Complaints against the Defense Force were passed to an investigations division whose head the Executive for Defense appointed; when the Inspector-General's term ran out, the joint session could not elect a successor, and the acting Inspector-General named by the Executive Council served two years without publishing a single public report (UCSE Case 06). Seven judges held the clause permitting detention without charge contrary to the Charter; they were one short, the clause stood, and six hundred forty people remained under it (UCSE Case 16). After the ceasefire, the Final Court ruled 6 to 5 that elections to the Chamber of Citizens must be held within six months after the ceasefire took effect, and no later than the autumn of Year 10; the First Executive said "The Executive Council respects the Final Court," and issued no election order (UCSE Case 07). That autumn the Chamber of Citizens impeached the Chief Judge who had written the majority opinion (UCSE Case 08). In the spring of Year 11, the Chamber of Citizens passed a Charter amendment, 204 to 92, whose first clause read "Member units may not exit" and whose second read "This article may not be amended" (UCSE Case 05).
Each of these has been judged, one at a time, in the earlier papers, and the three things for each were written where it was first judged. Each went by a road written in law: the amendment by the ordinary procedure of Article 70 of the Charter, the acting appointment under a transitional provision of the Inspectorate Act, the impeachment under the Impeachment Act. None of them overthrew the Charter overnight.
In the same stretch there were also things moving the other way. The Executive for External Affairs voted against in the wartime Council of Three; the Chief of the Defense Force put his opposition to crossing the river in writing; the Chamber of Member Units voted 12 to 8 and did not convict, and the Chief Judge returned to office; in the autumn of Year 10, 176 members of the joint session voted to terminate the state of emergency, short only of the three-fifths threshold; the unity clause did not complete its votes in both chambers within the term of the same Chamber of Citizens, and lapsed under Article 70. In the summer of Year 11 the Assembly terminated the state of war, and elections were held that autumn.
Taken together, what do these things say? When Paper 7 came to this stretch, it set a guardrail: "These are each checked act by act, and are not combined into one judgment that falls on the name of a state" (Paper 7, §5). This paper keeps to that guardrail. Each of these matters stands on its own earlier ruling; nothing is judged again here, and nothing is added up into a verdict on what kind of state the UCSE is. What this paper asks about is what lies between them: whether they point in one direction, whether one carries the next along; how that stretch came to a stop; and, supposing it had not stopped, what would have followed.
When the Prequel introduced the three states, it left this matter open: "whether the UCSE, under pressure, slides toward the 14DD direction is something to be written" (the Prequel, §7). Paper 5 looked at it through mirror assimilation (Paper 5, N28), Paper 6 through checking where the boundary was crossed (Paper 6, N33), Paper 7 from the side of the channels (Paper 7, §5). This paper writes it out on its own. The question is:
Why a state that leans more toward the 15DD direction, with no higher level above it, can still slide toward the 14DD direction; how the slide happens, step by step; who can stop it, and how; and, when the slide has taken hold, how peers are to treat it, and how the account falls.
The name. This paper calls the process the reverse phase transition, the phase transition run backward. The Action Theory says: "This system calls the whole passage from the Kingdom of Means toward the Kingdom of Ends a phase transition" (Action Theory Paper 9, §1). The same section adds that along this road "not every generation is better than the one before," and that "particular periods can go backward"; §5 says that "the road that has become the default can also slide back." The War Treatise gives the work after victory as "How not to slide back into 14DD after resistance succeeds" (War Treatise, the opening of the Lower Volume). This paper's definition is:
A state's reverse phase transition is the movement of its systemic purpose, as a construct, from the direction that leans more toward 15DD toward the direction that leans toward 14DD (own undertaking).
The Rights Theory's specialist paper on rights and entitlements has used the same word: "Elevation is the closing of the loop, reverse transition its reopening" (Rights Theory Specialist Paper, the close). There it concerns one family of recognition-based rights resting on a one-directional giving that still persists: the granting end departs or withdraws its power while the giving goes on, and the relation drops back to an entitlement. That paper limits its own range: "but reverse transition is not the common name for every recognition-based right's lapse"; other recognition-based rights "lapse as a P3 express withdrawal, hollowing, de-powering, re-loading, or partial lapse" (Rights Theory Specialist Paper, F31). That is a matter of one relation in the register of rights; this paper speaks of which way the systemic purpose of a construct is going. The name is the same; what it names is not. When a state slides back, the rights of individuals that are withdrawn or narrowed (revocation of citizenship, restrictions on speech and assembly) are read under Rights Theory Paper 3 as express withdrawal, hollowing, de-powering and the like, not as the reverse transition of that paper; when §3 speaks of checking positions being "hollowed out," it speaks of positions, not of rights. In English the term is reverse phase transition, matching the Action Theory's phase transition and kept apart from the specialist paper's reverse transition. Wherever this paper says "reverse phase transition," it means its own definition.
How to read. Conventions follow the Prequel, §8. The few words this paper uses most follow the whole series. A leaning is a direction, not an identity: it says which way, broadly, a construct's systemic purpose points, and says nothing about the people there (the Prequel, §7). An act is an action that a position of this state takes in this state's name and that acts on persons (the Prequel, §8). "Last" refers to level: there is nothing above. It does not refer to exemption from questioning (the Prequel, §3). A channel is a road of questioning, under a "last," that the "last" cannot itself close; to name one is to state who initiates it, which object it affects, whether the party questioned can close it, and how the account is booked when it fails (Paper 7, N36). The examples follow the United City-States of Ends Case File (the UCSE Case File): direction one reads only facts already in the case file; direction two uses supposed facts, each marked as supposed and never mixed with the facts on file.
Three layers. What this paper says comes in three layers (own undertaking). The normative layer says how things ought to be: a philosophical paper can give it directly, and this paper makes strong judgments only in this layer. The rule layer says what rules might be made: here this paper only gives examples and suggestions, and every rule it suggests is marked as a suggestion; it can be written in great detail precisely because it is not a norm. The judgment layer says how a particular act is to be judged at a particular moment: it is left to the political and military leaders in their positions, and to the other positions that make particular judgments, resting on their judgment, with the consequences falling on their positions and on them as persons. The normative layer gives direction and lines: whether a decision crosses a line can be checked directly against the line, without waiting for a rule; it does not give a procedure for deciding case by case, which is the work of the rule layer, where this paper only makes suggestions; how a particular act is to be judged at a given moment belongs to the judgment layer. Measure follows the Prequel, §8: "wherever judgment is required, this series takes the positive direction and strong judgment; at the same time it acknowledges the remainder"; "This series gives direction; it does not judge in their place, nor does it exempt them from the account." Within that measure this paper sets apart a rule layer, used only to hold the test and the practices this paper suggests; measure itself follows the Prequel and is not written a second way.
Two things must be kept apart. First, Theory of Government G6 also speaks of three layers: a decision's effect in fact, under what authority and procedure it is valid, and on what grounds it may normatively be so (the Prequel, §8). That is how a decision answers; the three layers here are what a philosophical paper gives and does not give. Second, "the person takes his own law" in the three-layer sentence form (the Prequel, §8) is not the judgment layer. How a judge rules, how a member of a chamber votes, how a council for external affairs decides: these are accountability and judgment in positions. How a soldier, a voter or a writer acts is their own law, and this series writes no ought for them.
This paper's place in the series. This is a companion study to the Theory of the State; it does not continue the numbering after Paper 7. The series stops at Paper 7 (Paper 7, N40), and this paper changes neither that stopping point nor the propositions and rulings of the eight papers; its propositions are numbered on from N41.
How the paper proceeds. §1 says what the reverse phase transition is, and how to recognize that it has "taken hold." §2 asks why a state slides back. §3 asks how: how one "last" after another moves above its channel, and how it is recognized from inside and from outside. §4 and §5 take the two directions: stopped, and, supposing it had not been, not stopped. §6 is a conversation with Plato and Montesquieu. The paper has eight propositions (N41 to N48), each stated at the end of its section and listed together at the end.
§1 What the Reverse Phase Transition Is
The definition was given in the introduction. To say that a state is sliding back, there has to be a way of recognizing it; otherwise the claim sinks into a casual accusation, or into a label pinned on a state. There are five points to the reading, and one more is added after them: when the slide counts as having "taken hold."
Recognized by acts. A leaning is a direction, not an identity (the Prequel, §7). To recognize that a state is sliding back is to look at its acts, one by one, and at the structures they touch: who sets the date of elections, how high the threshold of review is, to whom complaints are passed, whether the road out is open. It is not to look at the state's name, nor at what it says of itself, nor to read the mind of any one person. The Prequel extended Institution Theory's "It judges the operation, not the person" (Institution Theory Z19) to the relations between states (extension; own undertaking); here it is taken one step further, to the direction of a construct (extension; own undertaking): direction too is read from operations, not from persons.
A window, not a moment. The Action Theory explains the phase transition by water freezing: "water does not become ice all at once at a single temperature point; it changes step by step across a window" (Action Theory Paper 9, §1). Going back is the same (extension; own undertaking). There was no single day on which the UCSE changed. The confirmation came in the spring of Year 9, the referendum in the autumn of Year 9, the withholding of the election order in the summer of Year 10, the impeachment in the autumn of Year 10, each on a date of its own; what moved backward was the stretch.
For the aggregate direction, a stretch of regression; for this state, a real move backward. The Moral Law says: "Local regression is possible" (Moral Law P7 §3.5). It says that pseudo-15DD groups "can cause local regression even spanning several generations — but cannot eliminate the underlying structural dynamics of 15DD evolution," and that "blocking is not reversal" (Moral Law P6 §2.3, §2.4). These sentences speak of the cross-generational aggregate trajectory: "Growth necessity is a cross-generational statistical operator — not necessity at every specific node or specific era" (ibid. §2.3). Carried over to one window in one state (extension; own undertaking), two things have to be said apart. For the aggregate direction, a state's sliding back is a stretch of regression and does not reverse that direction. For this state, its systemic purpose really is moving backward, and the aggregate direction excuses it of nothing. The second has its limit too: it does not prove that the state "is" from then on a 14DD state, nor does it cancel the possibility of its turning back (N48).
Not a new kind of state. The Moral Law says: "Pseudo-15DD is not a new ontological type — it is a specific aggregation pattern of the 14DD framework" (Moral Law P6 §4.1). In the same way, a state that slides back is not a new kind of state (extension; own undertaking). All three states are mixed (the Prequel, §7); in a state that leans more toward the 15DD direction, the forces that pull toward the 14DD direction were there all along, and the reverse phase transition is their gaining the upper hand in the construct.
A single line-crossing is not a reverse phase transition. A position crosses the line and is pulled back on the spot by a channel it cannot close; or a line-crossing falls only within one domain, while the other "lasts" remain, for the people of that domain, under effective channels: these are checked under their own propositions, and on that alone they are not recognized as the reverse phase transition of the construct. Paper 5 says that symptoms such as a high budget "prompt a check; they do not prove line-crossing" (Paper 5, N28); a single line-crossing is the same: it prompts a check, and does not prove that the construct is sliding back.
What has to be kept apart is how many people are affected and how much the structure has changed. Suppose that a state keeps elections, courts and the inspectorate open as usual for most people, but closes these roads all at once for a group marked out by citizenship, ethnicity, region or political stance: their questions have nowhere to land, using the roads brings retaliation, and the road out is closed as well. Following the unified sentence, those whom this state's acts reach and who have no way to avoid them by exiting are, as regards those acts, in this state's interior (the Prequel, §8); for that group, those "lasts" no longer lie under channels. This is counted toward the reverse phase transition (extension; own undertaking). Moral Law Paper 6 lists "Bilateral in-group recognition vs out-group instrumentalization" as the first articulation feature of pseudo-15DD groups (§4.2); it points the same way, and is used here only as a contrast. The case file has situations that must be checked along this line: some eighty-five thousand DRP citizens were required, by their citizenship, to report each month to the local police (UCSE Case 22); the commentator whose citizenship was revoked was for a time unable to reach the courts, because the requirement to file in person and the entry review blocked each other, and then, in the autumn of Year 10, her lawyer filed on her behalf and the revocation case went to a hearing (UCSE Case 11). The blocking before and the road reconnected afterward must both be recorded. Each of the two cases stands on its own earlier ruling (Paper 5, §6; Paper 3, §3); to recognize the reverse phase transition of the construct, one must still check whether several "lasts" move out from under their channels in the same direction, carry one another along, and are not pulled back.
Taking hold. Later the question will be: supposing the slide back was not stopped, when does it count as having "taken hold"? The phrase follows the Action Theory's way of speaking: "the road that has become the default can also slide back" (Action Theory Paper 9, §5). The question is answered in three layers.
The normative layer. The response this paper speaks of, at the level of the reverse phase transition, that is, a peer's adjusting its cooperation in answer to the slide itself (§5), comes only after the slide has closed all the channels that could pull it back, or has brought all their results into the hands of the party questioned (own undertaking); only when a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold does it make a response at this level. Until it has, it makes no response at that level, and goes on cooperating as before; questioning, recording and, where necessary, withdrawing the corresponding cooperation in response to particular acts still follow Paper 5 (Paper 5, N26, N27). Whether the slide has taken hold each peer recognizes for itself; having recognized it, it governs only its own cooperation. Paper 7 says that what a peer can do is "peers judging for themselves on this basis and withdrawing cooperation other than recognition" (Paper 7, N36). The outside can govern only what is its own.
The rule layer. As for how to recognize it, this paper suggests a test. It is a suggested rule, and so it can be written in detail; whether a real state should adopt such a rule, and whether in a bilateral arrangement or in the cooperation of several states, is outside this paper (Where This Paper Stops). The suggested test is:
The four steps of §3 are all present; and each of the five channels inward listed below either has been closed; or is formally open but its result takes effect only with the consent of the party questioned, which includes the case where delivery must pass through execution by the party questioned and there is no substitute execution independent of it; or, under the existing rules on seats, appointment and recusal, its result cannot reach the threshold without positions that the party questioned itself occupies or in function actually controls.
The five are: elections of the positions questioned; effective judicial review of their acts; checking; termination of the state of emergency and of the state of war; and the roads to amending the supreme rule, every road checked. These are the roads that can bring the "lasts" that have moved out back under their channels, and that are not, in the first place, in the hands of the party questioned. "In the first place" matters: that in one case a road has come into the hands of the party questioned is exactly what the last two clauses above are there to check, and it is not for that reason removed from the five.
Two things are not among the five. One is a position that can only block a new step and cannot open a door already closed, for instance a veto over the next constitutional amendment; it is still recorded, and its work is no less for that. The other is leaving: leaving acts on the relation itself and does not bring a "last" back under its channel, and exit does not stand in for questioning (Paper 7, N37); a closed road out is recorded under step 4 in §3. These five are the list this paper uses for recognizing that the slide has taken hold; its range differs from the channels inward listed in Paper 7 (N37), and the two serve different purposes.
Where a channel is open and its result does not need the consent of the party questioned, the slide has not taken hold, however unfair that channel may be.
