Table of Contents for Governance Systems Design

Capsule history of governance systems of the world

Note that i have not researched this section carefully and it is probably rife with errors. This section should be treated as a fable, not as fact. I do not intentially including anything misleading or false here, and ideally i'd like to improve this section until is is fact, not fable, but i dont have time and so there is bound to be mistakes due to my lack of diligence; please contact me if you have conclusive evidence that something i said here is incorrect or misleading.

(todo: a capsule history of governance. surprising how far back everything goes. democracy,solrition vs reepublic,aristo. slavery, sortition, monarchy, indiv rights, antitotalitarianism, univeersal franchise, scalable republic, the press, science and progress, industry, feudal mode, meerchant mode, warrior glory, warrior/priest/commoner, elders, suizereignity, sovereignity, anarchism (not neccesarily advocates of no procedure); communism/socialist capitalism)

Governance system examples

athens

" In Athens:

    generals and treasurers were elected
    other official positions were chosen by an elaborate lottery process that every adult male citizen was entitled to participate in
    none of these officials had very much power to make any decisions
    decisions and laws were passed in Assembly, which was a gathering of citizens anyone could turn up to
    anyone could speak to the citizens at Assembly and seek to sway them to their point of view
    legal matters, including constitutional matters, were decided on by large numbers of lottery-selected citizens
    elections were regarded as undemocratic and to be avoided wherever possible
    the Athenians paid people for participating at Assembly and on juries" -- Roslyn Fuller

sparta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_Constitution early example of 'communism'?

rome

ancient china

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Lords_and_Nine_Ministers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Departments_and_Six_Ministries
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorate
"Ch'ü T'ung-tsu has shown that the "Confucianisation" of Chinese law was a slow process and that the amalgamation of the Confucian views of society with the law codes was completed only in the great Tang Code of CE 624. The code is regarded as a model of precision and clarity in terms of drafting and structure." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_law#Imperial_law
legalism: "The Legalist school, as represented by such thinkers as Han Fei Zi, insisted that the ruler must always rely on penal law and the imposition of heavy punishments as the main instrument of government. At the same time, moral considerations and social standing should be rigorously excluded. Another hallmark of Legalist thinking was that there should be equality before the law. On the question of legislative technique, the Legalists stressed that the rules enacted by the ruler for punishment of offences should be clear, intelligible to the ordinary people, and properly communicated to them." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_law#Legalism_and_Qin

various systems during the French Revolution

failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Year_VIII

holy roman empire, hanseatic league, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_commune

?swiss stuff?

failed: paris commune paris commune had almost learned what i think is one lesson of thee french revolution: no death penalty but this was only a de jure rule, not a de facto one; killing of generals, hostages, etc

Presidential system (example: US constitution) failed: us confederation failed: electoral college maybe it occurs after violent revolutions where the leading military general of the rebels becomes the president? (eg george washington in the US (presidentialy); Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan (ROC) (semi-presidential); Yuan Shikai in China)

Parliamentary system (example Westminster) (older, but updated more than the US constitution)

US modern joint shareholder corporation articles vs bylaws: each class can vote on articles separately?

US LLC

failed: USSR

taiwan's (ROC's) constitution (was five branches/Yuan)

art. 60 ff. of the Swiss Civil Code: http://web.archive.org/web/20120401000000*/http://communitywiki.org/en/CorporateMembership

modern china

holacracy

Occupy Wall Street

branch democracy (my own proposal)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_town_meeting [1]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland : a semi-direct democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry#Recognition.2C_amity_and_regularity

United States House of Representatives

The United States House is a legislative chamber. The majority party elects the Speaker, through the Speaker and their majority control of the House floor and of the committees, especially the Rules Committee, they have a lot of procedural control. The majority party often limits debate, claiming this is neccessary because there are so many members of the House (over 400). In constrast to the U.S. Senate, where the possibility of filibustering allows the minority party to essentially impose a supermajority 60% 'veto' over many acts, in the U.S. House the majority can pass legislation over the strong objection of the minority.

Some of this is said to be a result of reforms made by Thomas Brackett Reed in the 1890s, who believed that "The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.". [2].

Some of this as a result of changes made by Republicans after they captured Congress in 1994, in which the old policy of appointments to committee chairs based on seniority was jettisoned, causing the chairs to be effectively under the control of the party leadership. (Congress in comparative perspective by Graham K.Wilson)

" There is little disput among political scientists that the U.S. Congress is a uniquely powerful legislature by comparison with those in other contemporary democracies. And to the extent that a powerful and independent legislature is regarded as a positive attribute for modern democracies, Capitol Hill is surely the most compelling model.

The U.S. second chamber, the Senate, is as powerful, if not more so (due to its veto over federal executive and judicial nominations and its foreign policy prerogatives) than the House of Representatives. AMong other second chambers examined in this volume, perhaps only the Italian and Brazilian senates (and to some extent the German Bundesrat) approach the coequal strength of the U.S. Senate. Moreover, unlike other second chambers, such as the British House of Lords and the Canadian Senate, the U.S. second chamber does not suffer from a "legitimacy issue" that undermines its authority. The Senate has been directly elected for nearly a century, and although it grossly overrepresents the smaller states (Lee and Oppenheimer 1999_, there is no imminent or likely threat to its authority within the U.S. constitutional system.

The U.S. House of Representatives is also highly unusual by modern democratic standards. The term of office—two years—is the shortest among polyarchies today. The U.S. House is also peculiar in that the presiding officer -- the Speaker -- is simultaneously the leader of the majority party. In most other modern democracies, the chamber presidency or speakership is a neutral and largely nonpartisan office confined to arbitrating floor debate.

Both chambers of the U.S. Congress possess conspicuously powerful permanent committees with significant legislative power, covering the entire spectrum of government activity. These committees also have important oversight and investigative power, covering the entire specrum of government activity. By international standards, Congress is also superbly staffed at all levels: research staff (the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office), committee staff, and personal staff, with generous office, mailing, and travel allowances. In 2006, members of Congress earned an annual salary of $165,200, meaning that their wages are also well above the international average for parliamentarians.

The relative weakeness of American parties also means that individual members enjoy much more freedom in lawmaking and can make a mark earlier in their legislative career than in most other democratic systems. The fact that the U.S. executive, the president, is not electorally dependent on the assembly also allows legistlators to challenge the executive to a far greater degree than in other advanced industrial democracies, almost all of which are parliamentary systems. WHile most democratic legislative chambers today are in a weak position vs-a-vis their governments, U.S. presidents have to fight for their proposals every inch of the way in Congress and rarely get everything they want, event when their own party is nominally in the majority. Individual members of the executive are also compelled to appear regularly before committees and explain themselves. No other contemporary executive has to undergo anything like this degree of day-to-day scrutiny.

Of course all of these judgements are relative. By comparison with a century ago, Congress has lost a great deal of power to the presidency and the rest of the executive branch -- particularly in the area of war-making and national security -- as government has expanded and the United States has become a world power (Fisher 1995; Sundquist 1981). In this respect, the American experience partially mirrors the twentieth-century tentency for executives in democracies to gain power at the expense of legislatures in parallel with the expansion of government and the development of mass political parties (Duverger 1954). In the House of Representatives today, the committees and their chairs are but poor shadows of the bastions of power than they were in the middle decades of the twentith century. The party leadership has become much stronger in the last quarter century, and Congress is more partisan today than it has been since the 1890s (Rohde 1991; Sinclair 1995), altohugh party unity and discipline are still at nothing like the levels seen in other advanced industrial democracies. Part of this is due to the peculariarity of most House districts being drawn to be "safe" for one party or the other, but the trend has also affected the Senate, although to a somewhat lesser degree (Rae and Campbell 2001). The role of like-minded interest groups associated with the major parties in congressional campaigns, as well as the tendency of the ideologically minded to participate disproportionately in congressional electison, has probably been more significant here (Schier 2000). ... Federalism in the United States is robust, which is not the case in many nominally federal systems. " -- Legislative Diffiusion: Can the U.S. Congress Be a Source? by Timothy J. Power and Nicol C. Rae, in Exporting Congress?: The Influence of the U.S. Congress on World Legislatures

"...the specific electoral system (single-member district plurality, or SMDP) that is traditionally viewed as the driving force behind much congressional behavior (Mayhew 1973; Fenno 1978)." -- Legislative Diffiusion: Can the U.S. Congress Be a Source? by Timothy J. Power and Nicol C. Rae, in Exporting Congress?: The Influence of the U.S. Congress on World Legislatures

" While U.S. parties have revived in recent decades, they still pale in terms of organization, discipline, and electoral loyalty by comparison with the ideological and disciplined mass parties characteristic of many other advanced democracies. Party loyalties in the United States have rarely been sufficient to overwhelm the inherent powers of the legislature, and Americans, unlike Europeans, have been unwilling to sacrifice legislative power for partisan ends.

