Institutions: what to found, and how to run them

Each institution becomes possible once the one before it exists: a census needs writing, a register needs contract, an audit needs accounts. Found them in this order.

Whatever an institution does, the same nine things decide whether it serves its purpose or itself. Write all nine into the law that founds it.

Four methods, each right for a different job. Many failures come from using the wrong one: electing a post that needs a specialist, or appointing a post that should answer to voters.

Every institution on this page is built against the failures institutions are known for. Each fault below has a documented cause and a rule that prevents it. Write the rule in at founding: added later, it has to be won against whoever profits from its absence.

For: making the rules, voting the budget and the taxes, choosing or confirming the heads of other offices, and holding them to account in public.

Found: at tier 0 the assembly is every adult, under the decision rule. An assembly of all voters works at a larger size than most people expect: the Swiss cantons of Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden still make their laws at a yearly open-air meeting of all voters. Beyond the size one meeting can hold, elect representatives.

Run it:

• A written procedure, followed: motions, amendments, quorum, recorded votes, minutes. Robert's Rules of Order is complete and free.
• Every proposed law published at least a month before the final vote, with its cost.
• Votes recorded by name, and published with the minutes within days.
• Members declare their interests before each vote and do not vote where they profit.
• Sessions open to the public, and committees that question officials meet in public.
• Seats of equal population, redrawn after each census by an independent commission. The Venice Commission's limit: a seat may depart from the average by 10 %, and never by more than 15 %.

For: carrying out the law, within the budget the assembly voted.

Found: when the work outgrows volunteers — standing departments at tier 4 (departments and a civil service).

Run it:

• A head chosen by election or by the assembly, for a fixed term, who appoints a small number of department heads. Everyone else is a permanent official hired on merit.
• One department per function, each with a written mandate that lapses unless renewed.
• Officials neutral: they serve any lawful head, and refuse an unlawful instruction on the record.
• No spending the assembly did not vote, and no tax the law does not set.
• Reports to the assembly at fixed intervals; its heads answer questions in public.

For: choosing representatives, and removing the people in power without violence.

Found: once the community is too large for one assembly. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 21, sets the aim: periodic and genuine elections, by universal and equal suffrage, in a secret vote.

Run it to the Venice Commission's Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters (2002):

• Universal: every adult citizen, on a voter register drawn from civil registration and posted for checking before each vote.
• Equal: one vote each; seats of equal population within 10 %.
• Free and secret: a screened booth, and nothing on the ballot that identifies the voter.
• Run by an independent commission, its members drawn from more than one side and including a judge or an expert.
• Counted at the polling station, in public, with observers for every candidate; results posted at the door and published station by station.
• Disputes decided by a court within short, fixed deadlines.
• No change to the electoral rules in the year before a vote.
• Candidates' spending and donations published.

For: binding the people who make the rules — dividing power, making it removable, and listing the rights no majority can take away.

Found: tier 5. Constraint on the ruler has the procedure; its elements:

• Three branches — assembly, executive, courts — and nobody in two at once.
• Four arm's-length offices: audit, statistics, elections, and the central bank.
• A bill of rights enforceable in any court.
• Courts that can void unconstitutional acts, with judges secure in tenure and pay.
• Fixed terms, term limits, and a removal procedure.
• Emergencies that lapse unless renewed by vote, and rights no emergency suspends.
• Amendment harder than ordinary law: a supermajority, and an election between votes.
• Every armed body under civil law and civilian inspection.

The Venice Commission's Rule of Law Checklist (2016) tests a system on five benchmarks: legality, legal certainty, prevention of abuse of powers, equality before the law, and access to justice.

For: deciding local matters — streets, water, markets, schools, local planning — where the people affected can see the decision made.

Found: from the first settlement, as its own assembly; as a level of government once several settlements live under one law.