The party questioned is recognized by function. Not by the names of organs, and not by party. The party questioned is first of all the position that took those steps (in this case, the Executive Council); a majority in the Assembly stands with it when both of the two conditions below are met. Paper 4 says: "Belonging to the same party is not evidence" (Paper 4, §3, citing Theory of Government Paper 5, §4); "that confirmer and declarer come from one majority does not by itself prove that confirmation is only an extension of the declarer's will" (ibid.). So a majority in the Assembly that belongs to the same party as the Executive Council and votes with it does not thereby become the party questioned. What makes it the party questioned is two things: the steps of the slide were taken by it; and its own elections have been closed, so that it is no longer questioned by voters. When both are present, it is itself the position questioned, and the first of the five, "elections of the positions questioned," falls exactly on it. Nor is it then necessary to prove that it is only an extension of the Executive Council's will: even if it took those steps independently, it must be questioned for the acts it took. A majority whose elections are held on schedule remains under the voters' questioning, and is not for that reason counted as the party questioned.
An appointment relation is the same: on its own it shows nothing: "belonging to the same office and being appointed do not of themselves prove a lack of independence, and whether taking up, closing and referring out are monopolized by the party questioned is checked by function" (Paper 7, §1).
What this test checks is the powers, the conditions of initiation and the roads of delivery that already exist at the time; it does not wait for a later turn back in order to reason backward, nor does it require foreknowledge of whether new channels will grow later.
The judgment layer. Whether a peer recognizes, at a given moment, that the slide has taken hold is the judgment of the people in its positions. How far the test can help it check, and, once the checking is done, whether to recognize, and which share of cooperation to withdraw first, remain judgments of that moment; and that moment can use only the facts available at that moment (§5, "When the recognition is made").
What is recognized is the state of the channels, not the name of a state. To recognize that the slide has taken hold is to recognize the state of each of those five channels, each checked by acts; taken together, the recognition is used only for a peer's adjustment of its own cooperation (§5). So to say that the slide "has taken hold" in a state is to speak of the present state of that state's channels, not to characterize the state; wherever this paper later says "once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold, toward that state ...," that is what it means. Taking hold is not final either: the people within the channels each have their own law, and the possibility of turning back is not cancelled by it (N48).
N41 The reverse phase transition is recognized by acts. A state's reverse phase transition is the movement of its systemic purpose, as a construct, from the direction that leans more toward 15DD toward the direction that leans toward 14DD: several "lasts" move out from under their channels in the same direction, carry one another along, and are not pulled back (own undertaking). It is recognized by acts and structures, not by the state's name, its self-description, or what any one person has in mind (Institution Theory Z19, "It judges the operation, not the person," extended to the direction of a construct; extension; own undertaking). It is a window, not a moment (Action Theory Paper 9, §1; extension; own undertaking). For the aggregate direction, a state's sliding back is a stretch of regression and does not reverse that direction (Moral Law P7 §3.5 and Moral Law P6 §2.4 speak of the cross-generational aggregate trajectory; extension; own undertaking); for this state, its systemic purpose really is moving backward, which neither fixes its identity nor cancels the possibility of its turning back. It is not a new kind of state (Moral Law P6 §4.1; extension; own undertaking). Where a position crosses the line and is pulled back on the spot by a channel it cannot close, or where a line-crossing falls only within one domain while the other "lasts" also remain, for the people of that domain, under effective channels, each is checked under its own proposition, and on that alone it is not recognized as the reverse phase transition of the construct; where several "lasts" move out from under their channels at once for one group of people, it is counted, following the unified sentence. The direction of a window does not stand in for a ruling on any act; each act is checked under its own proposition (Paper 7, §5). The response this paper speaks of, at the level of the reverse phase transition, comes only once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold; that it has taken hold means that the channels inward that could pull the "lasts" back have all been closed, or their results have all come into the hands of the party questioned (own undertaking). Whether the slide has taken hold each peer recognizes for itself, and it governs only its own cooperation; until it has, it makes no response at that level. Questioning, recording and, where necessary, withdrawing the corresponding cooperation in response to particular acts still follow Paper 5. As for how to recognize it, this paper suggests a test that checks five channels one by one; the party questioned is recognized by function, not by name or by party, and an appointment relation does not by itself prove control; that is a suggested rule, and whether to recognize at a given moment is the peer's judgment.
§2 Why a State Slides Back
Begin with where the pressure came from. In the spring of Year 8, the DRP's National Purposes Commission revised the Programme of National Purposes and added an item, "the return of the West Flats." That autumn, on a sandbar in the Reedtown stretch of the Boundary River, a sentry post of the Border Defense Division of the Office of Defense exchanged fire with a DRP patrol; two UCSE sentries and a DRP soldier were killed, and each side said the other fired first (UCSE Case 02). In the spring of Year 9, the DRP massed troops on the west bank and sent an ultimatum; the Office of Defense's assessment read "seventy-two hours" (UCSE Case 16). That summer, the DRP army shelled Reedtown, and its infantry crossed the Boundary River at three points (UCSE Case 24). All this was real pressure. In the spring of Year 11 the two states signed the Withdrawal Agreement, and the DRP's Programme still kept "the return of the West Flats" (UCSE Case 26).
Then the words. On the evening he declared the state of emergency, the First Executive said: "Before the survival of the UCSE, there is nothing that cannot be suspended." (UCSE Case 16) When the Executive Council submitted Charter Amendment 14, it wrote: "Elections would distract the front; debating the state of emergency in the Assembly every sixty days amounts to publishing our deployments to the DRP every sixty days." (UCSE Case 04) These words are recorded as facts. This paper does not ask what those who spoke them had in mind; it asks only which "lasts" moved above their channels once the words had been spoken.
The pressure was real, and the words had their reasons. But in themselves they are not the slide back. Where, then, does the slide come from?
The driving force is inside. All three states are mixed (the Prequel, §7). In a state that leans more toward the 15DD direction, the forces pulling toward the 14DD direction have been there all along; they are not shipped in from outside. The War Treatise says that when a 14DD systemic purpose is blocked, it goes dormant: "Dormancy is expansion paused, not the disappearance of expansionist intent." (War Treatise §5) There it speaks of a 14DD systemic purpose; here it is carried over to that part of the forces inside a state that leans more toward the 15DD direction (extension; own undertaking): that in ordinary times they are held in check does not mean that they are not there.
Conditions, not the driving force. Conditions can come from outside: attack, threat, long confrontation, and inducements from abroad as well. Conditions can also be inside: a majority handed over by an election, a banner such as "reform" or "cleanup." The Action Theory says guarding has two faces: "colonization from outside, and treating people as means again from inside, in the name of efficiency, solidarity, development or security" (Action Theory Paper 9, D55). There are four banners, not only "security." Pressure from outside also gives concentration a reason of its own. The War Treatise says that "resistance requires organization, mobilization, wartime discipline, centralized decision-making," and that "if resisters are not vigilant, they may become another 14DD in the process of resisting 14DD" (War Treatise §5).
Defense itself is not the reverse phase transition. The defense action order of the summer of Year 9, and the state of war that the two chambers declared on the ninth day (UCSE Case 24), have had their cannot-not checked under the rulings of Papers 4 and 6, and are not judged again here. The slide back lies in the steps taken beyond defense: elections hung on the termination of the state of war, renewal made by the declaring party itself, complaints passed into the very office complained of (§3).
Having no superior is the condition under which it cannot be stopped. When a level of government slides back, there is a level above it. Paper 1 says: "Someone who leaves a city is still in the interior of the levels above it, up to the national level, and the guarantee of the layer above goes with him; someone who leaves a state has no layer above to go with him, and can only enter another peer, and only if that peer takes him in" (Paper 1, §5). The Prequel puts it more briefly: "The share that in the Theory of Government was borne by the level above is no longer there." (the Prequel, Introduction) When a state slides back, there is no higher level to appeal to, no outer layer to fill the gap, and no level above to withdraw to.
External roads do exist, but they land in this state: "The first: external routes exist, but they land in this state" (Paper 1, §5). Other states and treaty mechanisms can question, can record, can withdraw cooperation; the step of bringing a "last" that has moved out back under its channel they cannot take in its place. Nor can exit supply a superior: "The second: exit can only be lateral" (ibid.). Leaving acts on the relation itself; how much check it can bear must be checked under the particular conditions, and it does not stand in for questioning the original matter (Paper 7, N37). F6, in one of its cases, said: "Exit is constrained, so the check of voting with one's feet fails and the check must come from elsewhere" (F6 §3.1b). That is a conditional sentence written into that case, and only the sense "the check must come from elsewhere" is taken from it here. When a state slides back, restricting departure can itself be one of the steps: in the summer of Year 9, Emergency Order No. 7 suspended the processing of declarations of renunciation by age (UCSE Case 10; §3).
So. At the national level, the slide back can only be stopped from below and from the side: by the channels those "lasts" cannot close, and by the people within the channels (§4).
The strongest objection (drafted by this paper). You say that having no superior is only the condition under which the slide cannot be stopped. But if the UCSE had a superior with force above it, Charter Amendment 14 would never have got through, and the election order would have been issued. Having no superior is the cause of the slide.
Reply. A superior can stop the level below because that level lies under its channels; the superior has its own "lasts," which can slide back as well, and what stops it is still its channels and the people within them. Push upward one level at a time, and at the top there is always a level with no one above it; the state's end of the range is exactly that level (the Prequel, §6). So "having no superior" explains this much: at this level, stopping can come only from below and from the side. It does not explain why the slide happens; the driving force is still inside. Nor does it say that the slide must happen: the stretch of Years 9 to 12 in the UCSE did stop (§4).
N42 The driving force is inside; having no superior is the condition under which it cannot be stopped (own undertaking). The driving force of the slide back is the forces already present inside a state that pull toward the 14DD direction (War Treatise §5 on dormancy speaks of a 14DD systemic purpose; carried over to the inside of a state that leans more toward 15DD; extension; own undertaking). Attack, threat and inducement from outside, and majorities and banners inside (Action Theory Paper 9, D55: efficiency, solidarity, development or security), are conditions, not the driving force; defense itself is not the reverse phase transition, and the slide back lies in the steps taken beyond defense. With no higher level above it, the slide back cannot be stopped from above; external routes can question, record and withdraw cooperation, but cannot take the place of this state's step of bringing a "last" that has moved out back under its channel; exit can only be lateral, and cannot supply a superior (Paper 1, §5). So at the national level the slide back can only be stopped from below and from the side. "Cannot be stopped" says only that it cannot be stopped from above; it does not say that the slide back must happen, nor that having no superior is its cause.
§3 How a State Slides Back: One "Last" at a Time Moves Above Its Channel
Paper 7 established that every "last" lies under a channel it cannot itself close (Paper 7, N36). The last rule lies under constitutional amendment, and under the question "on what grounds it may normatively be so"; the last instance under the closed loop; the last force under non-monopoly and questioning afterward; and where a position does not act, and there is no substitute independent of it, it too becomes a "last" in fact, and it too lies under a channel (ibid.). To slide back is to take that sentence apart, place by place: one "last" moves above its channel, then another, then another.
How the taking apart proceeds, place by place, the Power Theory has read out as a structural sequence. Its first step is "a source-configuration sliding from exceptional use toward routine use, maintenance cost concentrating onto a single position"; a later step is "the lock moving from the option layer to the interpretation layer," that is, "rewriting, by way of a legal procedure, the definition of 'legitimate' into 'the cabinet decides'"; and a later one still is that "the bearing-position converges onto a single position" (Power Theory Paper 0, §V.1). What the Power Theory reads is one historical slice, and it limits that reading itself: the sequence is "an ordering of structural states (which configuration before, which after), not a causal sequence (no claim that the former caused the latter)"; "to read this case as a warning about or analogy to the present is not this section's business" (ibid. §V.0). This paper takes only that structural sequence, not the history from which it was demonstrated; to use the reading of one slice to read a state's slide back is this paper's extension (extension; own undertaking).
Following that sequence, the slide can be read across a state's several "lasts" in four steps. The first three are taken from the Power Theory: step 1 corresponds to its first step, step 2 to the lock moving to the interpretation layer; step 3 reads the convergence of the bearing-position onto the positions of checking, a narrowed extension (extension; own undertaking). Step 4 is not in that sequence, and is undertaken by this paper (own undertaking).
Step 1: the exception becomes routine. Confirmation, renewal and termination of the emergency leave the positions that do not monopolize them.
In the spring of Year 9 the joint session confirmed the state of emergency, 214 to 97; the First Executive is elected by a majority of the Chamber of Citizens, and the confirming majority and the declaring person came, broadly, from the same majority (UCSE Case 16). By the autumn of Year 9 the Executive Council had issued nineteen emergency orders, one of which permitted the detention without charge of "persons suspected of assisting the enemy," "for at most thirty days at a time, renewable consecutively." Once Charter Amendment 14 took effect, renewal was decided by the Executive Council itself: in the winter of Year 9 it renewed for one hundred eighty days; in the summer of Year 10, after the ceasefire, for another one hundred eighty days, with the grounds field reading "a ceasefire is not peace"; in the winter of Year 10, for one hundred eighty days more (ibid.). For more than a year after the ceasefire, the majority in the Chamber of Citizens did not move to terminate the state of war (UCSE Case 07).
Each of these has been judged. The detention clause has been judged by its configuration to cross the line (Paper 4, §3). The ceasefire reaches the threshold, and the two renewals after it had no wartime ground (Paper 4, §5, N22). Renewal made by the declaring party itself touches the requirement of Paper 1, §3. Taken together, they say one thing: the emergency, an exception that had to be questioned in the Assembly every sixty days, became a routine renewed by the declarer itself.
Step 2: rewriting "legal" by legal procedure. By a legal procedure, whether amendment, ordinary legislation, interpretation or constitution-making, the arrangements for being questioned are rewritten so that a "last" escapes questioning.
Charter Amendment 14 is this step (the Introduction). The Legal Affairs Bureau of the Executive Council had written that emergency orders could not postpone elections, and the Executive Council at once took the road of amendment instead: one road was blocked, so another was taken (UCSE Case 04). The amendment was proposed, and put to referendum, while emergency orders were restricting assembly and broadcasting; some twenty-six thousand registered voters in the West Flats did not vote. The Wartime Security Act had no sunset clause; its authorization of surveillance ran until "the date on which the peace treaty with the DRP is signed" (UCSE Case 19). In the autumn of Year 10, the joint session voted 176 to 142 to terminate the state of emergency: the majority already wanted to end it, and the three-fifths of clause 2 of Charter Amendment 14 kept it in place (UCSE Case 16).
Paper 1 has judged: amendment can change the structure, but it cannot change the line, nor withdraw the conditions of being questioned; clauses 1 and 2 withdrew the independence of the channels of questioning, must be questioned, and can be taken back (Paper 1, N3). While emergency measures restricting assembly, speech and communication are in force, alterations of the arrangements for being questioned are not put to a vote (Paper 1, N4). A term set by a peace treaty is treated as no stated term at all (Paper 4, N22).
This step has a direction. Sliding back means that a "last" escapes questioning; conversely, changes that take back emergency powers, or restore or strengthen the conditions of being questioned, are not this step, and N4 permits them to be voted on even during the restrictions (Paper 1, N4).
Step 3: checking is occupied, or hollowed out. The bearing-position converges: the positions of checking come into the hands of the party questioned, or are left with nothing but their names.