Mass parties evolved in Europe in the late nineteenth century as the advent of democratization, in combination with industrialization, created political pressure for the legislative representation of the working calss and some accomodation of their social and political demands, even at the expense of the independence and traditions of free debate in the legislature (Ostrogorski 1982; Duverger 1954). Legislative power in these circumstances became secondary to partisan imperatives, particularly in parliamentary systems where the legislator's first priority became etiher the defense or undermining of the government of the day, depending on whether the legislator's party held power. In fact, the institutionalized and powerful British House of Commons of the late nineteenth century stood as something of a barrier to democratic development as expressed by the mass parties that emerged to channel the political demands of the new middle- and working-class electorate.

Different historical patterns -- such as guaranteed constitutional rights and the emergence of a mass electorate prior to industrialization -- led to a... ... yet it is also evidence from our authors' accounts that the American model HAS been influential in several specific areas -- particularly as the grip of the mass party has begun to erode. Economic growth and concomitant social change have led to the attenuation of traditional class politics in Western democracies. A related rise of new parties and social movements is linked to an expanding "postmaterialist" middle class (Inglehart 1997) that possesses a much more individualistic and participatory approach to politics than the traditional hierarchical and disciplined mas parties. Emerging new social movements have been more inclined to challenge the authority of an overweening executive, traditional governing elites, swollen bureaucracies, and hidebound mass party organizations of both the Right and the Left. Elite-challenging actors have tapped into the increasingly self-expressive, anti-authoritarian biases that drive citizens to mistrust large-scale public institutions, including representative assemblies (Inglehard and Welzel 2005).

In this climate, and with the corresponding rise of "critical citizens" (Norris 1999), legislators have responded by seeking tools with which to cahllenge government and open its procedures and decisions to public scruitny. As legislatures have become somewhat less inclined to be pure rubber stamps for party governments, and individual legislators have become more creative in the use of what powers they have, interest in emulating at least some aspects of the U.S. congressional model, such as stronger committees and investigations, has grown. The U.S. Congress -- especally in its more combative, investigatory mode in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate (Sundquist 1981) -- provides an obvious model. ... The greater utilization of committee inquires and public committee hearings has been the most readily imitated aspect of congressional procedure...The adoption of committee inquires and investigations in Germany, Britain, and Canada has been popular...Even in Latin America, Morgenstern and Carey note the increased power of legislative committees and the growing use of roll call voting in recent years, although the prevailing executive-central environment still poses limits to the concept of a powerful legislature... ... Polsby (1975a) made the distinction between an "arena" and a "transformative" legislature, the former serving as the main venue of national political debate between government and opposition but with no substantive policy-making role, and the latter being a lawmaking body in the full sense of the word....Amie Kreppel makes a similar distinction -- although she uses the less opaque term "chamber of debate" rather than "arena legislature."... the U.S. Congress is very much..with a full policy-making role. Most of the other parliaments discussed in this volume...function primarily as chambers of debate, dominated by the government of the day, lacking adequate staff and resources, and generally experiencing high membership turnover. We stress again that the weak position of the legislative branch in most advanced democraicies is a legacy of the rise of mass political parties....the singular weakness of the American parties, by comparison with those in most other democratic or democratizing regimes in the early decades of the twentieth century, largely explains why the U.S. Congress has remained uniquely powerful among legislatures.... " -- Barrier and Carriers.. in Exporting Congress?: The Influence of the U.S. Congress on World Legislatures

http://wikisum.com/w/Mayhew:_Congress http://wikisum.com/w/Fenno:_Homestyle http://wikisum.com/w/Category:American_Politics

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Notes on Limits on Exporting the U.S. Congress Model to Latin America by Scott Morgenstern:

Why are Latin American legislatures weaker?

"Latin America’s democracies all have constitutions based on the U.S. model of presidentialism in that their presidents and legislatures are elected separately and on set schedules, the two branches have independent powers, and neither branch can dissolve the other. ...however, there are important differences between the United States and Latin American constitutions... the Latin American legislatures are not co-equal branches with the executive; few significant bills that become law are initiated in the legislature, most legislatures cannot increase the budget, and most executives are empowered to alter the legislative agenda and they can often end-run the legislatures on policy proposals. Given their more limited roles, Latin American legislatures attract very different sorts of legislators than in the U.S. case. As I show in this chapter, many Latin American legislators have only limited interests in becoming policy experts, writing legislation, or even winning reelection....legislatures continue to maintain the reputation as places to hold debates or ratify executive initiatives, rather than initiate bills, develop budgets, and oversee executive actions. "

some structural aspects that makes Latin American legislatures weaker:

cannot increase the budget
executive powers over legislative agenda; some executives can force the legislature to consider their proposal via 'urgency provisions'; they can do this over and over, preventing the legislature from having time to do anything else
low re-election rates gives legislators little hopes of making a career in the legislature, which means they have no incentive, and little time, to drive professionalization and institutional reform with the legislature
lack of independence in the courts
executive can pass legislative "decrees" which the legislature cannot veto (without their veto itself facing an executive veto) (note: the U.S. now has elements of this as well, after a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha)
executive have a 'partial veto', which disincentivizes legislators from making deals with each other in order to compromise
lack of generous staffing budgets for individual legislators, and lack of institutional assistance (for example, the U.S.'s Congressional Research Service, or the U.S.'s Congressional Budget Office; or things like a legislative bill-tracking website; or website and email infrastructure for legislator-constituent communication) makes it hard for legislatures to employ the expertise needed to create substantive policy proposals
some effects in the U.S. of a high re-election rate (and therefore legislators looking at their job as a career): the seniority system, a more complex organizational scheme, greater staff resources, and a decentralization of power in the chambers, institutional support for helping members get re-elected (via credit claiming, position taking, and advertising)
if you want legislators to vote for the reforms needed for a professionalized legislature, these reforms must further the interests of individual legislators
legislation cannot increase, or in some cases alter, the budget without an executive proposal
budget committees have unreasonable time constraints to review the executive's budget proposal (eg 45 days)
no judicial review of executive actions, or executive control over judges via court packing or similar
no way for an entity other than the executive to get judicial review of a law outside of the context of a case
"A final aspect of the party system that affects legislative organization and functioning is the independence of the legislative party from the executive. Even when U.S. presidents have enjoyed a partisan majority in the legislature, they frequently have had trouble winning support for their initiatives. Latin American presidents, by contrast, often direct their legislative contingents and thus face limited pressure by legislatures when their parties do control a majority of legislative seats. There would not likely be much movement towards the development of oversight mechanisms in Chavez’s Venezuela, Menem’s (or Peron’s) Argentina, or Fujimori’s Peru. As an example, even though a new constitution in 1994 which gave Menem the right to run for reelection also gave the Argentine Congress the right and obligation to set up a committee to oversee executive decrees, the necessary enabling legislation was not passed." (is he suggesting that Latin American presidents tend to direct legislative contingents because of the party-list electoral system?)
"Of course the opposite system also exists in Latin America, where multipartism leaves presidents with very limited support in the legislature. These cases might be propitious for an interest in developing oversight of the executive, but collective action problems could inhibit the formation of the requisite structure or the necessary cooperation among the otherwise competitive parties."