Run it:

• Subsidiarity: decide each matter at the lowest level able to handle it well, and pass it upward only when it cannot be — the rule of the European Charter of Local Self-Government (1985), article 4.
• Money follows the duty: a council given a task is given revenue to match. A task passed down without the money is a burden passed down.
• An elected council meeting in public, under the same charter as any institution: published budget, minutes, audit.
• Neighbouring councils share what none can do alone — a hospital, a water source — by written agreement.

For: settling disputes by rule rather than by strength, including disputes with the government.

Found: tier 2 with published law; contract claims at tier 3 (the enforceable promise).

Run it:

• Independent judges: chosen on merit by an independent commission, secure in tenure and pay, removable only for proved misconduct. The Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct (2002) name six values: independence, impartiality, integrity, propriety, equality, and competence and diligence.
• Public hearings; judgments written with reasons, and published.
• A judge with an interest steps aside.
• Appeal to a different court.
• Mediation first for civil disputes that the parties may settle.
• Time limits for every stage, and the average time to judgment published each year.
• A small-claims track: simple forms, no lawyer needed, a small fee.
• Legal aid for anyone facing prison or the loss of a home who cannot pay.
• An interpreter for anyone who does not speak the court's language.

For: preventing harm, answering emergencies, investigating offences and bringing suspects before a court. The police never judge or punish; courts do.

Found: at tier 1 as the watch; a standing police force once a town needs one.

Run it:

• Powers written in law — to stop, search, arrest and enter — and none beyond them.
• Force only when necessary and in proportion, after other means have failed, and every use recorded and reviewed — the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials (1990).
• Anyone arrested is told why, may see a lawyer, and is brought before a judge within 48 hours, the UN Human Rights Committee's reading of the ICCPR.
• Officers identifiable by number at all times.
• Complaints investigated by a body outside the police.
• Recruited on merit, trained, and answerable to a local body as well as to the law.

For: repairing harm, protecting the public from people who are dangerous, and returning offenders able to live within the law.

Found: with the court, at tier 2.

Run it:

• Repair first: restitution, fines in proportion to means, community work, supervision. Prison is for those who are dangerous, or who have repeatedly refused other sentences — never for debt or poverty.
• Sentence ranges published in the code before the act, as in published rule and the court.
• Prisons run to the Nelson Mandela Rules (UN, 2015): health care to the same standard as outside; the untried kept apart from the convicted, the young from adults, women from men; work, education and contact with family; no solitary confinement beyond 15 consecutive days; and a plan for each prisoner's release.
• Every place of detention inspected by an independent body that may enter unannounced and publishes what it finds.

For: proving who a person is, who owns what, and which companies exist and who controls them — from the record alone.

Found: tier 4, the register, once tenure and contract exist.

Run it:

• Civil registration of every birth, marriage and death: continuous, permanent, compulsory, universal and free, within days. The birth certificate is legal identity; providing it to everyone is target 16.9 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• Title registration for land: the entry is the title, and errors are compensated from a fund.
• A company register naming directors, shareholders and the real people who control each company, open to search.
• Two copies in two buildings, two clerks to every entry, nothing erased.
• Living people's personal records restricted, with every access logged.

Standards: the UN Principles and Recommendations for a Vital Statistics System, and FAO's Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (2012).

For: knowing how many people there are, where, of what age and in what conditions — the number under every plan.

Found: a census at tier 2 (count before you administer); an independent statistics office at tier 6 (audit, statistics and the published number).

Run it:

• A census at least every 10 years, of every person as at one date, with an independent recount of a sample to measure what was missed — the UN Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses.
• Individual returns used for statistics only, and sealed for a century.
• One statistics office, its head on a fixed term with sole control of methods and release dates.
• Releases on a calendar announced in advance, to everyone at once.
• The UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics written into its law.

For: keeping the record of what was decided and what is known, open to everyone, for longer than any government lasts.

Found: the record at tier 0; a public library once there is printing; a public archive with departments.