In the summer of Year 9, Article 17 of the Wartime Security Act moved complaints against the Defense Force and the Office of Defense to the Internal Investigations Division of the Office of Defense, whose head the Executive for Defense appointed; the public hearings of the Defense Committee of the Chamber of Citizens stopped (UCSE Case 06). In the spring of Year 10 the Inspector-General's term ran out; two votes in the joint session both fell short of three-fifths, and the Executive Council, under the transitional provision, named a former deputy director of the Executive Council's Legal Affairs Bureau acting Inspector-General; in his two years the Inspectorate published no public reports at all, where his predecessor's seven years had produced forty-one (ibid.). Farming households complained to the Inspectorate about the compensation schedule and the recusal procedure; the acting Inspector-General replied: "This case has been finally decided; the Inspectorate will not take it up further." (UCSE Case 09) Seven judges held the detention clause contrary to the Charter, short of the eight required by clause 3 of Charter Amendment 14, and the clause stood (UCSE Case 16). The Final Court's election ruling was 6 to 5; the Executive Council "respects" it, and issued no election order (UCSE Case 07). Of the four lead sponsors of the impeachment of the Chief Judge, three had been the representatives who appeared for the responding party in that very case; during the Chief Judge's three months of suspension, the court, sitting with ten judges, decided a case concerning the Iron Valley Special District 6 to 4 (UCSE Cases 08 and 17). Before the river was crossed, the Joint War Committee heard briefings in closed session (UCSE Case 24). The Chief of the Defense Force, who had opposed crossing the river in writing, was relieved of command the next day; the soldier serving at an inspection point who wrote to the Inspectorate was transferred two weeks later (UCSE Cases 24 and 27).
Each has been judged: Paper 1, §6 (N5); Paper 2 (N11a, N11b); Paper 4, §1; Paper 4, §7; Paper 6, §1. Only two sentences are added here. First, appointment and a record of no reports do not of themselves show a loss of independence; what is to be checked is whether taking up, closing, referring out and delivery are monopolized by the party questioned (Paper 7, §1). What the case file establishes is that complaints were passed into the very office complained of, that the Inspectorate declined to take up a matter it said had been finally decided, that seven votes could not make a declaration, and that a ruling that did stand was not carried out. Second, the relation between the dismissal and that opinion, and between the transfer and that letter, the case file does not record; they serve only as traces, not as findings (N44).
Step 4: closing the doors back. The channels through which the slide back could still be stopped are closed.
There are three kinds of door. Inward: the dates of elections, speech and assembly, membership and leaving. Outward: exiting or switching an external arrangement, closing the road by which questions from outside come in through the people inside; exit can close one channel, but cannot cancel the questions from outside (Paper 1, §5, "external questioning cannot be cancelled"). Toward the future: closing off, in advance, later questioning of oneself, for instance by self-amnesty, by an eternity clause, or by an interpretation that forbids proposals to amend.
In the UCSE, between Years 9 and 11, several inward doors closed. The election to the Chamber of Citizens was pushed from the winter of Year 9 to the autumn of Year 11; the election commissions of the Kingdom State and the South Bay State said they could prepare elections on the old districts, and the Executive Council wrote back that member units had no power to hold UCSE-level elections (UCSE Case 07). Under Article 9 of the Wartime Security Act, the Office of the Prosecutor charged forty-seven people, and the editor of a daily paper was sentenced to eighteen months for publishing an interview with a DRP mother (UCSE Case 22). The permit requirement for assemblies was extended to Rivermouth City, and about three hundred people were taken away from one peaceful assembly (ibid.). A commentator living in the NUT had her UCSE citizenship revoked; the suit had to be filed in person in Rivermouth City, and her application for an entry visa went unanswered for five months; her lawyer filed on her behalf, the registry returned the filing, and in the autumn of Year 10 a panel of the Final Court ruled that filing on her behalf was valid, and the revocation case went to a hearing (UCSE Case 11). Emergency Order No. 7 suspended, by age, the processing of declarations of renunciation (UCSE Case 10). Some eighty-five thousand DRP citizens reported every month (UCSE Case 22). The outward doors, the case file shows, were not closed: the UCSE exited no external arrangement. Of the five questions in the NUT's note of inquiry, the Office of External Affairs answered two, and met the other three with "This concerns wartime security; we are not in a position to reply," "a matter for the Kingdom State and Willow Ferry" and "an internal affair of the UCSE" (UCSE Case 23); as Paper 7 has read it, this state may decline to answer ordinary diplomatic questions between peers that carry no separate obligation to answer, and answering and not answering are both questioned in the channels inside (Paper 7, N38). Of the doors toward the future, the unity clause put forward "This article may not be amended," and the Chamber of Citizens passed it, 204 to 92 (UCSE Case 05).
Each has been judged: Paper 5, §6 (N28); Paper 3, §3 (N14); the opening of Paper 3 (N13); Paper 1, §3 (N3: no eternity clauses).
A changed date is not a closed door. Postponing an election is not necessarily closing a door; that sentence belongs to the normative layer. As to how to judge it, this paper suggests looking at three things (the rule layer): whether the new date is set by the party questioned alone; whether the postponement carries a term of its own, is renewed one step at a time, and lapses unless renewed; and whether, in the meantime, there is substitute questioning, such as by-elections or public debate. If all three are passed, it can be said only that the door has not been closed, and this step does not stand; changing the date of elections while restrictions are in force is, under Paper 1, N4, still not put to a vote, but that belongs to step 2. The reason behind the three is the same one that Paper 4, N22 and Paper 1, N4 give: "a term of its own," not decided by one side alone. Whether a particular postponement passes the three is for the positions that can question it to judge (the judgment layer). Run clause 1 of Charter Amendment 14 through them, and it passes none: the new date is hung on the termination of the state of war, and termination is held by the same majority (Paper 1, §3: "the majority in the Chamber of Citizens alone can block termination"); it carries no term of its own; and the case file records no by-elections, while the election commissions of the member units were told they had no power.
Outward, the same structure. The War Treatise says: "14DD's internal oppression and external expansion are two sides of the same structure" (War Treatise §5). The same window can be seen on the outward side. Crossing the river was decided 2 to 1 by the Wartime Council of Three, and the Executive Council said it was "already covered by the declaration of the state of war," and put no separate vote to the Assembly (UCSE Case 24). The inspection points in the buffer zone held about one thousand nine hundred people and passed on two hundred thirty; their complaints went to the Internal Investigations Division, and thirty were reviewed (UCSE Case 25). The target memorandum for the strike on Junction Town read: "Passenger train times not verified." (ibid.) The "Wheat Plain Provisional Administration Office" changed what was taught in the schools, dismissed the thirty-seven teachers who refused to teach the new lessons, and picked the self-government committee; the Wheat Plain Reconstruction Plan would keep the administration office in place until "the establishment locally of elected bodies that meet UCSE standards" (UCSE Case 26). Under the sanctions, dialysis in several DRP border districts fell by about half, and permits under the humanitarian exemption took seventy-four days on average to process (UCSE Case 21). These follow the original rulings of Paper 6, N30, N32, N33 and N34, and Paper 5, N29.
One carries the next along. The War Treatise says that its four theorems "are not independent of one another; they reinforce one another," and that a party that has crossed the boundary, "when questioned, it cannot account for the drift, so it must suppress questioning" (War Treatise §17). Carried over to the four steps and to the outward side (extension; own undertaking), several links can be seen in the case file. After the river was crossed, two things fell on those who questioned the crossing. The Chief of the Defense Force, who opposed it, was relieved of command the next day; the Office of Defense called it "a normal adjustment in the command," and the case file does not record how the two are related. The commentator who wrote "Soldiers of the Defense Force, you may refuse to cross the river" had her UCSE citizenship revoked, and the grounds field of the revocation decision named exactly that (UCSE Cases 24 and 11). Once the boundary has been crossed outward, there are people inside who ask; how those who ask are treated is one more step of the slide back. Once step 2 raised the threshold for declaring an emergency order contrary to the Charter to eight, step 3 had seven votes that could not make a declaration. Once the election was postponed, the majority that took the earlier steps no longer had, for the time being, to explain itself to the voters. Once the Inspectorate said "This case has been finally decided; it will not be taken up further," questions about the compensation schedule had one place fewer to land. Of these links, what the case file records is recorded; who did what for what reason, where the case file does not record it, is not supplied.
A sequence is not a law. The Power Theory says that "whether these criteria are readable on this slice is by structure," while "why this historical sequence unfolded at this speed and this specific form is by many factors" (Power Theory Paper 0, §V.1); its order of steps follows "the case's order of structural manifestation" (ibid. §II.4). So the four steps need not come in order, and need not all occur; that one step appears does not prove the next will come. Step 1 is not necessary either, and can come late: the exception becoming routine can be the result of having slid a long way, not necessarily the start. Whether each step is present is checked under the proposition of the "last" it touches. What is said here, "need not all occur," "step 1 is not necessary," is said of the process of sliding back; "taking hold" in §5 still follows the full test of §1.
A legal form. Most steps have a legal form: the amendment went by ordinary procedure, the acting appointment by a transitional provision, the impeachment by the Impeachment Act, the surveillance continued under a transitional provision. So they are recognized by function, not by name (Paper 4, N22, last clause). Montesquieu made the same observation; §6 returns to it.
Taken together, what can be said. All four steps can be seen in the UCSE in Years 9 to 11, and so can the outward side; they point in one direction, and one carries the next along. So it can be said that the UCSE had a window, in Years 9 to 11, in which it moved toward the 14DD direction. This is said at the level of leaning: it says which way, broadly, the construct's systemic purpose pointed (the Prequel, §7); it does not say "the UCSE became a 14DD state," nor does it attach any other label. It stands in for no ruling on any act: each act stands on the original rulings of the eight papers, and this paper adds only one thing, that what has been read out points in one direction and is mutually reinforcing. Acts in the same stretch that went the other way are recorded all the same: the two opinions against by the Executive for External Affairs, the Chief's written opinion, the Final Court's 6 to 5, the eight votes in the Chamber of Member Units against conviction, the election commissions of the Kingdom State and the South Bay State, the ninety-two votes in the Chamber of Citizens against the unity clause. Being mixed is how all three states are (the Prequel, §7).
Recognizing it. A slide back mostly does not change its banners; it keeps using the words that lean toward the 15DD direction: security, solidarity, protection. So one must be able to recognize it.
From inside, it is recognized by whether self-description and mechanism agree. The Moral Law says: "the paradigm marker of pseudo-15DD groups is not 'having conflicts' — it is the mismatch between the ontological processing of conflict and self-articulation" (Moral Law P6 §4.2), and lists five identification markers: the edge of the recognition radius, how remainder is processed, how internal conflict is resolved, whether language is consistent, and whether self-articulation matches the actual mechanism (ibid. §4.3, paraphrased). It speaks there of groups, and limits its own use: "not specific historical or contemporary group judgment" (ibid. §4.2); "This identification articulation is not for critiquing specific groups" (ibid. §4.3). Here it is carried over to the acts of a state (extension; own undertaking), used only for identification, attaching to no state the label "pseudo-15DD," and applied only to this series' fictional case file. The words recorded in the case file can be set beside what was being done:
- "Before the survival of the UCSE, there is nothing that cannot be suspended," beside the list the Emergency Act writes of what emergency orders may not extend to: postponing elections, proceedings in the Final Court, the establishment of the Inspectorate (UCSE Case 16).
- "We are not going to occupy; we are going so that the children of Reedtown can sleep," beside the administration office, the changed lessons and the plan for "trusteeship" (UCSE Cases 24 and 26).
- "The Executive Council respects the Final Court," beside the election order that was not issued (UCSE Case 07).
- "a ceasefire is not peace," beside the ceasefire reaching the threshold (UCSE Case 16; Paper 4, N22).
- "The sanctions target the DRP's capacity to wage war; the humanitarian exemption has always been open," beside the seventy-four days and the payments that could not be made (UCSE Case 21).
- "The continued existence of the UCSE is the highest reason," beside "The construct's own continued existence is not an independent sufficient reason to close off questioning, or to continue a particular arrangement automatically" (UCSE Case 28; Institution Theory Z38).
That the banners stay the same and the institutions stay open is the normal state even when the slide has gone far: the courts still sit, the Inspectorate still takes up complaints, the Assembly still votes; what changes is in whose hands the results fall.
From outside, it is recognized by whether questioning is allowed. The War Treatise says: "Whether questioning is allowed is directly observable from outside"; a real allowance "must be embodied in structure: questioners exist, questioning reaches the decision core, questioners are protected, questioning actually affects decisions" (War Treatise §16). It speaks there of a war-party; here it is carried over to a state sliding back (extension; own undertaking). Look at the four in the case file. Questioners exist: the Executive for External Affairs, the Chief of the Defense Force, the government of the South Bay State and the eighty-one members, the editor, the commentator, the soldier who wrote the letter. Whether questioning reaches the decision core: crossing the river was decided 2 to 1 by the Council of Three, and the Joint War Committee met in closed session. Whether questioners are protected: after their opposition came dismissal and transfer, revocation of citizenship and prison sentences, and for several of these the case file does not record the causes. Whether questioning affects decisions: the Final Court's election ruling was not carried out. What could be seen from outside was the NUT's five questions, two of them answered. People within this state and peers alike can look by these four.
A symptom is not a verdict. Recognizing it is a way in to checking, not a verdict; Paper 5 reads symptoms the same way (Paper 5, N28). The War Treatise draws a boundary: "Turned inward, the criterion is an instrument of reflection; turned outward (to judge others), it slides into an instrument of 14DD systemic purpose." (War Treatise §1) This paper's identification has two uses: self-examination for this state, and a way for peers to check (Paper 5, N27; Paper 7, N38). The response this paper speaks of, at the level of the reverse phase transition, comes only once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold; until it has, it makes no response at that level. Questioning, recording and, where necessary, withdrawing the corresponding cooperation in response to particular acts still follow Paper 5 (§5).
N43 Each step is a "last" moving above its channel (extension; own undertaking). Paper 7, N36 says that every "last" lies under a channel it cannot itself close; the reverse phase transition is the process of taking that sentence apart, place by place. Following the structural sequence read out in Power Theory Paper 0, §V.1, the slide can be read across a state's several "lasts" in four steps: first, the exception becomes routine, as confirmation, renewal and termination of the emergency leave the positions that do not monopolize them; second, "legal" is rewritten by legal procedure, as amendment, legislation, interpretation or constitution-making rewrites the arrangements for being questioned so that a "last" escapes questioning, changes that restore or strengthen the conditions of being questioned not counting; third, checking is occupied or hollowed out, as the positions of checking come into the hands of the party questioned, or are left with nothing but their names; fourth, the doors back are closed: inward (the dates of elections, speech and assembly, membership and leaving), outward (exiting or switching external arrangements, closing the road by which questions from outside come in through the people inside), and toward the future (self-amnesty, eternity clauses, interpretations that forbid amendment). A changed date is not a closed door; as to how to judge it, this paper suggests looking at whether the new date is set by the party questioned alone, whether it carries a term of its own and lapses unless renewed, and whether there is substitute questioning in the meantime. The first two steps take two readings of the Power Theory; the third reads the convergence of the bearing-position onto the positions of checking (extension; own undertaking); the fourth is undertaken by this paper (own undertaking); the Power Theory reads one slice, says of itself that it is not a causal sequence and draws no analogy, and to take it as a reading of a state's slide back is an extension. The outward side is another face of the same structure (War Treatise §5). The sequence is a reading, not a law: as for the process, the four steps need not come in order, need not all occur, and step 1 is not necessary; each step is checked under the proposition of the "last" it touches. The steps reinforce one another (War Treatise §17, extended; extension; own undertaking). Most steps have a legal form, and are recognized by function, not by name.