An idea for rotating committee chairmanship:

"Chile’s committee system shows that even with a majority actor in the legislature, there are viable and perhaps preferable alternatives to the U.S. model." They "rotate the chairmanship of the committees among coalition members, so that each legislator could credit claim and advertise to their constituents. Perhaps this shows the limits of Mayhew’s oft-cited phrase about the difficulty in imagining a better organizational scheme than the U.S. Congress if the institution were nothing but a reelection machine."

recent changes that make Latin American legislatures more U.S.-like:

"They have moved towards a system of permanent rather than standing committees. They have begun to use roll-call voting on a more consistent basis and have improved their bill-tracking systems. Veteran consultants from U.S. campaigns have directed Latin American elections, thus yielding U.S.-style media battles and phonebanks..."
"In the past, Latin American legislatures were considered places to debate, express discontent, recruit for the executive, ratification and legitimate government decisions, or decide upon distribution of clientelistic resources (see, for example, Baaklini 1992; Mezey 1979; Kornberg and Mussolf, 1970; Kornberg 1973. Abuses of power by decree-wielding presidents and statements like those of Colombian President Uribe suggest a continued prominence of this view. However, recent and successful efforts in numerous countries to reform constitutions and shore up the Latin American legislatures in other ways also suggest that at least some policymakers in both North and South America have come to accept a new assumption about the proper role of the legislatures. This shift in assumptions is perhaps related to arguments about how the concentration of power in the executive cheapens the democracy and inhibits democratic consolidation (O’donnell, 1994; Shugart and Carey, 1993; Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1997). "

"Chile’s Congress has conventionally been regarded as among the mosteffective in Latin America in representing diverse interests and influenc-ing policy" -- Parties, Coalitions, and the Chilean Congress in the 1990s by John M. Carey

titles

names that came from old fedual household stuff eg chamberlain

"Court officials or office-bearers (one type of courtier) derived their positions and retained their titles from their original duties within the courtly household. With time, such duties often became archaic. However, titles survived involving the ghosts of arcane duties. These styles generally dated back to the days when a noble household had practical and mundane concerns as well as high politics and culture." -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_%28royal%29#Court_officials

(other household guys: steward, butler (etymology related to 'bottle', "the attendant entrusted with the care and serving of wine and other bottled beverages which in ancient times might have represented a considerable portion of the household's assets" [3]), sensechal, chamberlain, marshal (etymology relating to 'horse', 'stable servant' [4]), footman, valet, coachman, groom)

"the four great offices necessary to run a great household: seneschal, butler, marshal and chamberlain" -- [5]

other names and their origins: chancellor, bailiff, sheriff, duke, earl, alderman, count, marquis

academic administrator titles: http://www.heitmanagement.com/blog/2013/03/what-is-a-provost-an-introduction-to-administrative-and-academic-ranks/

page squire knight

archon

constable count of the stables https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshal

castellans

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgrave

margrave

kaiser and czar: from Caesar -- [6]

reeve: sheriff comes from it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogt

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministeriales comparable to Gentry

pattern: some serfs become household servants, become administrators, become lords. Eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministeriales

"In many European languages, the very word for "king" derives from (Charlemagne's/Karl's) name; e.g., Polish: król, Ukrainian: король (korol'), Czech: král, Slovak: kráľ, Hungarian: király, Lithuanian: karalius, Latvian: karalis, Russian: король, Macedonian: крал, Bulgarian: крал, Romanian: crai, Bosnian: kralj, Serbian: краљ/kralj, Croatian: kralj, Turkish: kral." -- [7]

"Chancery is a general term for a medieval writing office, responsible for the production of official documents." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancery_%28medieval_office%29

https://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20133%20Government.htm

comptroller clerk

"Early medieval European courts frequently traveled from place to place following the monarch as he traveled. This was particularly the case in the early French court."

"Olson argued that under anarchy, a "roving bandit" only has the incentive to steal and destroy, whilst a "stationary bandit" a tyrant has an incentive to encourage some degree of economic success as he expects to remain in power long enough to benefit from that success. A stationary bandit thereby begins to take on the governmental function of protecting citizens and their property against roving bandits." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson

more on feudal England:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_King%27s_Bench_%28England%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchequer_of_Pleas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancery_%28medieval_office%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curia_regis

The Feudal Kingdom of England: 1042-1216 By Frank Barlow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_precedence_in_the_Catholic_Church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acolyte

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             Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium

                4:30 PM, Wednesday, October 28, 2015
     NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building Room B3
                       Stanford University
                   http://ee380.stanford.edu[1]

Topic: The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) and Its Unparalleled Power To Influence How We Think

Speaker: Robert Epstein American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology [2]

About the talk:

An extensive study published in August 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA shows that biased search rankings have a dramatic impact on the voting preferences of undecided voters. Five randomized, controlled experiments conducted with more than 4,500 participants in two countries showed that rankings that favored one candidate could easily increase the proportion of people who supported that candidate by 20 percent or more--up to 80 percent in some demographic groups--with virtually no one aware they were being manipulated. Because in most countries online search is conducted on a single search engine, this means that if, for any reason, search results on that search engine favored one candidate, a large number of votes would likely be driven to that candidate with no possible way of counteracting the effect. Because search algorithms currently do not incorporate "equal-time" rules to assure objectivity in presenting election-related material, and because many elections around the world are won by small margins, it is possible that a single search engine has recently been determining the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of the world's national elections, with increasing impact each year as internet penetration has been increasing.

The impact of search rankings on people's thinking is called the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). SEME is one of the

largest behavioral effects ever discovered, and it is almost entirely undetectable as a means of social influence, which makes it especially dangerous. Its impact extends far beyond voting, affecting decisions large and small that people make every day. SEME's power derives from a basic operant conditioning phenomenon: In routine searches every day, people are being trained, like rats in a Skinner box, to believe that what is higher in a list of search results is better and truer. The stronger that belief becomes, the more easily search rankings can be used to alter the beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and behavior of people who are undecided on almost any issue. In both scope and power, this makes SEME unlike any other list effect that has ever been discovered.

Ongoing research on SEME is assessing how the operant conditioning process contributes to SEME's power, how SEME is affecting decisions people make about their health, how SEME may be affecting court decisions, and how it might be possible to suppress SEME through regulations, browser add-ons, or other means.

The speaker's recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences can be found here[3]. An article Dr. Epstein published about SEME in Politico can be found here[4]. A critique of Dr. Epstein'sPolitico article by Dr. Amit Singhal, head of Google search, can be found here [5]. Dr. Epstein's reply to Dr. Singhal can be found here [6].

Slides:

There are currently no slides to be downloaded for this presentation.

Videos:

Join the live presentation.[7] Wednesday October 28, 4:30-5:45. ?Requires Microsoft Windows Media player. View the 2015 Stanford Archive Lectures[8] View video[9] by lecture sequence in HTML5. Available after 8PM Pacific on the day of the lecture. View Video[10] on YouTube?. The YouTube? video is uploaded the day following the prentation. You may need to disable your pop-up blocker for this link to work. Or use the direct YouTube? link.[11]

About the speaker:

[speaker photo] Robert Epstein is Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT) in Vista, California, as well as the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine and the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. A Ph.D. of Harvard University, he has published 15 books on artificial intelligence, creativity, stress management, and other topics, as well as more than 250 scientific and popular articles in publications such as Science, Nature, Psychological Science, TIME, Discover, U.S. News & World Report, and Scientific American Mind, where Dr. Epstein is a contributing editor. Dr. Epstein is also the founding director of the Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence, an annual Turing Test that has been conducted since 1990. A thought leader in the behavioral sciences, Dr. Epstein is interviewed by journalists between 50 and 100 times a year. You can follow him on Twitter at @DrREpstein?. For more information, see http://drrobertepstein.com [12].