Run it:

• Every department transfers its records to the archive after a fixed period — the UK now uses 20 years — and the archive opens them, except under listed personal and security exemptions with their own time limits.
• At least three copies, on two kinds of media, one of them far away, checked on a schedule: the rule in institutions that outlive people.
• A public catalogue, so every item can be found by its reference.
• Public libraries free to all, funded as a fixed share, as the IFLA–UNESCO Public Library Manifesto (2022) sets out.
• The ICA's Universal Declaration on Archives (2010) states in one page why.

For: making a kilogram, a metre and a part made in one workshop the same as in every other — and rewarding invention in exchange for publishing it.

Found: standard weights for trade at tier 2; standard units at tier 3; a patent office once there is printing and publication.

Run it:

• One set of units, the SI, tied to references the whole world shares — the Metre Convention of 1875, kept by the BIPM.
• Inspectors test every trade scale and measure on a published schedule and seal those that pass: legal metrology, harmonised internationally by the OIML.
• A standards body publishes specifications — sizes, threads, voltages — drafted by committees of makers and users, open to public comment.
• Patents give an inventor a monopoly for a fixed term — at least 20 years under the WTO's TRIPS agreement — in exchange for publishing the invention in full, so it joins the common stock when the term ends. Venice's patent statute of 1474 was the first general one.

For: raising and spending public money in the open, so anyone can see where it came from and where it went.

Found: accounts with the debt record and double entry; a treasury with departments.

Run it:

• One budget covering every public receipt and payment, with nothing kept off it, voted by the assembly before the year begins.
• The executive spends only what was voted, for the purpose voted.
• One treasury account through which all public money passes, reconciled with the bank every day.
• Accounts in accrual double entry, audited and published within months of the year's end.
• The eight documents the Open Budget Survey checks, all published: the pre-budget statement, the budget proposal, the enacted budget, a plain-language citizens' budget, in-year reports, a mid-year review, the year-end report and the audit report.
• The whole system measured against PEFA's 31 indicators of public financial management.

For: paying for what everyone uses and nobody would fund alone, from the first public good onward.

Found: as labour-days and produce at tier 1; in money once there is coin and a ledger.

Run it by Adam Smith's four maxims, from The Wealth of Nations, book V, chapter 2 — still the standard test:

• Equality: in proportion to ability to pay.
• Certainty: the amount, the time and the manner of payment fixed and plain, never at a collector's discretion.
• Convenience: due when and how it is easiest to pay — a harvest tax after the harvest.
• Economy: collection costs little beyond what is collected.

Add: no tax except by a law voted in the assembly; few taxes, on broad bases; every taxpayer may see their own assessment and appeal it to an independent tribunal; collectors paid a salary, never a share of what they collect — tax farming is how collection becomes extortion; and publish what each tax raises and what it costs to collect.

For: buying what public works and services need, at a fair price, with no favour to anyone.

Found: with the first public good; written purchasing rules once departments buy regularly.

Run it:

• Open competition above a published value: the need and the scoring criteria published; a fixed period for bids; sealed bids opened in public at a stated time; the award and the price published.
• Below that value, three written quotes.
• Splitting a purchase to stay under the value is forbidden, and audited for.
• The official who defines the need, the panel that scores the bids, and the officer who pays are different people, and panel members declare their interests.
• Every contract and every change to it published, to the Open Contracting Data Standard.
• A losing bidder may challenge an award before an independent body, within days.

The standard: the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement (2011).

For: money that holds its value, and banks whose failure does not take a town's savings with it.

Found: the mint at tier 3; credit and the bank at tier 4; the central bank and the price level at tier 5, once paper money circulates.

Run it:

• One issuer of the currency, with a published goal — stable prices — and a target it reports against; most central banks now aim at about 2 % inflation a year.
• Operational independence: the governor on a fixed term, removable only for stated cause, and no direct lending to the government to cover its deficit — the cause of the worst inflations on record, among them Germany in 1923, Hungary in 1946 and Zimbabwe in 2008.
• A lender of last resort in a panic, by Walter Bagehot's rule in Lombard Street (1873): lend freely, at a penalty rate, against good security.
• Banks supervised: capital and liquid reserves in proportion to risk, regular inspection, and deposits insured up to a published limit — the Basel Committee's Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision.
• Decisions and minutes published.