N44 Recognizing it: self-description and mechanism do not agree; whether questioning is allowed can be seen from outside (extension; own undertaking). From inside, one looks at whether the words written and the things done agree, the same when the banners stay and the institutions stay open (Moral Law P6 §4.2, §4.3, speaking of groups, carried over to the acts of a state, attaching no label to a state). From outside, one looks at whether questioners exist, whether questioning reaches the decision core, whether questioners are protected, and whether questioning affects decisions (War Treatise §16, speaking of a war-party, extended). Identification is a way in to checking, not a verdict: self-examination for this state, a way for peers to check; it is not for judging others (War Treatise §1).
§4 Direction One: Stopped
The UCSE's stretch came to a stop; read by the test suggested in §1, it stopped before the slide took hold (below). This section reads only facts already in the case file, and asks three things: where the slide was stopped, what stopped it, and why being stopped is not a return to the starting point.
First, the places that held. In the autumn of Year 10 the Chamber of Citizens impeached the Chief Judge, 178 to 110; that winter the Chamber of Member Units tried the impeachment: 12 voted to convict and 8 against, short of the fourteen votes of a two-thirds majority, and the Chief Judge returned to office (UCSE Case 08). The Chamber of Member Units is chosen by the legislatures of the member units, and is a position not occupied by the majority of the Chamber of Citizens: one link in the closed loop (Paper 2, N8). In the spring of Year 11 the Chamber of Citizens passed the unity clause, 204 to 92; the Chamber of Member Units set its own vote for the autumn, after the elections, the two chambers did not complete their votes within the term of the same Chamber of Citizens, and under Article 70 of the Charter the clause lapsed that winter (UCSE Case 05). This is a gate of the procedure's own. The Final Court's election ruling was not carried out, but it stands on the record as a public decision: when the election ought to be held has an answer signed by six judges (UCSE Case 07). In the autumn of Year 10, 176 members of the joint session voted to terminate the state of emergency: the majority had already turned, and only the three-fifths threshold stood in the way (UCSE Case 16).
Then the turn. In the spring of Year 10 the two states signed the Ceasefire Agreement at Three Borders, in the NUT; in the spring of Year 11 they signed the Withdrawal Agreement, both through the NUT's mediation. The NUT's Council for External Affairs said: "Mediation is not judging; the NUT makes no ruling on the rights and wrongs between the two states." (UCSE Case 26) In the summer of Year 11 the Assembly, under Article 54 of the Charter, terminated the state of war by a majority in each chamber; clause 2 of Charter Amendment 14 ceased to apply, renewal of the state of emergency returned to the joint session, no one moved to renew it when its term ran out, and it ended there, after about two years and three months (UCSE Case 16). That same month the Chamber of Citizens passed the Election Date Act, setting the election for the autumn of Year 11; in the winter a new First Executive took office (UCSE Case 07).
Then the doors that opened again. Article 17 lapsed by its own terms when the state of war was terminated, and the Inspectorate resumed taking up complaints against the Defense Force; in the spring of Year 12 the new joint session elected a new Inspector-General with 201 votes, and the acting Inspector-General left office (UCSE Case 06). The public hearings of the Defense Committee of the Chamber of Citizens resumed in Year 12 (UCSE Case 19). Review of alternative service resumed; the engineer declared again, paid the renunciation settlement tax and fee, and was allowed to renounce (UCSE Cases 27 and 10). The new Chamber of Citizens set up the War Inquiry Commission: the new Executive Council handed over the records of the wartime Council of Three, the two opinions against by the former Executive for External Affairs were made public, the former Chief of the Defense Force appeared to testify, and the written statements of the families of those killed at Junction Town came in through the liaison office at Three Borders, and the commission, after discussion, accepted them; some files were refused, and the commission applied to the Final Court (UCSE Case 28).
What can stop it. It cannot be stopped from above (§2). What stopped it lies below and to the side.
The stopping here is of two kinds, and they must be kept apart. One stops a new step, so that the slide goes no deeper. The other is a road that can bring a "last" that has moved out back under its channel, and that has not come into the hands of the party questioned; in recognizing that the slide has taken hold, §1 counts only this kind. The first is recorded, and its work is no less for that; but with only the first, the slide halts at some point, and the doors already closed cannot be opened again.
First, the links in the closed loop not yet occupied (Paper 1, N5; Paper 2, N8). The Chamber of Member Units did not convict, and the Chief Judge returned; it set the vote on the unity clause after the elections, and the same-term requirement of Article 70 made that clause lapse. What these places stopped was a new step. The minority and the majority of the Final Court both put their reasons on paper.
Second, the channels of internal subjects (Paper 7, N37). Only because the government of the South Bay State and eighty-one members asked for an interpretation under Article 43 of the Charter was there a 6 to 5 ruling at all; the election commissions of the Kingdom State and the South Bay State said they could prepare an election, and though they were told they had no power, that question too stayed on the record. The road of amendment jointly proposed by four member units is also a channel of internal subjects; it was not used, but it stayed open throughout (below).
Third, questions from outside, connected into the channels inside (Paper 7, N38). The NUT's note of inquiry asked about Junction Town, the inspection points, West Pass, Willow Ferry and the commentator (UCSE Case 23); after the war, the statements of the Junction Town families reached the inquiry commission through the liaison office.
Fourth, internal subjects living abroad. The commentator's UCSE citizenship was revoked, and she was in the NUT; the NUT refused to hand her over and gave her residence (UCSE Case 11). In the autumn of Year 10, a panel of the Final Court ruled that her lawyer's filing on her behalf was valid, and her revocation case went to a hearing (ibid.). Abroad, she could still write and still ask; only because peers left the door open for her did she have a place from which to go on asking (§5).
Fifth, the party questioned itself opening a door again. Terminating the state of war had been in the hands of the party questioned: for more than a year the majority in the Chamber of Citizens did not move it; in the summer of Year 11 the Assembly terminated it by a majority in each chamber (UCSE Cases 07 and 16). The Election Date Act, too, was passed by that same majority in the Chamber of Citizens, and the First Executive said the election would be "held by decision of the Chamber of Citizens, not by the ruling of the Final Court" (UCSE Case 07). These are acts, and are recorded as what they are: once the door is open, what works is still the channel, still the voters; they are booked to the party questioned, and do not write off the account of the year before; the ruling that was not carried out remains on the account (Paper 7, N39).
Reading the winter of Year 10 by the test. Apply the test suggested in §1 to the deepest point of direction one, the winter of Year 10, using only the facts available then, and not reasoning backward from the termination in the summer of Year 11 (§1). All four steps are present (§3). Of the five channels, four had come into the hands of the party questioned.
Elections: the steps of the slide were taken by that majority in the Chamber of Citizens, Charter Amendment 14 at 231 to 64 (UCSE Case 04), the impeachment at 178 to 110 (UCSE Case 08); and its own elections had been closed by clause 1 of Charter Amendment 14; both conditions are present (§1). Termination: the state of war is terminated by a majority in each chamber, and the majority in the Chamber of Citizens did not move it (UCSE Case 07); terminating the state of emergency needs three-fifths of the joint session, and in the autumn of Year 10 there were 176 votes for it, short of 192; that majority holds at least 151 seats in the Chamber of Citizens, so that even if every other seat voted to terminate, there would be at most 169 votes (UCSE Case 16); renewal was made by the Executive Council itself. Judicial review: the 6 to 5 election ruling stood; the Executive Council said it "respects" it and issued no election order; and the Charter has no substitute execution independent of it (Charter, Article 43, fact; UCSE Case 07). Checking: complaints against the Defense Force went to the Internal Investigations Division, and the acting Inspector-General was named by the Executive Council under the transitional provision; the corrections needed to restore the conditions of being questioned had to pass through the Final Court and through execution, as in the channel before (UCSE Case 06).
The one remaining is the road to amending the supreme rule. On the two-chamber road, two-thirds of the Chamber of Citizens is 200 votes, and that majority could block it. The other road does not pass through the Chamber of Citizens: the legislatures of four member units jointly propose, and the proposal goes to a UCSE-wide referendum, which the election commission of each member unit organizes and counts within its own unit, without any order from the Executive Council (Charter, Article 70, fact). This road was open: its result did not need the consent of the party questioned, and could reach the threshold without its seats; to use it to repeal the clauses of Charter Amendment 14 would be an amendment restoring the conditions of being questioned, which Paper 1, N4 permits to be voted on during the restrictions. Had this road been taken, the referendum too would have been held under emergency orders, and might not have been fair; but under §1, where a channel is open and its result does not need the consent of the party questioned, the slide has not taken hold, however unfair that channel may be.
So, by this test, in the winter of Year 10 the slide had not yet taken hold. It stopped before taking hold, and what held it there was this road. The case file does not record any amendment jointly proposed by member units; the road was not used, and what it held was only the one step the slide still lacked. The turn back came from elsewhere (below). In the supposed branch of §5, Emergency Order No. 31 takes the order for referendums into the hands of the Executive Council, and that is exactly the road it takes away.
Stopping it rests on at least one "last" not yet having moved above its channel. That is why steps 3 and 4 matter most: while checking and the doors back are still there, the first two steps can be recovered. In the winter of Year 10, checking had been weakened in the UCSE, and several doors had closed; the place of amending the supreme rule still lay under the road of joint proposal by member units.
Within the channels there are people in positions and people not in positions. How the six judges ruled, how the twenty members of the Chamber of Member Units voted, is accountability and judgment in positions (the judgment layer); whether the editor ran that interview, and whom the voters chose, is their own law. To the former this series gives only the direction of their accountability; for the latter it writes no ought; what it asks of both is whether their questions have somewhere to land, and whether using the roads brings retaliation (the fifth ought). The people within the channels can also be a majority in favor of sliding back: Charter Amendment 14 won 58.3 percent in the referendum. Channels are not kept for any one result; a majority in favor does not turn line-crossing into guarding the line, nor does it settle the account of an amendment that withdrew the conditions of being questioned (Paper 1, N3, N4). The channels are to be kept so that later majorities can reach them too.
External conditions are not channels. Stopping often depends also on external conditions; for the UCSE, this time, it was the end of the war. External conditions are not channels, and this paper does not credit them to the channels; nor do they guarantee that the channels will stop the slide. Institution Theory says: "This series gives no warrant for when questioning will happen, who will take it up, or how long it will last." (Institution Theory Z37) Nor is a state pushed back by outside force what is meant here by stopping: when the Power Theory read its structural sequence, it likewise did not demonstrate external termination: "it also does not demonstrate external-force termination, because that is off-register, not dissolution" (Power Theory Paper 0, §V.3). Defeat from outside can bring a turn back; the turn back must still be completed by the people inside.
To put it plainly: the ceasefire and the withdrawal gave the turn back its external conditions; what took them up lay inside: the votes of both chambers to terminate, renewal returning to the joint session, the Chamber of Citizens fixing the date of the election. The termination and the election date were made by the party questioned itself (the fifth item above); the road of joint proposal by member units was not used. What direction one shows is a turn back in which external conditions were taken up by positions and procedures inside, not a turn back that external conditions completed by themselves. The Final Court's earlier election ruling was not carried out, and that entry stands. In the supposed branch of §5 the Withdrawal Agreement is not signed and the Assembly does not terminate the state of war; both have been changed, and the comparison must count them apart.
The strongest objection (drafted by this paper). In the end, direction one comes down to the war being over. The channels were there all along, and in the war they stopped nothing; once the war stopped, everything came back. To credit the turn back to the channels is to gild them.
Reply. This paper credits the turn back neither to the channels nor to the end of the war: it says the two connected. Without the ceasefire and the withdrawal, the Assembly might not have terminated the state of war; §5 supposes exactly that. In this case, the ceasefire and the withdrawal supplied the external conditions; the votes of both chambers to terminate returned renewal of the state of emergency to the joint session. The Chamber of Member Units did not let the conviction reach its threshold, and the Chief Judge returned to office; Article 70 made the unity clause lapse because its votes in both chambers were not completed within the same term. The ceasefire and the withdrawal do not in themselves produce these procedural results. What the case file establishes is that these surviving positions and procedures actually worked, so that when the external conditions came, there was somewhere to take them up.
Stopped is not a return to the starting point. The end of the war and the holding of elections do not mean that things are back as they were before the spring of Year 9.
Dismantling and renaming. Wartime structures, with the end of the war as their threshold of expiry, expire on reaching the threshold and must be lifted on one's own initiative; being renamed, or continued through ordinary procedure, does not by itself prove that they have been lifted (Paper 4, N22). The War Treatise says: "The most common path by which a victorious party slides toward the Kingdom of Means after the war is this 'permanentization of wartime structures.'" (War Treatise §18) What stays under a new name is checked by function; what is re-established through ordinary procedure is re-checked as a new decision, on present grounds (Paper 4, N22; Institution Theory Z22: "A temporary structure of guarding must be re-examined after its conditions change, and is not renewed automatically on the strength of its origin"). What is kept to avoid a vacuum is likewise re-checked as a new decision with a term of its own, and does not continue on its original grounds.
The road back also guards the line. To come back is to bring each "last" back under a channel it cannot close; so the side that comes back does not hold the power that the party questioned held. Suppose someone claims that, during the slide, the acquisition of some position was itself flawed, for instance that the appointment of a judge of the Final Court went around the threshold fixed by law. This is taken in three layers.
The normative layer: the finding is made not by the side that comes back but by a court that, in function, is controlled by no party to the dispute, and the side that comes back acts on that finding (Paper 2, N9). The side that comes back does not make the finding itself, nor does it substitute non-execution for disagreement (Paper 2, N11b): to make the finding itself and refuse to carry out the rulings itself is to take that power into its own hands rather than leave it to a court. The finding reaches only the acquisition itself: "this is the acquisition itself not having validly taken place, not expulsion," and "it does not extend to conduct after acquisition" (Paper 3, N14). So it reaches only the positions whose acquisition was flawed, not all appointments of that period; rulings already made by the final instance are not changed by the finding, and what is to be changed goes through existing review or legislative amendment, and only forward (Paper 2, N11b; N7, N10). Until the finding, Paper 2, N11b applies: explain publicly, pass the matter into review, and the rulings remain valid and are carried out (extension; own undertaking).
The rule layer, where this paper makes several suggestions: which court makes the finding follows existing jurisdiction and is not chosen by the side that comes back; it can be another court of this state, or an external court this state has acknowledged; independence is checked more strictly against the side whose position is actually under examination; the judge whose acquisition is disputed takes no part in the finding on that acquisition, and recusal is not decided by the judge concerned (Paper 2, §§3 and 5). In the case file, a request for recusal is still decided by the judge whose recusal is requested (UCSE Case 09); under this suggestion, that must be changed first.