Contact information: (omitted)

Embedded Links: [ 1 ] http://ee380.stanford.edu [ 2 ] http://www.aibrt.org [ 3 ] http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2015-The_Search_Engine_Manipulation_Effect-SEME-PNAS-w_SUPPLEMENTS.pdf [ 4 ] http://politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548.html [ 5 ] http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/google-2016-election-121766 [ 6 ] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-epstein/googles-hypocrisy_b_8253332.html [ 7 ] http://coursematerials.stanford.edu/live/ee380.asx [ 8 ] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rMQd1ZcAY9zzP3oWa3m_hFti [ 9 ] https://mvideos.stanford.edu/Seminars/ [ 10 ] http://ee380.stanford.edu/Abstracts/150923-video.html [ 11 ] https://youtu.be/ [ 12 ] http://drrobertepstein.com

ABOUT THE COLLOQUIUM:

See the Colloquium website, http://ee380.stanford.edu, for scheduled speakers, FAQ, and additional information. Stanford and SCPD students

"ability ((for legislators)) to develop legislative careers that do not depend on whether the party leadership supports them. " -- http://www.bu.edu/law/journals-archive/bulr/volume89n2/documents/wilson.pdf

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notes on "The U.S. Congress's Modest Influence on the Legislatures of Central and Eastern Europe" by John R. Hibbing and Samuel C. Patterson, in Exporting Congress?: The Influence of the U.S. Congress on World Legislatures edited by Timothy Joseph Power, Nicol C. Rae:

we are comparing central and eastern european countries Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary Poland, Romania, and Slovakia to Germany and to the United States.

in terms of the following variables the US is an outlier (I only report the means for CE countries but the individual numbers, which are given in the article, support this too):

committee slots per member (2 for the US vs 1.3 for central and eastern european mean and 1.2 for germany)
membership of largest committee (75 US, 29 CE mean, 42 Germany)
mean staffers per committee (53, 3.3, 5)
% of committee chairs kept by winning party (100, 44, 43)
% of committee chairs kept by governing coalition (100, 63, 52)

Sometimes CE legislatures will even have non-legislators as voting members in committees (although this may be declining).

CE parliaments are parliamentary, proportional representation, multiparty systems: the Prime Minister is appointed by and a member of parliament, MPs do not know exactly when the next election will be, most MPs "do not have a formal electoral connection with a single district", and between 12% to 57% of the MPs are not members of either of the top two parties (the actual numbers are (same alphabetical ordering of CE countries, as above) 69%, 54%, 88%, 58%, 69%, 43%; Germany 83%; US 100%).

"On all these points, arrangements in Central and Eastern Europe are infinitely more proximate to German political structures than American".

seems like oppressive governments mainly fall when members of their own militaries and police refuse to follow orders to oppress; is this correct? list of examples?

later: well, what about coups? And what about external conquests?

i guess the question is, are there examples of self-described oppressed people rising up against their oppressors and winning, as opposed to (a) the security apparatus of the oppressors refusing to follow orders, (b) a colony or conquered territory rebelling against a distant central government? mb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution ? no, not the February revolution (Wikipedia says: "To quell the riots, the Tsar looked to the army.... proved reluctant to move in on the crowd, since it included so many women. It was for this reason that when, on 11 March [O.S. 26 February], the Tsar ordered the army to suppress the rioting by force, troops began to mutiny."). I think the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution fits this though; the Bolsheviks had the alligeiance of many troops and took over government buildings. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Revolution probably also was; there was full-scale conventional war.

So what is the taxonomy of revolutions in this sense, where 'revolution' is defined as an extra-legal transfer of power?

Mb:

"local coup": one faction of the elite leadership takes power by assasination and/or by suddenly forcibly preventing the opposition from freely communicating/meeting/moving, without having to conquer the entire country in a conventional war
conquest by an external power
miliary coup: like 'conquest by an external power', except the conqueror is the military of the country which was conquered
rebellion against a distant central government
'the masses' revolt against the elite, and the military and/or police eventually refuses to use force against them
'the masses' revolt against the elite and muster their own military and/or convert some portion of the military to their cause, and win a conventional war against the rest of the military
various parts of the country rebel and achieve indepedence and then re-unify: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution
dubious legality: the legislature and/or executive transfer power by a proclaimation that is clearly illegal yet which does not meet a serious forcible challenge

Potential examples:

local coup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_of_18_Brumaire
conquest by an external power: Allies conquer Germany at the end of WWII
military coup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar's_Civil_War
rebellion against a distant central government: American revolution
'the masses' revolt against the elite, and the military and/or police eventually refuses to use force against them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution#Tsar.27s_return_and_abdication
the rebels muster their own military and/or convert some portion of the military to their cause, and the old government surrenders without a full-scale conventional war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
the rebels muster their own military and/or convert some portion of the military to their cause, and win a conventional war against the rest of the military: (i dont have an example at hand)
various powers in various parts of the country successfully rebel, and then later re-unify: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution
dubious legality: the legislature and/or executive transfer power by a proclaimation that is clearly illegal yet which does not meet a serious forcible challenge (i dont have an example at hand)

Questions: (1) Is this comprehensive; if not, what am i missing? (2) What is the frequency of each of those classifications?

One reason that I am interested in this question is the future possibility of robot security services, which would make 'the military and/or police eventually refuses to use force against them' less likely; anecdotally, I've gotten the impression somehow that, out of the methods of revolution in which 'the masses' take power (as opposed to the leading opposition political party), this method is more common than others; this suggest that robot security services may make regimes that "oppress" "the masses" longer-lasting. But perhaps my anecdotal impression of the relative frequency of these things is incorrect.

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apparently prohibition provides an example showing that in a democracy, the will of the people can in fact overcome moneyed special interests:

" Did you know that at the time alcohol prohibition was instituted, fully 1/3 of the federal budget came from liquor taxes? Alcohol producers were incredibly powerful, yet their product was banned because of moral panic. To a significant degree, women's' suffrage happened when it did so they could vote for prohibition.

There is a great PBS series on this: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition. It's a story of a grass-roots national movement of Americans, many of them heretofore politically marginalized, rising up against money and power to effect change. "

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11210043

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" The first thing which is essential when thinking about 1700-1800 Crime and Punishment in Britain is to get rid of any preconceived notions of the state and justice systems. Once you have done that and seen the system as a far more patchwork, contradictory and individualised morass you will be on the right track! ... First ‘jails’ as we know them today did not really exist. The standard of sending people to prison as a punishment in and of itself only really came about in the 1800’s after a lot of navel-gazing due to the American Revolutionary War. Most were used for holding certain criminals pre-trial and debtors. Indeed Beattie’s masterful study of Surrey 1722-1749 found that the most common crimes for which transportation was used post-1718 (non-capital property offenses) were almost never sentenced to prison before transportation was an option – 60% were branded on the thumb and let go! ... While laws were passed down from Parliament Britain throughout this period did not have a systematic bureaucracy of justice to reliable and consistently deliver these laws. Instead the dominant force of law was the JP (Justice of the Peace). He was usually a local notable with economic and often social links to community. His role was not simply as presiding judge but almost as a jack-of-all-trades executive-part-time-functionary of the state. He administered the proto-welfare, the prisons, trials, highways in some cases etc. Much has been made of their paternalist self-conception and self-ascribed desire to ensure the health and peace of their community for either self motivated or high minded (or both) reasons. Any local Gaol was paid for locally. As it happens this often meant it was paid for by the same men who were JPs as they made up a large part of the tax base. These JPs therefore had an economic incentive not to send people to jails and utilise any option of further punishment. With the opening up of transportation as a viable option we see a flooding of cases all the way through. It is very interesting that the decline of transportation and beginning of prisons (which are intimately but not directly-linked) happened in the mid 1800’s as central government took over more of the economic and bureaucratic functions of justice. " -- [8]

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what books cover this stuff?

question for r/askhistorians

I'm interested in which organs, offices, and classes of people existed, how their members where chosen, what their formal powers and rules were, how rules and actions were decided upon, how decisions were made when there was disagreement (both during legislation, and execution, and interpretation of the rules), and how the system dealt with noncompliance.

 By 'governance procedure' I include things like parliamentary procedure, how officials are selected, and how legislation is decided, but also how noncompliance was dealt with, and also which classes of people existed in society and what their rights and obligations were.

 (How are officials chosen? How are decisions made when there is disagreement? How are rules made, and how is the governance system itself modified? What are the 'parliamentary procedures' to organize speeches, if any? What classes of people are there, what are their rights and duties, and how does a person become a member of a class? What checks are there on corruption? Who decides when a rule has been broken and what the punishment is?),

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hwuul/survey_of_governance_procedures_throughout_history/ :

I'm more interested in the systems themselves than the history surrounding the system.

what i actually submitted (after 21 days, there were no answers that suggested a survey)

" Survey of governance procedures throughout history

My motivation is to inform the design of future governance procedures (e.g. "this bylaw that you have proposed reminds me of tradition X of Organization A circa 1000 BC, and here's a problem that X caused them: ...; and here's an alternative procedure Y that Organization B used circa 500 BC that seemed to work out better").

