Systems Atlas Project

Level 0

Political

political

Justification

What has been written down.

Six fields are required of every node. Empty ones are shown as declared gaps — a gap means nothing has been written, not that there is nothing to write.

Definition

Comment

Institutions, authority relations and formal or informal decision structures that determine collective choices and the allocation of public power in a society.

Inclusion

Comment
  • entities that hold or compete for legitimate coercive authority
  • entities that make or authorise binding collective decisions
  • structures of representation and participation
  • structures of accountability and oversight of state power

Exclusion

Comment
  • individual motivations — lens incentives
  • courts and legislation analysed as legal structures — goes to legal

Sources

Comment

Declared gap No sources have been cited.

Boundary cases

Comment
  • Institutions that both constrain power and apply legal rules are classified by primary analytic focus: political when analysing allocation, limitation or competition of authority; legal when analysing rule validity, interpretation or enforcement.

Uncertainty

Comment
  • Same objection as the legal domain. Classification by analytic focus makes the same institution sit in two places depending on the question asked.

The whole domain

16 nodes, every level of the descent.

The full descent below this domain. A node that divides opens to show its parts; a node that does not is a link and nothing more. Every entry is a page, and a page existing says nothing about whether anything has been written on it.

Rules

Whether this division survives the six rules.

Rules 1, 5 and 6 are checked by the validator and reported here. Rules 2, 3 and 4 are judgements about meaning and cannot be automated — no state is claimed for them. The rules themselves are set out in the method.

Rule 01

At most seven

Divides into 5 components.

Passes
Rule 02

Mutually exclusive

A judgement about whether the parts overlap. Not automated.

Not checked
Rule 03

Collectively exhaustive

A judgement about what the parts leave out. Not automated.

Not checked
Rule 04

Equal abstraction

A judgement about whether the parts answer the same question type. Not automated.

Not checked
Rule 05

Decomposable or terminal

Divides into 5 parts.

Passes
Rule 06

Justified in writing

5 of the six fields carry content. The rest are declared gaps.

Warning

Proposals

What has been argued about this node.

Nothing has been decided against this node. That is not the same as nothing being wrong with it.

Discussion

What has been said about this node.

Nothing published on this node yet.