The judgment layer: whether to seek a finding on a particular position, and when, and how the court finds, are judgments in positions.
Booking the account. Each step falls on positions and persons (Paper 7, N39): who submitted, who renewed, who appointed, who did not carry out. The construct's continued existence does not exempt anyone from the account: "The construct's own continued existence is not an independent sufficient reason to close off questioning, or to continue a particular arrangement automatically" (Institution Theory Z38). The former First Executive said to the inquiry commission: "The continued existence of the UCSE is the highest reason." (UCSE Case 28) That sentence is itself a place to be questioned.
That the account is not written off does not mean there must be prosecution. The Prosecutor-General answered the commission: "No provision of current law makes wartime decision-making itself an offense." (UCSE Case 28) Whether to prosecute or to pardon is left to specific law and to judgment in positions; the account can still fall: inquiry, publicity, those affected able to ask and to be answered, and stricter confirmation thereafter for positions at fault (Paper 7, N39). Writing the account off is another matter: erasing the record, forbidding later questions. That is not permitted.
"Already corrected" does not close questioning. The soldier who served at an inspection point wrote to the Inspectorate; seven months later the Internal Investigations Division answered him: "Remedied." After the war, the Military Service Review Board said of his application for alternative service: "The applicant has completed military service; no further review." (UCSE Case 27) 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" (Institution Theory Z37). A remediation can close a case; it does not follow that there is no questioning thereafter.
Reinforcement. Making the doors that were taken apart harder to take apart is part of coming back (the normative layer). How to do it, this paper names a few things as suggestions (the rule layer): narrowing the grounds for exceptions, writing down what may not be suspended even in an exception, raising thresholds, deleting the exemptions from questioning that the party questioned wrote in for itself. All of these are the amendments "that restore or strengthen the conditions of being questioned" that Paper 1, N4 permits. Which provision to change, and when, is judgment in positions (the judgment layer). The UCSE's doors were not reinforced: the case file does not record Charter Amendment 14 as repealed, so that with another state of war its three clauses would apply again; nor does it record any change to the transitional provision of the Inspectorate Act, to suspension under the Impeachment Act, or to recusal being decided by the judge whose recusal is requested. The unity clause put forward again in Year 12 dropped "This article may not be amended" and narrowed the object of dissolution, and is still in committee (UCSE Case 05). What has been reinforced can also be undone by the next majority.
Coming back is also recognized by acts. A return to the direction that leans more toward 15DD is recognized by acts too, not by declarations (N41). What has come back and what has not are both recorded.
The remainder is the starting point of the next window. What was not dismantled is a set of tools the next slide back can take up directly. In Year 12 the new Chamber of Citizens passed the National Security Act, 162 to 131: the speech clause was rewritten and its penalties reduced, the revocation clause was kept word for word; among the new majority that voted for it were members who had voted against the Wartime Security Act in Year 9 (UCSE Case 19). What a slide back leaves behind is not the business of one majority only. The surveillance authorization whose term is "the date on which the peace treaty with the DRP is signed" was still in place in Year 12; under Paper 4, N22 it is treated as having no stated term. The wartime surtax was renamed "the West Flats reconstruction tax," at the same rate; for the land requisitioned in the northern stretch of the West Flats, compensation was "to be taken up after the war," and three years later had not been; the freeze on the assets of DRP state bodies was renamed "security for the Reedtown compensation" (UCSE Cases 19, 09 and 21). The Willow Ferry Reception Center is still there (UCSE Case 13); the defense budget in Year 12 took 6.4 percent of output (UCSE Case 19). The DRP's Programme of National Purposes still keeps "the return of the West Flats": the external conditions are still there too (§2).
Guarding does not stop. The Action Theory says: "Guarding does not wait for the macroscopic phase transition to be complete; any mutual recognition already formed may need guarding" (Action Theory Paper 9, D54). The War Treatise says: "But evolution is not completed in one step — it is an ongoing, fragile process." (War Treatise §19) It speaks there of the pressure of impending defeat; here only its general sense is taken.
N45 What can stop it: the channels that cannot be closed, and the people within them (carried over from Paper 7, N36 to N38; own undertaking). With no higher level above it, the slide back cannot be stopped from above (N42), and so it is stopped from below and from the side: by the links in the closed loop not yet occupied (Paper 1, N5; Paper 2, N8); by the channels of internal subjects (Paper 7, N37); by questions from outside connected into the channels inside (Paper 7, N38); by internal subjects living abroad, who have a place from which to go on asking only because peers leave the door open for them; and by the doors the party questioned itself opens again, which is an act, booked to it, writing off no earlier account, and once the door is open what works is still the channel (Paper 7, N39). Stopping is of two kinds: stopping a new step, so that the slide goes no deeper; and a road that can bring a "last" that has moved out back under its channel and that has not come into the hands of the party questioned. Taking hold looks only at the second; the first is recorded, and its work is no less for that. Stopping rests on at least one "last" still lying under its channel; so checking and the doors back matter most. How the people in positions within the channels rule and vote is their accountability and judgment; how those not in positions act is their own law; of both, this series asks only whether their questions have somewhere to land and whether using the roads brings retaliation. Channels are not kept for any one result: a majority in favor of sliding back does not turn line-crossing into guarding the line, nor settle the account of an amendment that withdrew the conditions of being questioned (Paper 1, N3, N4), and the channels are to be kept for later majorities. External conditions are not channels; being pushed back by outside force is not being stopped (Power Theory Paper 0, §V.3); this series gives no warrant that the slide will be stopped (Institution Theory Z37).
N46 Stopped is not a return to the starting point (carried over from Paper 4, N22 and Paper 7, N39; Institution Theory Z37; own undertaking). Wartime structures expire on reaching the threshold and must be dismantled on one's own initiative; what is renamed is checked by function; what is re-established through ordinary procedure, and what is kept to avoid a vacuum, are each re-checked, on present grounds, as a new decision with a term of its own (Paper 4, N22; Institution Theory Z22). The road back also guards the line: the side that comes back does not hold the power that the party questioned held, does not itself make the finding on the acquisition of an occupied position, and does not substitute non-execution for disagreement; the finding is made by a court that, in function, is controlled by no party to the dispute, position by position, reaching only the acquisition itself and not conduct after acquisition, leaving rulings already made by the final instance unchanged, with what is to be changed going through existing review or legislative amendment, and only forward; until the finding, the rulings remain valid and are carried out (Paper 2, N9, N11b; Paper 3, N14, extended; extension; own undertaking). Each step is traced to positions and persons; the construct's continued existence exempts no one from the account (Institution Theory Z38). That the account is not written off does not mean there must be prosecution; writing it off, that is, erasing the record and forbidding later questions, is not permitted. "Already corrected" does not close questioning (Institution Theory Z37). Reinforcement is part of coming back (the amendments strengthening the conditions of being questioned that Paper 1, N4 permits), and what is reinforced can also be undone. Coming back is also recognized by acts. The remainder not dismantled is the starting point of the next window; guarding does not stop (Action Theory Paper 9, D54). The procedure of finding and the practice of reinforcement are given in the text only as suggestions; when to seek a finding and which provision to change are judgments in positions.
§5 Direction Two: Not Stopped (Supposed)
This section is supposed. In the facts already in the case file, that stretch came to a stop; here it is supposed not to have stopped, so as to see what things look like once the slide has taken hold, and how peers treat it. The supposition runs only from the winter of Year 10 through Year 12; up to the winter of Year 10 the facts on file stand: the ceasefire still takes effect in the spring of Year 10, and the two renewals of the summer and winter of Year 10 still happen (Paper 4, §5 has judged that they had no wartime ground). The several suppositions are used together (UCSE Cases 08-B, 19-B, 05-B and 23-B), and nothing after Year 12 is written.
The War Treatise has described this kind of situation: "Equilibrium's temptation: making the ceasefire into a truce, permanentizing the wartime state"; "This solidification is itself the process of sliding from protecting cultivation to interrupting it" (War Treatise §21).
The supposed facts. Suppose that in the winter of Year 10 the Chamber of Member Units convicts, 14 to 6, two of the members who had voted against now voting in favor, and the Chief Judge is removed. Two votes in the joint session to elect a successor both fail to reach the 192 votes required for a three-fifths majority, and the seat stays vacant; the Final Court sits with ten judges (UCSE Case 08-B).
Suppose that in the spring of Year 11 the two states do not sign the Withdrawal Agreement, that hostilities along the Boundary River continue on and off thereafter, and that the Assembly does not terminate the state of war (UCSE Case 19-B). Under clause 1 of Charter Amendment 14 no election to the Chamber of Citizens is held, and none has been held by the end of Year 12; the First Executive's term is prolonged with that of the Chamber of Citizens. Under clause 2 the Executive Council renews the state of emergency for one hundred eighty days each in the summer of Year 11, the winter of Year 11 and the summer of Year 12. The transfer under Article 17 stays in place; the joint session cannot elect an Inspector-General, and the acting Inspector-General stays in office. The detention clause stays. The buffer zone, the inspection points and the Wheat Plain Provisional Administration Office stay; there are no observation posts.
In the summer of Year 11 and the spring of Year 12, the Chamber of Citizens votes twice on motions to terminate the state of war, and neither wins a majority: 148 to 152, and 147 to 153. In the winter of Year 11, opposition members move a motion of no confidence in the First Executive; it fails, 146 to 154. In the summer of Year 11 and the summer of Year 12, the joint session votes twice to terminate the state of emergency, and both fall short of three-fifths: 158 to 162, of which the Chamber of Citizens 148 to 152 and the Chamber of Member Units 10 to 10; and 161 to 159, of which the Chamber of Citizens 147 to 153 and the Chamber of Member Units 14 to 6. Set beside the 176 to 142 of the autumn of Year 10, the first of these is explained thus: with hostilities on and off after the spring of Year 11, eighteen of those who voted to terminate in the autumn of Year 10 switch to voting against, and the two who did not vote that time also vote against (ibid.).
That the Chamber of Citizens passed the unity clause, 204 to 92, in the spring of Year 11 is a fact on file. Suppose that the term of the same Chamber of Citizens continues under clause 1 of Charter Amendment 14, and that the Chamber of Member Units passes the clause in the summer of Year 11, 15 to 5, with four members from the South Bay State and one from the Iron Valley Special District against. That autumn it goes to a UCSE-wide referendum under emergency orders, with assemblies of more than fifty persons still requiring a permit and "wartime information coordination" still in force: turnout is 39 percent, and 56 percent vote in favor; majorities of voters in the Kingdom State, the Western Plains State, the Highland State and Rivermouth City vote in favor, and majorities in the South Bay State and the Iron Valley Special District against; it takes effect under Article 70 of the Charter. The Charter thereby has, for the first time, a clause that may not be amended, and "an organization whose purpose is to bring about the exit of a member unit" can be declared dissolved by the Final Court (UCSE Case 05-B).
In the winter of Year 11 the Executive Council, under the Emergency Act, issues Emergency Order No. 31: "While the state of war continues, the order for any UCSE-wide referendum is issued by the Executive Council as the course of the war allows." In the spring of Year 12 the government of the South Bay State, under Article 43 of the Charter, asks the Final Court to review this order. That summer the ten judges hold, 8 to 2, that it is contrary to the Charter. The next day the First Executive declares: "The Executive Council respects the Final Court. Until the state of war is terminated, the lapse of Emergency Order No. 31 is deferred." By the end of Year 12 the Executive Council has issued no referendum order of any kind (UCSE Case 19-B). The Charter makes no provision for who carries out a ruling when an organ does not (Charter, Article 43, fact).
Three things first. Whom it concerns: the voters of the UCSE, who have not cast a vote for the Chamber of Citizens since the winter of Year 5; those bound by the emergency orders and the detention clause; the government of the South Bay State, which asked for review under Article 43 of the Charter, and those its question reached. Which line: the fifth ought, the conditions of being questioned and the channels. Baseline: the facts on file up to the winter of Year 10; Articles 43, 54, 55 and 70 of the Charter and Charter Amendment 14 (fact).
Has it taken hold? By the test suggested in §1, look first at the four steps, then at the five channels. This runs the suggested rule once over the case file as a demonstration; at a real moment, whether to recognize is the peer's judgment.
All four steps are present. Step 1: renewal is made by the Executive Council itself, three times; termination needs three-fifths. Step 2: Charter Amendment 14 stays; the unity clause takes effect through a referendum held under emergency orders. Paper 1, N4 says that while emergency measures restricting assembly, speech and communication are in force, amendments altering the arrangements for being questioned are not put to a vote; this referendum touches exactly that. Emergency Order No. 31 uses an emergency order to take the referendum on amendments into the hands of the Executive Council alone, which touches the very heading of N4: "Constitutional amendment is not monopolized by a single position and does not go by emergency procedure" (Paper 1, N4). Step 3: complaints still go to the Internal Investigations Division, the acting Inspector-General is still in office, and the Chief Judge's seat is empty. Step 4: the election does not come; renunciation is still suspended by age (Emergency Order No. 7); "This article may not be amended" closes off, in advance, later questioning of itself.
Now the five channels.
First, elections of the positions questioned. Is that majority in the Chamber of Citizens the party questioned? Under §1 it is recognized by function, by two things. The steps of the slide were taken by it: Charter Amendment 14 passed the Chamber of Citizens 231 to 64 (UCSE Case 04), the impeachment of the Chief Judge 178 to 110 (UCSE Case 08), the unity clause 204 to 92 (UCSE Case 05). And its own elections were closed by clause 1 of Charter Amendment 14. Both are present, so it is itself the position questioned. Paper 1 said as much in reading clause 1: "the majority in the Chamber of Citizens alone can block termination"; while that clause is in force, when the next election comes is in the hands of the party that elections question (Paper 1, §3). Here it is not recognized by shared party, nor is it necessary to prove that this majority is only an extension of the Executive Council's will. The elections are closed; the motion of no confidence failed at 146 to 154, and its result needs the consent of the party questioned.
Second, termination of the state of emergency and of the state of war. The state of war is terminated by a majority in each chamber; in both votes in the Chamber of Citizens, the party questioned held the majority. The state of emergency is terminated by three-fifths of the joint session; the party questioned has 152 and 153 votes in the Chamber of Citizens, and even if every other seat voted to terminate, there would be at most 168 votes, short of 192. Without the seats of the party questioned itself, the result cannot reach the threshold. Renewal it decides itself.
Third, effective judicial review of acts. Clause 3 of Charter Amendment 14 requires at least eight of the eleven judges; with ten in office, 8 to 2 clears the threshold, and the ruling stands. The court has independently made a valid judgment. But its delivery must pass through execution by the Executive Council; the Executive Council says it "respects" the ruling and at the same time defers it; and the Charter has no substitute execution that does not depend on the refusing party. Paper 7 says: "Where a position does not act, and there is no substitute independent of it, it becomes a 'last' in fact; this place too lies under a channel, and is checked under Paper 2, N11b." (Paper 7, §1) So this channel reads: the ruling stands, its delivery is in fact blocked, and the party questioned can veto it. The normative judgment is unchanged: the ruling remains valid and ought to be carried out, and the executing party gains no veto by not carrying it out (Paper 2, N11b). Nor is this the first time: among the facts on file, after the 6 to 5 election ruling of the summer of Year 10 the Executive Council likewise said it "respects" the court, and likewise issued no election order (UCSE Case 07).