For: safe water, waste taken away, and roads, drains and bridges that keep working.

Found: the first public good at tier 1; city water and sewerage at tier 4.

Run it:

• An asset register: every pipe, pump, bridge and road with its age, condition, last inspection and next — the core of asset management (ISO 55000).
• The maintenance budget set aside first, before any new building. The maintenance rule matters more than the construction rule.
• A water safety plan from source to tap, with test results published — the WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality.
• A drinking-water inspector separate from the operator.
• Charges published, with a basic amount per person that everyone can afford.

For: preventing disease across the population, and treating the sick so that illness does not also bring ruin.

Found: the health authority at tier 3 — on the record, the largest gain in life expectancy of any institution.

Run it:

• A medical officer of health with the duty and the right to publish a yearly report on the population's health, unedited by government.
• Notifiable diseases reported by every practitioner within a set time, and outbreaks investigated; the International Health Regulations (2005) for anything that crosses borders.
• Primary care first: a trained health worker within reach of every settlement, as the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 set out.
• Every health worker licensed on a register that can strike them off.
• An essential medicines list guiding what is bought — see medicines.
• Payment pooled through tax or insurance, so nobody is ruined by being ill — target 3.8 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• WHO's six building blocks of a health system — services, workforce, information, medicines, financing, leadership — are the checklist for the whole.

For: passing on what is known to every child, and adding to it.

Found: the school and arithmetic for everyone at tier 2; the university at tier 4.

Run it:

• Elementary education free and compulsory for every child — Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 26.
• A published curriculum, and teachers qualified to a published standard.
• Inspection by an inspectorate independent of the schools, its reports published.
• Funding fixed as a share in law, not fought over every year — see institutions that outlive people.
• Universities free to research and teach, appointing staff on merit and publishing through peer review.
• Apprenticeship in every trade, to a written standard, with a test at the end.

For: answering fire, flood, collapse and injury within minutes, and planning so that disasters do less harm.

Found: alarms and the fire rule with the watch at tier 1; a standing fire service once a town is built close together.

Run it:

• Stations sited by travel time. The US standard NFPA 1710 sets 4 minutes' travel for the first engine to 90 % of fires for career fire departments; smaller places use trained volunteers called by alarm.
• One emergency number, answered day and night.
• Fire safety rules for buildings, inspected: separation, escape routes, water supply and hydrants.
• One commander at every incident, and each supervisor directing 3 to 7 people — the Incident Command System.
• A written plan for each hazard — flood, fire, earthquake, epidemic — exercised every year, with warnings that reach every household.
• The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 sets the four priorities: understand the risk, govern it, invest in reducing it, and prepare to respond and to build back better.

For: reaching every household — with letters, services, emergency crews and the census.

Found: street names and house numbers with plot, street and block; a post office once there is regular trade; the telegraph and radio later.

Run it:

• An address for every dwelling: named streets and numbered buildings, kept in one public address register that every department uses.
• A universal postal service: every address served, at one published price for any distance within the territory.
• Communication networks open to all on equal terms, with a priority channel for emergencies.
• Privacy of correspondence: no letter opened and no message read without a judge's warrant.

The Universal Postal Union (1874) links national posts and sets the rules for exchanging mail between them.

For: the base facts every plan needs: where things are, what the weather will do, and what lies underground.

Found: mapping with instruments and measurement; a weather service once there are instruments at many places and a telegraph to gather the readings.

Run it:

• A mapping agency keeping one survey grid and one base map, used by the land register and by every planner.
• A weather service recording at fixed stations at fixed hours, and issuing forecasts and warnings to everyone. National services exchange their data through the World Meteorological Organization.
• A geological survey mapping rock, groundwater, minerals and hazards — landslides, earthquakes, floods.
• All their data published free, because every other institution uses it.