Opinionated texts are fine; stuff like Bagehot's book The English Constitution or de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is what I'm after, except that for the most part these focus on just a few systems contemporary at the time of writing (England, America, France), and I'm looking for surveys over many places and many time periods (for example, perhaps a survey would briefly cover the governance procedures of each of ancient China, ancient Sparta, ancient Athens, ancient Republican Rome, medieval guilds, the Hanseatic League, the Ottoman Empire under Suleiman, France under Louis XIV, the French Reign of Terror and what went wrong, the French Consulate, Weimar Germany and how Hitler took power, Soviet Russia and how Stalin took power, the modern UK, and modern US corporations). "

Survey of governance procedures throughout history?

I'm looking for books and articles broadly surveying formal (though not necessarily written) 'constitutions' or systems of governance throughout history, for governments but also private societies and businesses, with an emphasis on pros and cons and details of each procedure which are thought to have played a critical role in successes and failures of the system. My motivation is to inform the design of future governance procedures (e.g. "this bylaw that you have proposed reminds me of tradition X of Organization A circa 1000 BC, and here's a problem that X caused them: ...; and here's an alternative procedure Y that Organization B used circa 500 BC that seemed to work out better"). I'm interested in the procedures themselves rather than in the history of the organizations using them, or the history of the development of the procedures, except I am interested in historical examples showing the motivation for and pros and cons of particular procedures. Opinionated texts are fine; stuff like Bagehot's book The English Constitution or de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is what I'm after, except that for the most part these focus on just a few systems contemporary at the time of writing (England, America, France), and I'm looking for surveys of many systems over many time periods (e.g. for example, perhaps a survey would briefly cover each of imperial China, ancient Sparta, ancient Athens, ancient Rome, the Ottoman Empire, medieval guilds, the Hanseatic League, France under Louis XIV, the French Reign of Terror and what went wrong, the French Consulate, Weimar Germany and how Hitler took power, Soviet Russia and how Stalin took power, the modern UK, and modern US corporations).

Some examples of the sort of things that such surveys might contain (incidentally, are there any mistakes in the following?):

in the ancient Greek city-state Sparta, people were divided into Helots (~90% of the population; state-owned serfs), Perioeci (free non-citizens), and citizens. There were two elected bodies, the Ephors and the Gerousia. The Ephors ("overseers") consisted of five citizens elected for one year, and could not be re-elected. The ephors held the executive powers and also some legislative and judicial powers. The Gerousia consisted of 28 elders over the age of 60, usually part of the royal households, and appointment was for life. There was a monthly popular assembly at which 'voting' (by shouting) by the citizens took place; the agenda of the assembly was set by the Gerousia. Sparta had two hereditary kings who were chief priests and who served as generals in military campaigns. The Ephors could indict the kings to be tried in front of the Gerousia and the Ephors. At one point each Spartan citizen owned an equal plot of land. The families of Spartan citizens had public education. Every male Spartan citizen had compulsory military service at least until age 30, and a significant part of their public education related to physical fitness and military training. Spartans were reputed to be great fighters. Spartan woman had more rights than in some other Greek city-states.
a similar summary for the constitutions of ancient Athens, ancient Rome, Soviet Russia, the French Consulate, the Weimar constitution, various imperial Chinese governments, various periods in the British monarchy, various other French governments, various Swiss governments, etc.
a failure of the Soviet system was Stalin's rise to dictatorial power. (todo). One mechanism of Stalin's power was his power, via his position as Secretary, over nominations and appointments (called the 'circular flow of power') (todo).
a failure of Germany's Weimar constitution was Hitler's rise to dictatorial power. Hitler was appointed Chancellor (similar to Prime Minister) and afterwards, immediately after the arson of one of the legislature's buildings, convinced President Hindenburg to invoke the emergency provisions of the constitution (Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, which had been used recently by Hindenburg to govern by decree due to the failure to form a government for awhile) in the Reichstag Fire Decree which suspended many civil rights. This allowed Hitler to attack his political opponents, for example Communist Party parliamentary delegates were arrested. This allowed the Hitler's Nazi party to ascend from a parliamentary plurality to a majority (in conjunction with an effective weakening of the quorum of the Reichstag, a legislative house, by the presiding officer, Göring, who did not count the arrested Communist Party deputies against the quorum). Hitler then courted the Centre Party, a minority lay Catholic party, and won passage of the Enabling Act of 1933, in which a supermajority of the legislature voted to (implicitly, amend the Constitution to) allow the executive to pass laws on its own, without parliament. After this point, the legislature "only met sporadically until the end of World War II, held no debates and enacted only a few laws". Within a few months, all parties except the Nazi party were banned or pressured into dissolving themselves, and then a new law banned all parties except for the Nazi party. The next year, Hitler took actions explicitly contradicted by the Enabling Act (tranferring the power of the upper house to the executive, and assuming the Presidency upon the death of President Hindenburg), but there was no remedy specified for these violations and they went unpunished; around this time also occurred the Night of the Long Knives, a series of extra-judicial political purges. Some say that the proportional voting system was at fault, as it allowed many political parties, making it difficult to form a majority government. Some design characteristics that other constitutions have to prevent this sort of thing are: quorums; protections against arrest of legislators; provisions of the Constitution immune to amendment; judicial review (although the German Federal Constitutional Court had the authority to challenge the move but "accepted the validity of the Enabling Act" (Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism, pg. 224) [9]); provisions to prevent splintering of power between a large number of small political parties; "to prevent a government from being forced to rely on decrees to carry on normal business, ((stipulations)) that a chancellor may be removed from office only if there is already a positive majority for a prospective successor" [10]; lengthly cool-down periods before constitutional amendments can come into force; checks and balances against the suspension of civil liberties; disallowing the removal of a Prime Minister unless there is a positive majority for a successor (to prevent a government from being forced to rely on decrees to carry on normal business [11]). However, note that even if the Communists had been present and voting, the Enabling Act would still have passed with 68.7% (Evans, Richard J. (2003). The Coming of the Third Reich). Also, a majority of the political parties wanted an end to the republic [12], and all major candidates for Presidency in 1932 disliked it to varying degrees [13] [14]. In the face of voter support for its destruction, it is questionable whether any structural changes could have saved the Weimar Republic.
a popular form of political governance in the modern era is a democratic republic. In this form, the voters elect legislators, and either the voters or the legislators elect a chief executive officer. The legislators pass laws via vote after (usually public) discussion governed by various 'parliamentary procedure's. Judges are often at least somewhat independent from the executive and legislative branchs of government. In the modern era, there is often also a civil service which persists across administrations and which has some power to determine how the legislature's law will be realized in concrete regulations and government actions. In order to get elected, legislators have to run mass media campaigns, which is often expensive. Sometimes the candidate is wealthy and spends their own money on the campaign, but usually the money for these campaigns is donated by supporters, and by interest groups who hope to gain the attention and favor of the legisators for their policy proposals in the case that they get elected.
two forms of democratic republic are the parliamentary and the presidential form. In the parlimentary form, the chief executive officer is chosen by the legislators. In the presidential form, the chief executive officer is directly elected by the voters. The parliamentary form is more popular and some researchers believe that the presidential form is in more danger of instability.
a popular form of corporate governance in the modern era is: ownership of a corporation is split into a large number of 'equity shares'. Each share carries the right to (a) cast a proportionate vote (although some shares are 'non-voting', and some carry more than one vote), (b) receive a proportionate amount of dividends, or a proportionate amount of corporate assets if the corporation is liquidated. The corporation is 'limited liability', meaning that the shareholders are not typically individually liable for the corporation's misdeeds beyond losing the value of their shares. The shareholders typically don't control the corporation directly, but rather elect a Board of Directors. The Directors have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the shareholders. The Directors also don't control the corporation directly, but rather hire and fire corporate officers, who have the power to bind the corporation. Sometimes either the Chairman of the Board, or some proportion of Directors, or all Directors, are required to be 'independent', which means they do not have a material relationship with the company or related entities.
a popular parliamentary procedure in the English-speaking world in the modern era is Robert's Rules. These are frequently used in civil society and in corporate governance, but not in government legislatures, which tend to each have their own idiosyncratic parliamentary procedure. Robert's Rules has a 'Chair' who runs the meeting, but the Chair's decisions can be overruled by a vote of the members. Robert's Rules provides for majority voting for most decisions, but a 2/3s supermajority is needed to suppress speech.
a few hundred years ago, the voters in democratic republics were only men in the upper, or the upper and middle classes. In the modern era, the 'franchise' (set of voters) has in most places been expanded to include all adults.
a long time ago, slavery (the ownership of humans) was legal in many places. In the modern era, it is almost universally prohibited (at least in name).
since the Enlightenment and especially in the modern era, the concepts of "human rights" and "civil rights" have become popular in some countries.
Feudalism is a idealized political/social/economic system (defined different by different people, so here is presented only one conceptualization of that work). There is a lord/vassal relationship in which the Vassal pledges military service to the Lord, and in return the Lord pledges military protection to the Vassal; the Vassal might also have obligations beyond military service, and in 'late-stage feudalism' the Vassal might have only these other obligations, and no military service obligation. Often, the Lord also loans land (a 'fief') to the vassal. People where formally divided into hierarchical classes, with the lower classes denied what would in the modern era would be regarded as universal human rights.
Part of ideal Feudalism is Manorialism, a system in which various small regions are 'manors', and the Lord of the Manor holds both economic and legal (including judicial) power over the manor, and a relatively large number of other people live in the Manor and have obligatory contributions to the Lord. Related is the institution of serfdom, in which people are bound to the land and typically not allowed to move between manors (sometimes serfs had a right to move but under conditions that made it infeasible to take advantage of).
In the modern international order, the world is partitioned into 'states' (or 'countries' or 'nation-states'), each of which is said to hold "sovereignty" over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers. Each sovereign state is equal to each other in the eye of international law. This conception of sovereignty is sometimes called "Westphalian sovereignty" as it is thought to have originated in the Peace of Westphalia, which was the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War in 1648.
In England circa 1700 a common punishment for convicted criminals was branding on the thumb. In the modern era a common punishment for criminals is extended stretches of imprisonment in jail, and sometimes death. In various ancient societies corporal punishment, exile, and penal servitude were common punishments.
In the modern era, many government employees are employed via a 'civil service' which hires on the basis of competitive examinations (as opposed to by inheritance, patronage, or purchase). This system originated in Imperial China.