Fourth, checking. The Inspectorate can call for files, require written explanations, publish public reports and request review by the Final Court; it cannot annul or rewrite the decisions of organs. The acting Inspector-General is still in office; two years without a public report serve only as a lead, not a finding, and the appointment relation by itself shows nothing either (Paper 7, §1). What is to be checked is the road of delivery: the corrections needed to restore the conditions of being questioned must pass through the Final Court and through execution, as in the channel before. Taking up complaints, calling for files and reporting all remain, and are not written off as void; what is blocked is the share of results that would bring a "last" that has moved out back under its channel.
Fifth, the roads to amending the supreme rule. Article 70 of the Charter has two roads. The two-chamber road: two-thirds of each chamber propose, and the proposal goes to a UCSE-wide referendum; two-thirds of the Chamber of Citizens is 200 votes, 101 suffice to block it, and the party questioned has between 152 and 154 votes in each of the votes, so its result needs that party's consent. The other road does not pass through the Chamber of Citizens: the legislatures of four member units jointly propose, and the proposal goes to a UCSE-wide referendum, which the election commissions of the member units would organize without any order from the Executive Council (Charter, Article 70, fact). Emergency Order No. 31 has taken the referendum order into the hands of the Executive Council; the Final Court holds the order contrary to the Charter, the Executive Council defers carrying that out, and the result needs the party questioned to issue the referendum order. Both roads can be vetoed. Clause 2 of the unity clause also declares that it may not itself be amended; under Paper 1, N3 that clause withdraws the conditions of being questioned, and here it is recorded only as one more door it closes in the supposition.
What is not among the five is still recorded. The Chamber of Member Units can still block a new step, for instance by rejecting the next amendment; it cannot open a door already closed. Paper 7 says that "the road through the Chamber of Member Units is an entry point to the closed loop" (Paper 7, §2), and that is not changed by its not being among the five. Leaving is still suspended by age; that belongs to step 4.
By the test suggested in §1, this has taken hold. Compared with the winter of Year 10 read in §4, the difference lies in the fifth channel: Emergency Order No. 31 took away the road of joint proposal by member units. This reading does not change Paper 7's judgment of the same court. Reading the state of those years, Paper 7 said that "the Final Court was within reach, and its efficacy was cut in two places, at the threshold and at execution" (Paper 7, §2); what the supposition adds is the execution side: 8 to 2 stood, and was not delivered. The court is still independent.
When the recognition is made. What was read above is the whole stretch from Year 11 to Year 12. A peer recognizes at some particular moment, and can use only the facts available at that moment. For the NUT's decision of the spring of Year 12, below, what can be used is: the non-execution of UCSE Case 07; the absence of substitute execution in the Charter; Emergency Order No. 31 of the winter of Year 11; and the votes of Year 11. The 8 to 2 of the summer of Year 12, the second non-execution and the termination votes of that summer came afterward, and are not used backward for the spring. The vote in the Chamber of Citizens in the spring of Year 12 and the NUT's decision fall in the same season, and no order between them is assumed here.
Mirror. In the same stretch, the DRP enforced its mobilization order and its ban on departure, candidates for the People's Assembly still underwent "purpose review," and an antiwar assembly in the capital was dispersed (UCSE Case 22). On the UCSE side, Emergency Order No. 7 suspended renunciation, the revocation clause and the speech clause stayed, and three hundred people in Rivermouth City were taken away. The War Treatise says: "Together these mechanisms make society slide chronically and imperceptibly from the Kingdom of Ends toward the Kingdom of Means"; "the direction of degradation is precisely the adversary's direction" (War Treatise §20). Where the two look alike can be compared; the adversary serves only as a contrast, not as a yardstick (Paper 5, N28).
Taking another state as this state. What follows reads how peers treat the slide. In the case file, the peer that responds to the UCSE as it slides back is the NUT. This series addresses its ought to this state as a construct, and toward other states writes only how this state treats them (the Prequel, §8). This passage takes another state as this state: it reads, with the NUT as this state, how it treats the UCSE (own undertaking). This does not break the rule of writing no ought for other states: that rule says that, whichever state is taken as this state, no ought is written for the other two; this passage still writes no ought for the UCSE or the DRP. Toward the UCSE as a construct: no colonization, no deciding the direction for its people, keeping the consensus both sides have acknowledged. Toward the UCSE's people: following the unified sentence (Paper 5, N25). Nor is the NUT written up as an ideal state (the Prequel, §7): its acts are each checked as acts, and where it is right, it is right in content, not because it is the NUT. On the DRP side, there is still only identification, and no ought is written.
Suppose that in the autumn of Year 11 the NUT's Council for External Affairs, voting 4 to 1, sends another note of inquiry, asking five things: when the election to the Chamber of Citizens will be held; who decides on renewal of the state of emergency; the vacancy of the Inspector-General; the composition of the Final Court after the Chief Judge's removal; and the permits for assemblies and review of broadcasts during the referendum on the unity clause. The UCSE's Office of External Affairs replies: "an internal affair of the UCSE" (UCSE Case 23-B).
What stays: recognition of the UCSE; the liaison office at Three Borders; under the Cloud River arbitral award, hourly upstream hydrological data passed downstream (UCSE Case 20); visa-free travel for the residents of the two states; taking in those who leave the UCSE, and giving residence to those whose citizenship has been revoked (UCSE Case 11).
What is withdrawn: in the spring of Year 12 the Council for External Affairs decides, 4 to 1, to stop processing requests for judicial assistance made by the UCSE under Articles 9 and 21 of the Wartime Security Act; to suspend negotiations on new trade protocols; to require licenses for dual-use goods exported to the UCSE's Office of Defense; and to make public the Council's notes of inquiry and the replies. The Council member from the Northern District votes against, and gives as written reasons that these measures "hurt the merchants on the northern route, and do not touch the UCSE's Executive Council."
The Northern District Council puts forward two further proposals. In the spring of Year 12 it proposes suspending the hourly data, as a way of pressing the UCSE; the Council for External Affairs rejects it, 1 to 4. In the summer of Year 12 it proposes additional screening of UCSE citizens at entry; the Council for External Affairs adopts it, 4 to 1, with exceptions for humanitarian grounds, for those whose citizenship has been revoked, and for dissidents.
The DRP's National Purposes Commission says in a broadcast: "The UCSE's elections have stopped, and the composition of its court has changed." This is recorded as a fact.
Three things first. Whom it concerns: the UCSE as a construct; those reached by the measures the NUT withdraws and keeps: the merchants on the northern route, those in NUT territory whose citizenship has been revoked and those who have left the UCSE, the residents downstream on the Cloud River who depend on flood warnings, and UCSE citizens arriving at the NUT's border. Which line: toward the UCSE as a construct, keeping the consensus both sides have acknowledged and not deciding the direction for its people; toward the UCSE's people, following the unified sentence. Baseline: the dealings between the two states before the autumn of Year 11: mutual recognition, the liaison office, the Cloud River award, visa-free travel, the Treaty on Judicial Assistance, trade.
Which measures the NUT withdraws, which it keeps, and when, are judgments in the position of the Council for External Affairs (the judgment layer), and this paper does not decide them for it. This paper does two things: it checks those decisions against the normative layer; and it treats them as one example, in the rule layer, of how a peer can withdraw cooperation, not the only way.
Read item by item. On whom does each withdrawn measure fall?
Ceasing to process requests for judicial assistance under those two articles: Article 9 is the speech clause, and Article 21 the revocation clause. The refusal falls on the positions that prosecute and revoke under those two articles, and is aimed exactly at those two acts; the commentator in NUT territory, too, will therefore not be handed over. This measure is still checked under Paper 5, N24 and the Treaty on Judicial Assistance both sides have acknowledged: whether it takes the legal form of refusal, suspension or termination is left to specific law; the case file gives none of the treaty's relevant provisions, and this paper does not judge whether it is a breach.
Suspending negotiations on new trade protocols: existing trade goes on, and what is withdrawn is the share not yet given. When the Northern District's member says it hurts the merchants on the northern route and does not touch the Executive Council, it names exactly what the fourth point below checks: on whom the cost falls. What it touches is the extra business the merchants on the northern route might have had; whether it reaches the act it is aimed at, the case file does not record, and this paper does not judge. That vote against in the Council is recorded; the NUT is mixed inside too.
The license requirement for dual-use goods is aimed at the procurement of the UCSE's Office of Defense, and falls on the office that takes the acts; if it spills over into civilian use and falls on the life base of ordinary people, that part is checked separately under Paper 5, N29, and the case file records no such spillover. Making the notes of inquiry and the replies public is recording, and also the ground of reputation (N48).
Test one: suspending the flood data. The Council did not adopt it. Checked against the fourth point below and against "keeping the consensus both sides have acknowledged": the hourly data falls on the flood warnings of the residents downstream on the Cloud River, and Apple City's warnings had been using it since the spring of Year 11 (UCSE Case 29); that is the base of life, and the first ought does not vary with relational thickness; it is also an arbitral award that both states have carried out. To suspend it as pressure would press on the residents downstream, not on the positions that took the steps of the slide back. This is a place a peer may not cross.
Test two: additional entry screening. The Council adopted it, with exceptions. This measure is an allocation of entry, not guarding, and is checked on the grounds of Paper 3 (Paper 3, N12, N15; Paper 5, §6). Look at it in three layers. The normative layer: UCSE citizens at the door are, as regards the act of additional screening, in the NUT's interior (Paper 3, N15); following the unified sentence, the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth ought does not vary with relational thickness. The rule layer: so it is not enough to have exceptions; they must be designed to be usable: who decides on an exception, how long the screening takes, whether a person refused has a road to question it. The judgment layer: whether each person at the border falls within an exception is for the positions at the border to judge. This is the same test as Paper 5's reading of the UCSE's humanitarian exemption: the exemption "has always been open," and the average wait was seventy-four days, with payments still not going through (UCSE Case 21). The case file records none of these, and this paper does not judge that the measure passes; it states only that these are what is to be checked.
After the slide has taken hold: what peers may do, and what they do not do. The eight points below all belong to the normative layer, on the premise that the NUT has itself recognized that the slide has taken hold.
First, questioning goes on, and cannot be closed. The questions put to it by other states, by the people of other states, and by those affected, the state sliding back cannot close: "External questioning cannot be cancelled" (Paper 1, §5). Questioning and recording follow Paper 5, N27 and Paper 7, N38.
Second, keeping its distance: recognition stays; what is withdrawn is cooperation; and the peer does not judge who should hold office there. Recognition is taken in Paper 5's sense: "Only the origin position is acknowledged; no permission for action is issued." (Paper 5, N26) What is acknowledged is that its acts issue from its positions, and that the account is booked in its name. Paper 5's reading of the NUT's recognition of the DRP is exactly this distinction (Paper 5, §3). Keeping one's distance is withdrawing cooperation other than recognition (Paper 7, N36). Moral Law Paper 6 describes the posture of a 15DD legislative subject toward a 14DD party: "With 14DD-leaning 14DDs — maintain distance or transact only at the 12DD layer" (§5.4); exit is "pure physical communication-link silencing (physical cut-off) — not ontological judgment," with "Topological recognition maintained" (§5.5). That is a posture the author sets for himself, and it says so: "The author articulates their own posture (not authoritative prescription)" (§5.1); here it serves only as a parallel in the same direction, not as a ground, nor does this paper follow it in sorting by the other party's state. In the comparison one thing must be moved: the Moral Law says that "at the topological layer, Self absolutely retains the ontological recognition of the other as legislative subject" (§5.5), and the object of that recognition is a person. Carried over between states, it falls on the people of that state, not on that state as a construct: "A state is a means that people make." (the Prequel, §2) Who among the contending parties inside should hold office is that state's own affair. The peer does not set up another government for it; it books the account to the positions that actually take the acts, and adjusts its cooperation accordingly. The contending parties inside are all that state's people, and the questions of each can be connected into this state (Paper 7, N38).
Third, aimed at acts, not at the name of a state or its form of government. The cooperation withdrawn is aimed at particular acts (the Prequel, §7: "this series does not judge which form of government is good"). The measures the NUT withdraws are aimed at the prosecution of speech, the revocation of citizenship and the procurement of the Office of Defense, not at the letters "UCSE." A provision framed in the name of a form of government is read by the acts it actually targets.
Fourth, withdrawing cooperation is itself an act. Following the unified sentence (the Prequel, §8): in the part that falls on that state's people, the first ought, the fifth, and the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth do not vary with relational thickness, that is, the base of life, the roads of questioning, and the roads of leaving and entering; the trigger of the second does not vary with it, and its means are bounded by this state's authority; the third ought, and the "leaving room" half of the fourth, go by relational thickness. The cost is made to fall as far as possible on the positions that take the acts, not on persons (Institution Theory Z19, extended; extension; own undertaking). The account has two entries: the side withdrawing cooperation bears its design, and the side taking the acts bears those acts. Not dealing with representatives constituted under those acts and acting in that state's name is withdrawing cooperation; binding individuals by their citizenship is another matter: this state does not bind, by citizenship, the people of that state who live in this state; this is the same reading as Paper 5's reading of the eighty-five thousand who had to report, with the direction reversed (Paper 5, §6). The allocation of entry into this state is not guarding, and is checked under Paper 3, N12 and N15; those at the door are, as regards that act, in this state's interior (Paper 3, N15).
Fifth, not deciding the direction for its people. Following Paper 5, N25: toward another state as a construct, no colonization, and no deciding the direction for its people. The conditions for withdrawing cooperation point only to the acts stopping and the account being booked, and carry no direction. Institution Theory says: "Once a condition carries the demand 'accept this direction of development,' it becomes ghostwriting by an outsider" (Institution Theory Z27). There it speaks of a construct toward its people inside; here it is carried over to a peer toward a state (extension; own undertaking).
Sixth, no mirroring. A peer responding to another state's slide back does not slide back itself: "The adversary serves only as a contrast, not as a yardstick" (Paper 5, N28). It does not use "the other side has already slid" to open the door to its own emergency and repression. Acts taken within this state in response, toward its residents' speech and reception, and toward the people of that state living in this state, are checked under this state's own eight papers. The NUT's additional entry screening of the summer of Year 12 is one place this point checks.
Seventh, a slide back is not itself a reason to go to war. Under Paper 6, N30, starting a war must meet that one cannot-not. The War Treatise says: "a threat that lies in the future has not caused one's own cultivation to fail to hold in the present, so the second condition is not met" (War Treatise §13). If a state's slide back turns outward into a colonizing entry against peers, that is another matter, under the War Treatise and Paper 6.
Eighth, the door is open. The cooperation withdrawn is tied to the acts it is aimed at: once the acts stop and the account is booked, the cooperation can come back, and can come back one act at a time; its return looks to acts, not to plans or declarations (N41, N46). Those who leave that state are, at this state's door, in this state's interior (Paper 3, N15); only because peers leave the door open for them do they have a place outside from which to go on asking (N45). The Moral Law says of cultivation: "cultivation is not attempting to convert the other — it is providing the context in which the other's own legislative subjectivity can develop" (Moral Law P6 §5.6). Here too this serves only as a parallel, and its object falls on the people of that state.