For: pooling the risks no household can carry alone — old age, disability, sickness, losing a provider, losing work — so that one misfortune does not become destitution.

Found: as mutual aid under the rationing rule in deciding how you decide; as insurance once there are registers and accounts to run it.

Run it to the ILO's Social Protection Floors Recommendation (No. 202, 2012):

• Benefits and contributions set in law, the same for everyone in the same position.
• An actuarial review every few years, published: what the scheme has promised, what that will cost, and how it will be paid.
• Payment direct to the person, on time, with no intermediary taking a cut.
• A basic floor for everyone: health care, and income security for children, in old age and in disability.
• Every decision open to appeal before an independent tribunal.

For: making what is sold safe and what is described true, and keeping markets open to newcomers.

Found: market inspectors at tier 2, with weights and measures; a food authority once food is processed and sold far from where it was grown.

Run it:

• Food standards — hygiene, additives, contaminants, labels — inspected at farms, processors and markets; the Codex Alimentarius is the international set.
• Product safety: dangerous goods recalled, and makers liable for the harm their defective products cause.
• Honest dealing: false descriptions and hidden charges are offences, and buyers may return faulty goods.
• Competition: agreements between rivals to fix prices or share out markets are forbidden, and no merger may create a monopoly without review by an authority independent of the firms.
• Inspectors paid by the public, never by the firms they inspect, and rotated.

For: checking that public money was spent as voted and achieved what it was for — and telling the public.

Found: in simple form at tier 1, when the accounts of the first public good are read aloud; in full at tier 6 (audit, statistics and the published number).

Run it:

• Independent on the eight conditions of INTOSAI's Mexico Declaration (2007), and reporting to the assembly.
• Every account audited every year, and performance audits chosen by risk.
• Every finding kept in a public register until it is closed.
• INTOSAI's Lima Declaration (1977) is the founding charter of public audit.

For: a free, independent hearing for anyone wronged by a public body — delay, a lost file, a wrong decision, discourtesy — without going to court.

Found: with citizen services. Sweden created the first ombudsman in 1809.

Run it by the Venice Commission's Principles on the Protection and Promotion of the Ombudsman Institution (2019):

• Chosen by the assembly by a qualified majority, for one long fixed term, removable only for stated cause.
• Free and open to anyone, with the power to see any file and question any official.
• Recommends remedies — an apology, a reversal, compensation, a changed procedure — and publishes each case and whether the body complied.
• Reports every year to the assembly on patterns, not only cases.

For: letting anyone see what the government does, while keeping what it knows about each person private.

Found: with writing and records. Sweden's Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 was the first law to give the public a right to see official documents.

Run it:

• Every record open unless a listed exemption applies — personal data, security, an ongoing investigation, commercial secrets — and each exemption time-limited and weighed against the public interest.
• Every request answered within 20 working days, as the UK's Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires; a refusal gives reasons, and may be appealed to an independent information commissioner.
• Publication without being asked: budgets, contracts, decisions, senior salaries, minutes.
• Personal data under the OECD Privacy Guidelines (1980, revised 2013): collect only what a stated purpose needs; use it only for that purpose; keep it accurate and secure; let the person see and correct it; and name who answers for it.
• Every access to a personal record logged, and the log open to the person.

For: stopping public power being used for private gain, and catching it when it is.

Found: from the first office-holder; the full rules at tier 4 with departments.

Run it to the UN Convention against Corruption (2003) and the OECD Recommendation on Public Integrity (2017):

• Declarations of assets and interests by every senior official, on taking office and every year, published.
• Stepping aside from any decision that touches one's own interests, family or business.
• Gifts above a token value declared in a public register.
• A cooling-off period before an official may work for a firm they regulated or bought from.
• A public register of meetings with lobbyists.
• Protection for anyone who reports wrongdoing, through a channel outside their line of command, and no dismissal or reprisal for a report made in good faith.
• An independent body to investigate and prosecute, with its own budget.