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some toreads for me:

links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_Joseph_Stalin http://www.chacha.com/question/what-was-the-circular-flow-of-power http://whenyournotesfailyou.tumblr.com/post/16857116808/submitted-by-itsmetara-stalins-rise-to-power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_on_factions_in_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism https://books.google.com/books?id=LXo-0FUpZccC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=circular+flow+of+power+stalin+nominations&source=bl&ots=qmsGspRl-R&sig=q9ZEJ5pCY87MSdkgDV_leigStAk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF1-PIybzMAhUV62MKHUnGAWsQ6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=circular%20flow%20of%20power%20stalin%20nominations&f=false which suggests that Stalin's rise resulted not from procedural mechanics but rather because he supported policies (such as suppression of intra-party democracy) which were in line with the interests of the majority of the rank-and-file of party secretaries. (i would describe this more mechanistically, as resulting from a situation where having a single 'party' controlling government leads to a situation where there is no judicial review or other checks and balances to maintain intra-party democracry, and so invites a takeover by the party leadership via accusing their opponents of 'factionalism'; in other words it's no surprise that centrism and bans on factions will, from time to time, be supported by a majority of voters in any organization -- the key then is to have judicial and other checks and balances that maintain the freedom of the opposition to oppose without being ejected from power; in other words, as usual for me, it all seems to come back to allowing strong central leadership so as to 'get things done' while at the same time preserving the option of 'the people' to eject the leader if they get too greedy, and preventing this from degenerating into a situation where the leadership can prosecute the opposition and so cause a positive feedback loop at the end of which no one is left to effectively oppose a transition to dictatorship).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Constitution#Hitler.27s_subversion_of_the_Weimar_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_48_%28Weimar_Constitution%29
Congress in comparative perspective by Graham K.Wilson)

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the constitution of the Mali Empire

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https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1e9oio/how_much_republican_sentiment_was_there_after/

"proscribed. That was a Roman legal practice where a list was published and the people on it were fair game for assassination at any time. The person's entire estate would be confiscated; a quarter would go to the person who killed them, the rest to the state." -- [15]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20yl8l/how_did_the_roman_population_react_to_the_change/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/231imy/did_the_romans_know_that_their_republic_was/

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https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_system http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/Powers_practice_and_procedure/practice/chapter2 http://thoughtundermined.com/2013/06/30/the-westminster-system-of-parliamentary-government/ http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/Powers_practice_and_procedure/practice

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What happens in the Westminster system in-between a vote of no confidence and the formation of a new government? Often the incumbents stay in power, but must refrain from making controversial decisions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caretaker_government

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" Prime ministers: • are the key advisers to the sovereign or president; • are the leaders of their parties; • have significant patronage powers, including shaping their ministries; • chair meetings of ministers, including Cabinet; • are responsible for ensuring that their governments retain the confidence of Parliament; and • in some sense or other represent their governments within their own countries and externally.

Beyond these characteristics, however, it is hard to generalise. For example, prime ministers are the leaders of their parties, but they are chosen in a wide range of ways, which affect their personal power and authority. Most prime ministers select all their ministers, while Australian and New Zealand Labour leaders have to accept a team that is elected by their parliamentary colleagues. 7 Some prime ministers have to face confirmatory votes in Parliament (the German Chancellor, forexample), while others do not. Some prime ministers chair Cabinets comprising one party while others lead multi-party Cabinets. ... In comparison with the office of prime minister, ministers are relatively easy to define: they have prescribed roles defined by the portfolios delegated to them; some of the powers within their portfolio responsibilities are legally defined; and in all systems of parliamentary government, ministers answer to Parliament either directly or indirectly for their policies and behaviour, although the sanctions that are brought to bear on erring ministers vary through time and across political systems. Nonetheless, even here there are definitional problems. Ministers in some systems do not necessarily have to be members of Parliament; in others they vacate their seats for the duration of their ministerial tenures; and in bicameral systems, ministers can be drawn from the upper as well as the lower house. ... Cabinets, however, are altogether more slippery bodies to pin down. Cabinets in systems of parliamentary government: • are meetings of the top group of ministers drawn from the predominant parliamentary party or parties; • are chaired by prime ministers/premiers/chancellors; and • are composed of ministers who are drawn from one or more than one political party (or very occasionally, independents).

These three general characteristics exhaust the commonalities across Cabinet systems. 11 Cabinets may or may not comprise all the ministers; Cabinets may or may not meet regularly; Cabinets may make decisions collectively, or ministers, with the prime minister, may make decisions unilaterally and bilaterally; Cabinets may be collegial or hierarchical in style; Cabinet committees may or may not exist and, if they do exist, may or may not be significant groups in the policy-making process; Cabinets come in a variety of sizes; Cabinets may form the entire ministry, most of it (New Zealand), or involve a minority of ministers (Britain); Cabinet collective responsibility, although a feature of all systems of parliamentary government, is honoured to a greater or lesser extent across jurisdictions and through time in particular countries; and prime ministers may dominate Cabinet or take a more facilitating role. ... George Tsebelis has helpfully identified these sources of constraint (within jurisdictions) as institutional veto players (such as second chambers, courts with powers of judicial review, and sub-State structures) and partisan veto players (for example, political parties). "-- Buckle, Board, Team or Network?: Understanding Cabinet, by McLeay?, Elizabeth, New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law, Volume 4 Issue 1 (June 2006)

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Weimar republic

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What factors contribute to the rise of organized crime?

Dimico, Isopi, Olsson, Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: The Market for Lemons says that others found that key factors in the rise of the Sicilian Mafia were a "weak state, a high regulatory burden, and a lack of public trust"; they suggest that further necessary factors were "high profits, a weak rule of law, a low level of interpersonal trust, and a high level of local poverty".

A non-peer-reviewed report Sardell, Economic Origins of the Mafia and Patronage System in Sicily suggests that "the most effective policies for reducing mafia power are those that decrease the demand for private protection services by reducing the threat of banditry in society" after studying "Japanese yakuza, Hong Kong triads, Russian mob, Shiite gangs in 19th-century Ottoman Iraq, and Ugandan drinking companies and vigilante groups" and making a model.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris_(Romani_court)

(maybe more information is in the book "Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture edited by Walter O. Weyrauch"?)

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todo what about governance examples from nomadic pastoralist peoples?