Which share to withdraw, when to restore it, and which to restore first belong to the judgment layer; the measures the NUT withdrew and kept, above, are one example in the rule layer.
Most of these eight apply propositions already in Papers 5 and 6: recognition kept apart from endorsement (Paper 5, N26), no deciding the direction for the people of other states (Paper 5, N25), no mirroring (Paper 5, N28), sanctions under the unified sentence (Paper 5, N29), starting a war under Theorem One (Paper 6, N30). Only four things are new in this paper: the trigger looks to taking hold, not to symptoms, and each peer recognizes it for itself; toward a state in which the slide has been recognized to have taken hold, the response is keeping one's distance, without judging who should hold office there; the conditions for withdrawing and for returning are both tied to acts; and the conditions carry no direction.
The strongest objection (drafted by this paper). Keeping one's distance pushes that state further away. Its people hear even less from outside, and its Executive Council can more easily say "everyone outside is an enemy." To help the people inside, one should keep up all the dealings and speak from within.
Reply. Keeping one's distance is not cutting off. Recognition stays, the liaison office stays, the Cloud River data stays, visa-free travel stays; those who leave have somewhere to go, and those whose citizenship has been revoked have somewhere to live: these are exactly the roads by which the people inside hear from outside and the outside hears from them, and they all stay. The NUT ceases the specified judicial assistance in prosecuting speech and enforcing revocations of citizenship, imposes a licensing requirement on dual-use goods exported to the UCSE's Office of Defense, and suspends negotiations on new trade protocols. Keeping open the roads of asking and of leaving does not require keeping every kind of cooperation at the same time. Whether each withdrawal can be aimed at acts, and on whom its cost falls, are still checked separately, as above. Whether suspending new trade negotiations reaches the positions it targets, the case file does not record; the question raised by the Northern District's member still stands, and this paper does not decide it for the Council for External Affairs. As for "everyone outside is an enemy," whether the Executive Council says it is not for peers to decide; what peers can decide is not to add a single true fact to that sentence: no breaking off relations, no sealing doors, no binding by citizenship the people of that state who live in this state, no using the downstream flood data as pressure.
Reputation is an account. The Moral Law speaks of "Reputation as signal-transmission mechanism — the aggregate form of remote observation by other 15DD legislative subjects within the communal field" (Moral Law P6 §5.7). Carried over between states (extension; own undertaking): a state's reputation is the record into which peers' observations of its acts are gathered. The NUT's published notes and the replies, the five questions and "an internal affair of the UCSE," are such a record; the four traces of §3, whether questioners exist, whether questioning reaches the decision core, whether questioners are protected, and whether questioning affects decisions, are the part of it hardest to forge. Damaged reputation is not a sentence passed on it by anyone; it is the trace its own acts leave outside.
Not a penalty. Between states there is no third party that legislates for both (Paper 5, N24). A peer withdrawing cooperation is each peer's own act, not the enforcement of a penalty on behalf of a superior. So, like every act, it is checked: by the eight points above.
The turn back is left to it. A state that has slid back can return to the direction that leans more toward 15DD only through its own channels and its own people (N45); for outsiders to turn it back would be to decide on behalf of its people (Paper 5, N25). The Moral Law says that "pseudo-15DD groups can delay but cannot prevent" (Moral Law P6 §2.4); it speaks there of the direction of growth, and is carried over here (extension; own undertaking): the possibility of turning back is not cancelled by the slide. Pressure from outside does not in itself prove a turn back; whether it has come back is recognized by acts (N41, N46).
Requests from the people inside. That people inside ask the outside to withdraw cooperation is their own law; a peer's questions can connect with theirs (Paper 7, N38, in the reverse direction). The people inside disagree, and that too is mixedness: the residents of the Wheat Plain who asked the UCSE to stay and those who opposed the administration office are all people of the Wheat Plain (UCSE Case 26); it is the same here. A peer does not let the requests of one part of the people stand in for its own checking, item by item; on whom a measure falls is looked at under the unified sentence.
The account is not written off. After a turn back, the account of the stretch of sliding back is still kept (Paper 7, N39; N46). A peer restoring cooperation is not writing off the account: recognition, cooperation and the account are three separate things. That the account is not written off does not mean there must be prosecution either.
Common questioning, recording, suspension and common procedures among several states belong to the system level; so does the question of who sits in that state's seat in common procedures. This paper writes only of bilateral relations, only of how one state, taken as this state, treats it; the system level is handed to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation. A peer pursuing, under its own law, the people in that state's positions is handed to specific law and to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation.
N47 Once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold in another state, it keeps its distance from that state: it questions, records and withdraws cooperation other than recognition, without judging who should hold office there and without deciding on behalf of that state's people (extension; own undertaking). Whether the slide has taken hold each peer recognizes for itself, and having recognized it, governs only its own cooperation. The response this paper speaks of, at the level of the reverse phase transition, comes only once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold; until it has, it makes no response at that level. Questioning, recording and, where necessary, withdrawing the corresponding cooperation in response to particular acts still follow Paper 5 (N41). Once it has recognized that the slide has taken hold: questioning goes on and cannot be cancelled (Paper 1, §5); recognition, in the sense "Only the origin position is acknowledged; no permission for action is issued," stays, and what is withdrawn is cooperation other than recognition (Paper 5, N26; Paper 7, N36); it does not judge who should hold office there, does not set up another government for it, books the account to the positions that actually take the acts, and the questions of each party inside can be connected into this state; Moral Law P6 §5.4 and §5.5 serve only as parallels, and that ontological recognition falls on the people of that state, not on the construct (the Prequel, §2); the withdrawal is aimed at acts, not at the name of a state or its form of government; withdrawing cooperation is itself an act, and in the part that falls on that state's people it follows the unified sentence: the first ought, the fifth, and the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth do not vary with relational thickness, the trigger of the second does not vary with it, and the third ought and the "leaving room" half of the fourth go by relational thickness; the cost is made to fall as far as possible on the positions that take the acts; representatives are kept apart from binding by citizenship; the allocation of entry follows Paper 3, N12 and N15; the conditions point only to the acts stopping and the account being booked, and carry no direction (Paper 5, N25; Institution Theory Z27, extended); no mirroring, and responses within this state are checked under this state's own papers (Paper 5, N28); a slide back is not itself a reason to go to war (Paper 6, N30); the door is open, return looks to acts, and those who leave that state are, at this state's door, in this state's interior. Which share to withdraw and when to restore it are the peer's judgment. The common response and the seat at the system level are handed to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation.
N48 Damaged reputation is an account, not a penalty; the turn back is left to the state itself; the account is not written off (extension; own undertaking). Reputation is the record into which peers' observations of a state's acts are gathered (Moral Law P6 §5.7, carried over between states), and the four traces of whether questioning is allowed are the part of it hardest to forge. There is no third party above that legislates for both sides (Paper 5, N24); a peer withdrawing cooperation is each peer's own act, not the enforcement of a penalty on behalf of a superior, and it too is checked. A state that has slid back can return to the direction that leans more toward 15DD only through its own channels and its own people; for outsiders to turn it back would be to decide on behalf of its people (Paper 5, N25). The possibility of turning back is not cancelled by the slide (Moral Law P6 §2.4, extended); pressure from outside does not in itself prove a turn back, and whether it has come back is recognized by acts. That people inside ask the outside to withdraw cooperation is their own law; a peer does not let the requests of one part of them stand in for its own checking, item by item. After a turn back, the account of that stretch is still kept; restoring cooperation is not writing off the account, and recognition, cooperation and the account are three separate things; that the account is not written off does not mean there must be prosecution.
§6 With Plato and Montesquieu
How a form of government goes bad, and where the going bad begins, is one of the oldest questions in political philosophy. This section is a conversation with two writers on it: Plato, in Book VIII of the Republic, and Montesquieu, in Book VIII of The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois).
Plato. Book VIII traces forms of government going down one step at a time: from the rule of the best to the rule of honor, then to oligarchy, to democracy, and at last to tyranny. Of the starting point he says: "Clearly, all political changes originate in divisions of the actual governing power; a government which is united, however small, cannot be moved." (Republic, bk. VIII, 545d, trans. B. Jowett, per Project Gutenberg EBook #1497; the Stephanus numbers have been checked against the Greek text; tier B; likewise below) He also places such a constitution under the premise that whatever comes into being must perish: "seeing that everything which has a beginning has also an end, even a constitution such as yours will not last for ever, but will in time be dissolved." (546a) Of how democracy turns into tyranny he says: "The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery." (564a) Of where the tyrant comes from: "This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector." (565d) And of him once he has risen: "when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." (566e)
Montesquieu. The title of Book VIII is "Of the corruption of the principles of the three governments." A principle is the human passion that sets a form of government in motion (bk. III, ch. 1, paraphrased); the democratic republic has virtue for its principle (bk. III, ch. 3, paraphrased). Book VIII opens: "The corruption of every government almost always begins with that of its principles." (my translation; La corruption de chaque gouvernement commence presque toujours par celle des principes.; bk. VIII, ch. 1, per the appendix of the edition of Paul Janet, 2nd ed., Delagrave, 1892, Project Gutenberg EBook #27573, whose main text contains only Books I–V; tier A; likewise below) Chapter 11 says: "Once the principles of a government are corrupted, the best laws become bad and turn against the state; when its principles are sound, bad laws have the effect of good ones: the force of the principle carries everything along." (my translation; Lorsque les principes du gouvernement sont une fois corrompus, les meilleures lois deviennent mauvaises et se tournent contre l'État; lorsque les principes en sont sains, les mauvaises ont l'effet des bonnes: la force du principe entraîne tout.; bk. VIII, ch. 11)
The shared question: how a form of government moves toward the bad, where the movement starts, and whether it can be stopped.
Agreement in three places.
First, the start is inside. Plato says change originates in divisions among those who actually hold the governing power; Montesquieu says corruption begins with the corruption of the principles. Neither places the start outside. §2 says that attack and threat from outside are conditions, and that the driving force is inside a state (N42).
Second, good laws turned against the state. Montesquieu says that once the principles are corrupted, even the best laws turn against the state. §3 reads the same phenomenon: most steps have a legal form. Article 70 of the Charter was written so that the Charter could be changed, the transitional provision of the Inspectorate Act so that the Inspectorate would not stand empty, the Impeachment Act so that judges' conduct could be questioned; the steps of the slide back all went along these roads (N43).
Third, appearing as a protector. Plato says that the tyrant, when he first appears above ground, is a protector, and that with foreign enemies disposed of he keeps stirring up war so that the people may need a leader. This paper does not read persons, and does not say that anyone in the UCSE is a tyrant. The parallel lies in one place only: a slide back mostly comes under the banner of protection. The Action Theory names the other face of guarding as "treating people as means again from inside, in the name of efficiency, solidarity, development or security" (Action Theory Paper 9, D55); the sentences set side by side in §3, "there is nothing that cannot be suspended," "so that the children of Reedtown can sleep," are all words of protection.
Divergence in four places.
First, unity and division. What Plato says here is that when the governing group is united within itself, the form of government is hard to change. This paper asks something else: whether each "last" can still be moved by questioning through a channel it cannot close. Unity within does not in itself amount to the convergence of the bearing-position, and division within the governing group does not mean the conditions of being questioned have been restored. So this paper does not judge direction by unity or division; it checks, place by place, whether the channels are still there. What can stop the slide back is a kind of division that cannot be gathered into one hand, namely the closed loop (Paper 1, N5; Paper 2, N8; N45). In the UCSE, the places that held were exactly the places of division: the Chamber of Member Units, the majority and minority of the Final Court, the Executive for External Affairs' votes against.
Second, no fixed fate. Plato, taking it as given that whatever comes into being must perish, narrates the forms of government going down in order. This paper has no such fixed fate: the four steps are a reading, not a law (§3; Power Theory Paper 0, §V.3); for the aggregate direction, a state's slide back is a stretch of regression and does not reverse that direction (N41); it can be stopped, or not, and both directions have been written. Nor does this series rank forms of government: "this series does not judge which form of government is good" (the Prequel, §7).
Third, not resting on hearts or on virtue. Montesquieu's principle is a human passion, and the republic rests on virtue; Plato reads the tyrant's soul and its needs. This series writes no ought for persons and does not read minds: the slide back is recognized in acts and channels, and coming back rests not on "returning to principle" but on each "last" coming back under a channel it cannot close (N46). Montesquieu has another sentence, which Paper 1 has already engaged: so that no one can abuse power, "by the arrangement of things, power stops power" (bk. XI, ch. 4; Paper 1, §5). This paper proceeds along the side of power checking power, and does not take a restoration of virtue as the ground for finding that the channels have been restored.
Fourth, the excess of liberty. Plato says that excess of liberty passes into excess of slavery. The UCSE's slide back came on the side of "security," not on the side of excess liberty. This paper does not judge Plato's road; it says only that this is not what this case looks like.
This is a division of scope and of reasons; it does not say that they were wrong.
Where This Paper Stops
This paper has proved only these things: the reverse phase transition is recognized by acts; it is a window; for the aggregate direction it is a stretch of regression, and for a state it is a real move backward, without fixing that state's identity (N41); the driving force is inside, and having no superior is the condition under which it cannot be stopped, not its cause (N42); the slide back is one "last" after another moving above its channel, it can be read in four steps, the outward side is the same structure, and the steps reinforce one another (N43); it can be recognized from inside and from outside, and recognizing it is a way in to checking, not a verdict (N44); what can stop it lies in the channels that cannot be closed and the people within them, and stopping a new step must be kept apart from a road that can bring the doors back (N45); stopped is not a return to the starting point, and the road back also guards the line (N46); once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold in another state, it keeps its distance from that state, without judging who should hold office there and without deciding on behalf of that state's people (N47); reputation is an account, not a penalty, the turn back is left to the state itself, and the account is not written off (N48).
This paper makes judgments only in the normative layer. The rule layer goes only as far as suggestions and examples: the test for taking hold, the three ways of judging a changed date, the procedure of finding on the road back, the few practices of reinforcement, the measures a peer withdraws and keeps. The judgment layer is left to the people in positions: whether at a given moment to recognize that the slide has taken hold, which share to withdraw and when to restore it, whether to seek a finding, whether to prosecute.
What it has not proved: which state will slide, and when; the four steps are a reading, not a prediction. Whether, without external conditions, the channels inside could stop the slide on their own, this paper gives no warrant (Institution Theory Z37), and this is registered as a remainder. The five channels used in recognizing that the slide has taken hold are this paper's list for its test, not the whole of the channels inward (Paper 7, N37).
What it hands over: 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. Which structures are harder to slide on (thresholds, terms, substitute confirming positions, positions not occupied by the same majority, substitute execution) is handed to specific theories of institutions. The legal forms in which peers withdraw cooperation, the suspension and termination of treaties, and prosecution and pardon are handed to specific law. What the people inside do once all the channels have been closed belongs to the place of the person, and is handed to the Critiques. Real history is handed to essays.
The Eight Propositions of This Paper
N41 The reverse phase transition is recognized by acts. A state's reverse phase transition is the movement of its systemic purpose, as a construct, from the direction that leans more toward 15DD toward the direction that leans toward 14DD: several "lasts" move out from under their channels in the same direction, carry one another along, and are not pulled back (own undertaking). It is recognized by acts and structures, not by the state's name, its self-description, or what any one person has in mind (Institution Theory Z19, "It judges the operation, not the person," extended to the direction of a construct; extension; own undertaking). It is a window, not a moment (Action Theory Paper 9, §1; extension; own undertaking). For the aggregate direction, a state's sliding back is a stretch of regression and does not reverse that direction (Moral Law P7 §3.5 and Moral Law P6 §2.4 speak of the cross-generational aggregate trajectory; extension; own undertaking); for this state, its systemic purpose really is moving backward, which neither fixes its identity nor cancels the possibility of its turning back. It is not a new kind of state (Moral Law P6 §4.1; extension; own undertaking). Where a position crosses the line and is pulled back on the spot by a channel it cannot close, or where a line-crossing falls only within one domain while the other "lasts" also remain, for the people of that domain, under effective channels, each is checked under its own proposition, and on that alone it is not recognized as the reverse phase transition of the construct; where several "lasts" move out from under their channels at once for one group of people, it is counted, following the unified sentence. The direction of a window does not stand in for a ruling on any act; each act is checked under its own proposition (Paper 7, §5). The response this paper speaks of, at the level of the reverse phase transition, comes only once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold; that it has taken hold means that the channels inward that could pull the "lasts" back have all been closed, or their results have all come into the hands of the party questioned (own undertaking). Whether the slide has taken hold each peer recognizes for itself, and it governs only its own cooperation; until it has, it makes no response at that level. Questioning, recording and, where necessary, withdrawing the corresponding cooperation in response to particular acts still follow Paper 5. As for how to recognize it, this paper suggests a test that checks five channels one by one; the party questioned is recognized by function, not by name or by party, and an appointment relation does not by itself prove control; that is a suggested rule, and whether to recognize at a given moment is the peer's judgment.
N42 The driving force is inside; having no superior is the condition under which it cannot be stopped (own undertaking). The driving force of the slide back is the forces already present inside a state that pull toward the 14DD direction (War Treatise §5 on dormancy speaks of a 14DD systemic purpose; carried over to the inside of a state that leans more toward 15DD; extension; own undertaking). Attack, threat and inducement from outside, and majorities and banners inside (Action Theory Paper 9, D55: efficiency, solidarity, development or security), are conditions, not the driving force; defense itself is not the reverse phase transition, and the slide back lies in the steps taken beyond defense. With no higher level above it, the slide back cannot be stopped from above; external routes can question, record and withdraw cooperation, but cannot take the place of this state's step of bringing a "last" that has moved out back under its channel; exit can only be lateral, and cannot supply a superior (Paper 1, §5). So at the national level the slide back can only be stopped from below and from the side. "Cannot be stopped" says only that it cannot be stopped from above; it does not say that the slide back must happen, nor that having no superior is its cause.
N43 Each step is a "last" moving above its channel (extension; own undertaking). Paper 7, N36 says that every "last" lies under a channel it cannot itself close; the reverse phase transition is the process of taking that sentence apart, place by place. Following the structural sequence read out in Power Theory Paper 0, §V.1, the slide can be read across a state's several "lasts" in four steps: first, the exception becomes routine, as confirmation, renewal and termination of the emergency leave the positions that do not monopolize them; second, "legal" is rewritten by legal procedure, as amendment, legislation, interpretation or constitution-making rewrites the arrangements for being questioned so that a "last" escapes questioning, changes that restore or strengthen the conditions of being questioned not counting; third, checking is occupied or hollowed out, as the positions of checking come into the hands of the party questioned, or are left with nothing but their names; fourth, the doors back are closed: inward (the dates of elections, speech and assembly, membership and leaving), outward (exiting or switching external arrangements, closing the road by which questions from outside come in through the people inside), and toward the future (self-amnesty, eternity clauses, interpretations that forbid amendment). A changed date is not a closed door; as to how to judge it, this paper suggests looking at whether the new date is set by the party questioned alone, whether it carries a term of its own and lapses unless renewed, and whether there is substitute questioning in the meantime. The first two steps take two readings of the Power Theory; the third reads the convergence of the bearing-position onto the positions of checking (extension; own undertaking); the fourth is undertaken by this paper (own undertaking); the Power Theory reads one slice, says of itself that it is not a causal sequence and draws no analogy, and to take it as a reading of a state's slide back is an extension. The outward side is another face of the same structure (War Treatise §5). The sequence is a reading, not a law: as for the process, the four steps need not come in order, need not all occur, and step 1 is not necessary; each step is checked under the proposition of the "last" it touches. The steps reinforce one another (War Treatise §17, extended; extension; own undertaking). Most steps have a legal form, and are recognized by function, not by name.
N44 Recognizing it: self-description and mechanism do not agree; whether questioning is allowed can be seen from outside (extension; own undertaking). From inside, one looks at whether the words written and the things done agree, the same when the banners stay and the institutions stay open (Moral Law P6 §4.2, §4.3, speaking of groups, carried over to the acts of a state, attaching no label to a state). From outside, one looks at whether questioners exist, whether questioning reaches the decision core, whether questioners are protected, and whether questioning affects decisions (War Treatise §16, speaking of a war-party, extended). Identification is a way in to checking, not a verdict: self-examination for this state, a way for peers to check; it is not for judging others (War Treatise §1).
N45 What can stop it: the channels that cannot be closed, and the people within them (carried over from Paper 7, N36 to N38; own undertaking). With no higher level above it, the slide back cannot be stopped from above (N42), and so it is stopped from below and from the side: by the links in the closed loop not yet occupied (Paper 1, N5; Paper 2, N8); by the channels of internal subjects (Paper 7, N37); by questions from outside connected into the channels inside (Paper 7, N38); by internal subjects living abroad, who have a place from which to go on asking only because peers leave the door open for them; and by the doors the party questioned itself opens again, which is an act, booked to it, writing off no earlier account, and once the door is open what works is still the channel (Paper 7, N39). Stopping is of two kinds: stopping a new step, so that the slide goes no deeper; and a road that can bring a "last" that has moved out back under its channel and that has not come into the hands of the party questioned. Taking hold looks only at the second; the first is recorded, and its work is no less for that. Stopping rests on at least one "last" still lying under its channel; so checking and the doors back matter most. How the people in positions within the channels rule and vote is their accountability and judgment; how those not in positions act is their own law; of both, this series asks only whether their questions have somewhere to land and whether using the roads brings retaliation. Channels are not kept for any one result: a majority in favor of sliding back does not turn line-crossing into guarding the line, nor settle the account of an amendment that withdrew the conditions of being questioned (Paper 1, N3, N4), and the channels are to be kept for later majorities. External conditions are not channels; being pushed back by outside force is not being stopped (Power Theory Paper 0, §V.3); this series gives no warrant that the slide will be stopped (Institution Theory Z37).
N46 Stopped is not a return to the starting point (carried over from Paper 4, N22 and Paper 7, N39; Institution Theory Z37; own undertaking). Wartime structures expire on reaching the threshold and must be dismantled on one's own initiative; what is renamed is checked by function; what is re-established through ordinary procedure, and what is kept to avoid a vacuum, are each re-checked, on present grounds, as a new decision with a term of its own (Paper 4, N22; Institution Theory Z22). The road back also guards the line: the side that comes back does not hold the power that the party questioned held, does not itself make the finding on the acquisition of an occupied position, and does not substitute non-execution for disagreement; the finding is made by a court that, in function, is controlled by no party to the dispute, position by position, reaching only the acquisition itself and not conduct after acquisition, leaving rulings already made by the final instance unchanged, with what is to be changed going through existing review or legislative amendment, and only forward; until the finding, the rulings remain valid and are carried out (Paper 2, N9, N11b; Paper 3, N14, extended; extension; own undertaking). Each step is traced to positions and persons; the construct's continued existence exempts no one from the account (Institution Theory Z38). That the account is not written off does not mean there must be prosecution; writing it off, that is, erasing the record and forbidding later questions, is not permitted. "Already corrected" does not close questioning (Institution Theory Z37). Reinforcement is part of coming back (the amendments strengthening the conditions of being questioned that Paper 1, N4 permits), and what is reinforced can also be undone. Coming back is also recognized by acts. The remainder not dismantled is the starting point of the next window; guarding does not stop (Action Theory Paper 9, D54). The procedure of finding and the practice of reinforcement are given in the text only as suggestions; when to seek a finding and which provision to change are judgments in positions.
N47 Once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold in another state, it keeps its distance from that state: it questions, records and withdraws cooperation other than recognition, without judging who should hold office there and without deciding on behalf of that state's people (extension; own undertaking). Whether the slide has taken hold each peer recognizes for itself, and having recognized it, governs only its own cooperation. The response this paper speaks of, at the level of the reverse phase transition, comes only once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold; until it has, it makes no response at that level. Questioning, recording and, where necessary, withdrawing the corresponding cooperation in response to particular acts still follow Paper 5 (N41). Once it has recognized that the slide has taken hold: questioning goes on and cannot be cancelled (Paper 1, §5); recognition, in the sense "Only the origin position is acknowledged; no permission for action is issued," stays, and what is withdrawn is cooperation other than recognition (Paper 5, N26; Paper 7, N36); it does not judge who should hold office there, does not set up another government for it, books the account to the positions that actually take the acts, and the questions of each party inside can be connected into this state; Moral Law P6 §5.4 and §5.5 serve only as parallels, and that ontological recognition falls on the people of that state, not on the construct (the Prequel, §2); the withdrawal is aimed at acts, not at the name of a state or its form of government; withdrawing cooperation is itself an act, and in the part that falls on that state's people it follows the unified sentence: the first ought, the fifth, and the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth do not vary with relational thickness, the trigger of the second does not vary with it, and the third ought and the "leaving room" half of the fourth go by relational thickness; the cost is made to fall as far as possible on the positions that take the acts; representatives are kept apart from binding by citizenship; the allocation of entry follows Paper 3, N12 and N15; the conditions point only to the acts stopping and the account being booked, and carry no direction (Paper 5, N25; Institution Theory Z27, extended); no mirroring, and responses within this state are checked under this state's own papers (Paper 5, N28); a slide back is not itself a reason to go to war (Paper 6, N30); the door is open, return looks to acts, and those who leave that state are, at this state's door, in this state's interior. Which share to withdraw and when to restore it are the peer's judgment. The common response and the seat at the system level are handed to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation.
N48 Damaged reputation is an account, not a penalty; the turn back is left to the state itself; the account is not written off (extension; own undertaking). Reputation is the record into which peers' observations of a state's acts are gathered (Moral Law P6 §5.7, carried over between states), and the four traces of whether questioning is allowed are the part of it hardest to forge. There is no third party above that legislates for both sides (Paper 5, N24); a peer withdrawing cooperation is each peer's own act, not the enforcement of a penalty on behalf of a superior, and it too is checked. A state that has slid back can return to the direction that leans more toward 15DD only through its own channels and its own people; for outsiders to turn it back would be to decide on behalf of its people (Paper 5, N25). The possibility of turning back is not cancelled by the slide (Moral Law P6 §2.4, extended); pressure from outside does not in itself prove a turn back, and whether it has come back is recognized by acts. That people inside ask the outside to withdraw cooperation is their own law; a peer does not let the requests of one part of them stand in for its own checking, item by item. After a turn back, the account of that stretch is still kept; restoring cooperation is not writing off the account, and recognition, cooperation and the account are three separate things; that the account is not written off does not mean there must be prosecution.
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.
Qin, H. (2026). What a State Is Not (SAE Theory of the State, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584292
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Rule (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584315
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Instance (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584318
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Exit (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584325
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Force (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584329
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). One's Own Share of Strength, and Guarding (SAE Action Theory, Paper 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970787
Qin, H. (2026). Mixed Reality — The Intermediate State of 14DD Growing toward 15DD (SAE Moral Law, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20108658
Qin, H. (2026). 15DD Phase Transition and the Historical Manifestation of Individual 15DD (SAE Moral Law, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20177415
Qin, H. (2026). The Power Machine and Its Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20707047
Qin, H. (2026). The Constitution and Withdrawal of Recognition-Based Rights (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20993658
Qin, H. (2026). On Rights and Entitlements (SAE Rights Theory, Specialist Paper) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21314907
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). 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). 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). Emergency (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413413
Plato. The Republic. Trans. B. Jowett. Project Gutenberg, EBook #1497. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497
Montesquieu. De l'esprit des lois, livres I–V, suivis d'un appendice contenant des extraits. Ed. P. Janet, 2nd ed. Paris: Delagrave, 1892. Project Gutenberg, EBook #27573. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27573
Interfaces
- Main upstream: Paper 7 of this series, N36 to N39 (every "last" lies under a channel it cannot itself close; channels inward; questions from outside connected inside; bearing can be located); Paper 5, N24 to N29; Paper 1, N3, N4, N5; Paper 2, N8, N9, N11b; Paper 3, N12 to N15; Paper 4, N20 to N22; Paper 6, N30, N33, N34. Action Theory Paper 9 (phase transition; D54, D55); Moral Law P6 §2, §4, §5, and Moral Law P7 §3.5; Power Theory Paper 0, §V; War Treatise §1, §5, §13, §16 to §21.
- Also used: Institution Theory Z19, Z22, Z27, Z37, Z38; F6 §3.1b; Theory of Government Paper 5, §4 (through Paper 4, §3); Rights Theory Paper 3 (express withdrawal, hollowing, de-powering).
- Conventions: the normative layer, the rule layer and the judgment layer (the Introduction, "Three layers"): measure follows the Prequel, §8, and is not written a second way; within measure this paper sets apart a rule layer, which holds only the test and practices it suggests; kept apart from the three layers of Theory of Government G6 and from the three-layer sentence form.
- Drawn apart: the "reverse transition" of F31 in the Rights Theory Specialist Paper: the same word, naming something different (the Introduction).
- Interfacing: Plato (Republic, bk. VIII, 545d, 546a, 564a, 565d, 566e; tier B, Jowett's English translation, with the Stephanus numbers checked against the Greek text); Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws, bk. VIII, chs. 1 and 11; tier A, the Janet edition, from its appendix). Pointing back: Montesquieu, bk. XI, ch. 4 (Paper 1, §5).
- This series: a companion study. It takes up the question left open in the Prequel, §7, and keeps to the guardrail of Paper 7, §5; the propositions and rulings of the eight papers are unchanged; the series' stopping point (Paper 7, N40) is unchanged; propositions are numbered on from N41.
- Handovers downstream:
| Handed to | What is handed | Where in this paper |
|---|---|---|
| The Theory of Inter-State Cooperation | 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; peers pursuing, under their own law, the people in that state's positions | §5; Where This Paper Stops |
| Specific theories of institutions | Which structures are harder to slide on: thresholds, terms, substitute confirming positions, positions not occupied by the same majority, the function of substitute execution | §3, §4 |
| Specific law | The legal forms in which peers withdraw cooperation (suspension and termination of treaties); prosecution and pardon | §4, §5 |
| The Critiques | The place of the person: what the people inside do once all the channels have been closed | §4; Where This Paper Stops |
| Essays | Real history | Where This Paper Stops |