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" The court is, by design, the “least dangerous” branch, in Hamilton’s words. It lacks both the power of the sword and the power of the purse, and therefore must rely on the explicitly “political” branches—the executive and the legislature—to enforce its decisions. It therefore cannot speed too far ahead, or lag too far behind, the existing political consensus. Political scientist Robert Dahl got it right six decades ago when he wrote that “except for short-lived transitional periods … the Supreme Court is inevitably a part of the dominant national alliance,” and “in the absence of substantial agreement within the alliance, an attempt by the Court to make national policy is likely to lead to disaster.”

Nor should we want it any other way. The linchpin of democratic legitimacy is consent, and a tribunal of unelected judges who could dictate national policy without the consent of the electorate or the political branches would be an illegitimate institution in a democratic society. The Supreme Court cannot countermand the political branches unless the political branches acquiesce to its rulings. Historically they have, but only because historically the court has not cut loose from the dominant national alliance—at least, not for long.

Which is not to say that the court is an irrelevant institution. To the contrary, and notwithstanding its ultimate dependence on the political branches, the court still can serve a restraining function when the political branches stray too far from core constitutional commitments. It cannot “save a people from ruin,” as then–Harvard law professor James Bradley Thayer recognized at the end of the 19th century, but it can spur the political branches to reconsider decisions that disregard fundamental and widely shared values. In former Yale law professor Alexander Bickel’s oft-quoted words, the court can remind us of that “which may have been forgotten in the moment’s hue and cry.” " [16]

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http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsContents.htm https://www.amazon.com/Legal-Systems-Very-Different-Ours/dp/1793386722/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1550994518&sr=8-1

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge : """ A doge (/doʊdʒ/ DOHJ,[1] Italian: [ˈdɔːdʒe]; plural dogi or doges) was an elected lord and head of state in several Italian city-states, notably Venice and Genoa, during the medieval and Renaissance periods. Such states are referred to as "crowned republics".

Etymology The word is from the Venetian language, reaching English via French. Doge, along with the related English word duke and the Italian duce, duca (masculine) and duchessa (feminine) all descend from the Latin dux, meaning either "spiritual leader" or "military commander". However, the words duce and Duca are not interchangeable. Moreover, Duca (duke) is an aristocratic and hereditary title.[2] The wife of a doge is styled a Dogaressa[3] and the office of the doge is termed dogeship.[4]

Usage The title of doge was used for the elected chief of state in several Italian "crowned republics". The two best known such republics were Venice (where in Venetian he was called doxe [ˈdɔze]) and Genoa (where he was called a dûxe [ˈdyːʒe])[6] which rivalled each other, and the other regional great powers, by building their historical city-states into maritime, commercial, and territorial empires. Other Italian republics to have doges were Amalfi and the small town of Senarica...

Selection After 1172 the election of the Venetian doge was entrusted to a committee of forty, who were chosen by four men selected from the Great Council of Venice, which was itself nominated annually by 12 persons. After a deadlocked tie at the election of 1229, the number of electors was increased from forty to forty-one. New regulations for the elections of the doge introduced in 1268 remained in force until the end of the republic in 1797. Their object was to minimize as far as possible the influence of individual great families, and this was effected by complex elective machinery. Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge. None could be elected but by at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors.[9] Initially, the doge of Genoa was elected without restriction and by popular suffrage. Following reforms in 1528, plebeians were declared ineligible, and the appointment of the doge was entrusted to the members of the Great Council, the Gran Consiglio.[10][11]

Term of office and restrictions of power In Venice, doges normally ruled for life, although a few were forcibly removed from office. While doges had great temporal power at first, after 1268, the doge was constantly under strict surveillance: he had to wait for other officials to be present before opening dispatches from foreign powers; he was not allowed to possess any property in a foreign land. After a doge's death, a commission of inquisitori passed judgment upon his acts, and his estate was liable to be fined for any discovered malfeasance. The official income of the doge was never large, and from early times holders of the office remained engaged in trading ventures.[9]

Originally, Genoese doges held office for life in the so-called "perpetual dogeship"; but after the reform effected by Andrea Doria in 1528 the term of his office was reduced to two years.[11] The ruling caste of Genoa tied them to executive committees, kept them on a small budget, and kept them apart from the communal revenues held at the Casa di San Giorgio.[citation needed] """ -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancery_%28medieval_office%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancery_hand

" By the time of Henry I (r. 1100–1135), the royal household was divided into five departments as described in the Constitutio Domus Regis. The Chapel—led by the lord chancellor—served the king's spiritual and secretarial needs. Subordinate to the chancellor was the master of the writing office (or chancery) who supervised the clerks who wrote various government documents. The Chamber was the main financial office within the king's government and also saw to the king's personal needs. The Chamber was led by the master chamberlain (Latin magister camerarius, later called the Lord Great Chamberlain), lesser chamberlains, and other officials. The next department was the Hall, led by the stewards who probably were four in number and served in rotation. The buttery was led by the butler. The constabulary-marshalsea constituted the outdoor staff (including a large number of hunting officials) under the authority of the constables and master-marshal. These officers also supervised the knights of the royal household, who formed the backbone of the king's army. Knights of the familia militaris or military household were often young men from prominent families for whom receiving military training in the king's household was considered a great honor. Others were younger sons forced to make their own way in the world.[2] The royal household grew out of the earlier "thegnhood". Among the most eminent and powerful of the king's thegns were his "dishthegn", his "bowerthegn", and his horsethegn or staller. In Normandy at the time of the Conquest a similar arrangement, borrowed from the French court, had long been established. Norman dukes, like their overlords the kings of France, had their seneschal or steward, their chamberlain and their constable. After the Norman Conquest, the ducal household of Normandy was reproduced in the royal household of England; and since, in the spirit of feudalism, the great offices of the first and second were made hereditary. Thenceforth they were held by the grantees and their descendants as a holder of tenure in grand serjeanty of the Crown.[1] " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Households_of_the_United_Kingdom

but note especially: "The royal household grew out of the earlier "thegnhood". Among the most eminent and powerful of the king's thegns were his "dishthegn", his "bowerthegn", and his horsethegn or staller. In Normandy at the time of the Conquest a similar arrangement, borrowed from the French court, had long been established. Norman dukes, like their overlords the kings of France, had their seneschal or steward, their chamberlain and their constable." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Households_of_the_United_Kingdom

"Dish-bearers (often called seneschals by historians) and butlers (or cup-bearers) were thegns who acted as personal attendants of kings in Anglo-Saxon England. Royal feasts played an important role in consolidating community and hierarchy among the elite, and dish-bearers and butlers served the food and drinks at these meals. Thegns were members of the aristocracy, leading landowners who occupied the third lay (non-religious) rank in English society after the king and ealdormen. Dish-bearers and butlers probably also carried out diverse military and administrative duties as required by the king. Some went on to have illustrious careers as ealdormen, but most never rose higher than thegn. " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish-bearers_and_butlers_in_Anglo-Saxon_England

which makes it sound like a relatively low position but:

" Disc thegn: A dish-bearer or sewer. The word is the Old English equivalent of discifer . To judge from the land and wealth granted to various discthegns in the charters, it was not a humble position. Discifer: A dish-bearer or sewer. When held in a royal household the office was of rather higher standing than the Modern English words might imply. " -- https://pase.ac.uk/reference/glossary.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_France (later) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancien_R%C3%A9gime#Conseil_du_Roi

" Officers of the Maison du Roi were directly responsible to the Grand maître de France (Chief Steward)." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_du_Roi#Great_Officers_of_the_Royal_Household

"The Grand Master of France (French: Grand Maître de France) was, during the Ancien Régime and Bourbon Restoration in France, one of the Great Officers of the Crown of France and head of the "Maison du Roi", the king's royal household. The position is similar to that of Lord Steward in England. " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Master_of_France

"The Constable of France (French: Connétable de France, from Latin comes stabuli for 'count of the stables') was lieutenant to the King of France, the first of the original five Great Officers of the Crown (along with seneschal, chamberlain, butler, and chancellor) and the commander-in-chief of the Royal Army. He was, at least on paper, the highest-ranking member of the French nobility. The Connétable de France was also responsible for military justice and served to regulate the Chivalry. His jurisdiction was called the Constabulary (connestablie; or in modern French orthography which sticks closer to the correct pronunciation: connétablie). " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constable_of_France

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constable_of_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneschal#In_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Chamberlain_of_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Butler_of_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_France

" The Grand Chamberlain of France (French: Grand Chambellan de France) was one of the Great Officers of the Crown of France, a member of the Maison du Roi ("King's Household"), and one of the Great Offices of the Maison du Roi during the Ancien Régime ... At its origin, the position of Grand Chamberlain entailed oversight of the king's chamber and his wardrobe, but in October 1545, the position absorbed the duties of the position of Grand Chambrier, which was suppressed by François I, and the Grand Chamberlain became responsible for signing charters and certain royal documents, assisting at the trial of peers, and recording the oaths of homage to the Crown, among other duties. ... The political importance of the Grand Chamberlain stemmed from his having permanent access to the King's Chamber. His symbol of office was the keys to the royal apartments, which he always carried; in token of which, he was permitted to place two gold keys in saltire behind his coat of arms. He also was entitled to carry the banner of France. In rank, the position was between the Grand Maître de France and the Grand Écuyer. During a lit de justice, he sat at the king's feet. "

"The Grand Butler of France (French: Grand bouteiller de France) was one of the great offices of state in France, existing between the Middle Ages and the Revolution of 1789. Originally responsible for the maintenance of the Royal vineyards, and provisioning the court with wine, the Grand Butler's role became less and less important and more ceremonial over time." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Butler_of_France todo: https://www.google.com/search?q=Grand+bouteiller+de+France+Grands+officiers

" In France, under the Ancien Régime, the officer of state responsible for the judiciary was the Chancellor of France[1] (French: Chancelier de France). The Chancellor was responsible for seeing that royal decrees were enrolled and registered by the sundry parlements, provincial appellate courts. However, since the Chancellor was appointed for life, and might fall from favour, or be too ill to carry out his duties, his duties would occasionally fall to his deputy, the Keeper of the Seals of France (Garde des sceaux de France). " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_France

"the original five officers of the royal household: the Sénéchal, Chambrier, Connétable, Bouteiller and Chancelier" -- https://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/officiers.htm

""" The chief officers of the king, in charge of war, justice, finance, the king's household, took early on the title of Officers of the Crown to distinguish themselves from all other officers. Around the 12th century, the list of Great Officers settles down to the senechal, constable, chancellor, butler and chamberlain. The office of senechal was abolished in 1190 because its holders were acquiring too much power. Over the course of the Middle Ages, kings tried to similarly curb the other officers. The office of constable was abolished in 1627, other offices were either abolished or reduced to purely ceremonial posts, left in the hereditary possession of a family. ... Traditionally, the Great Officers cannot be removed once appointed. They are entitled to the style of "my cousin" by the king. Their powers extend over the whole kingdom, and they preside over the relevant administrations (corps de l'Etat). Other officers are merely Officers of the King's Household.

Connétable

The Connétable (Constable in English) was one of the original five officers of the royal household: the Sénéchal, Chambrier, Connétable, Bouteiller and Chancelier. The office is a very ancient one, since it existed in the late Roman Empire (comes stabuli, count of the stable). After the abolition of the office of Sénéchal in 1191, the Connétable was the most important officer in the army. His insign of office was the straight sword, which represented the king's sword whose care was his. He carried before the king during the coronation ceremony. The same sword appears, held by a hand issuant from a cloud, on both sides of his coat of arms.

As first officer of the crown, he ranked in precedence immediately after the peers. He had the position of lieutenant general of the King both within and without the kingdom. The constable had under his command all military officers, including the marechaux; he was also responsible for the financing of the army. He also administered military justice within the host (the name of the jurisdiction was the connétablie), which he exercised with the assistance of the maréchaux (marshals) of France. This is very much in parallel with the Court of the Lord Constable, later called curia militaris of Court of Chivalry, which existed in England at the same time.

The duc de Bourbon betrayed in 1522 and passed to the service of the enemy of the king of France, Charles V. Since then, kings were careful in their choice of constable, and did not always replace him.

...

Chancelier

The Chancelier was the second officer of the crown (first officer after 1627). His function was that of head of the administration of justice. In ceremonies, he sat to the left of the king. His function was originally to be Keeper of the Seals, and to seal all royal acts, without which the acts were not valid.

In modern France, his appointment was for life; in fact, he was the only royal officer in the whole kingdom who did not automatically lose his office at the death of a king, and did not wear mourning. He received his commission from the hands of the king directly, before taking his oath of office.

...

Grand Maître de France

Head of the King's Household, to whom all the king's officers swore oath.

...

Grand Bouteiller-échanson

""" -- https://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/officiers.htm

https://www.google.com/search?q=S%C3%A9n%C3%A9chal+Chambrier+Conn%C3%A9table+Bouteiller+Chancelier https://www.google.com/search?q=S%C3%A9n%C3%A9chal+Chambrier+Conn%C3%A9table+Bouteiller+Chancelier&lr=lang_en

"Le grand chambrier de France était l'un des grands officiers de la couronne de France pendant l’Ancien Régime. Il s'agissait de l'une des charges conférant la noblesse héréditaire au premier degré dès le jour de l'entrée en fonction. Le grand chambrier était le chef de la chambre du roi. Sous les premiers Capétiens, le grand chambrier gérait le Trésor royal (ou Trésor du roi) avec le grand bouteiller." -- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_chambrier_de_France

"In the Middle Ages, a buttery was a storeroom for liquor, the name being derived from the Latin and French words for bottle or, to put the word into its simpler form, a butt, that is, a cask." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_(room)#Etymology

"..."butler"..., the household officer in charge of the buttery, and possibly also its provisioner (i.e., the sourcing and purchasing of wine)" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_(room)#Role_of_the_butler

" Bouteiller (en latin buticularius) était un titre donné au Moyen Âge à l'officier chargé de l'approvisionnement en vin d'une cour royale, impériale ou princière. Il pouvait aussi avoir un rôle d'échanson, ce qui signifie qu'il pouvait être amené à servir le roi à table dans les grandes occasions. Le titre apparaît en Occident à l'époque carolingienne. Le bouteiller est alors un des quatre grands officiers de la cour, avec le chancelier, le chambrier et le sénéchal. La fonction se diffuse alors dans la plupart des cours d'Europe occidentale. Dans les cours anglaises du Moyen Âge, il porte le nom de butler, qui a gardé les deux sens premiers d'échanson (celui qui sert le vin) et de bouteiller (celui qui gère les réserves de vin). " -- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouteiller

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lit_de_justice "In France under the Ancien Régime, the lit de justice (French pronunciation: [li də ʒystis], "bed of justice") was a particular formal session of the Parliament of Paris, under the presidency of the king, for the compulsory registration of the royal edicts. It was named thus because the king would sit on a throne, under a baldachin.[1] In the Middle Ages, not every appearance of the King of France in parlement occasioned a formal lit de justice. " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lit_de_justice

"The kings no longer changed their capitals as they had done during the age of agricultural economy ; Paris became their permanent residence. Here they were surrounded by a band of high court officials. There were five chief officials, the Senechal, the Chancelier, the Bouteiller, the Connetable, and the Chambrier. These offices were held as fiefs by the high nobility, and were practically hereditary ; the object of the kings was to place them as far as possible in commission by entrusting their responsibilities to ecclesi- astical or secular nominees, who were thus dependent only upon themselves.

In this way, as under Charles the Great, was formed a professional class of court officials, in which the first place belonged to the lawyers and the jurists, known as chevaliers es lois, knights of the law, to distinguish them from knights of noble blood. Of the high feudal offices there remained only those of Connetable, or commander of the army, the Chambrier, and Bouteiller. The number of the chancery officials, the notaries and seal keepers, increased, as did that of the lawyers and parliamentary officials...The growth of this bureaucracy, which was due chiefly to Philip IV., the Fair (1285-1314), naturally had its bad side, which was marked by an increased taxa- tion and a conjoined attempt to secure money in any manner. " -- https://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/james-bryce-bryce/the-book-of-history-a-history-of-all-nations-from-the-earliest-times-to-the-pre-ala-597/page-41-the-book-of-history-a-history-of-all-nations-from-the-earliest-times-to-the-pre-ala-597.shtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_of_the_palace (of which Sénéchal was claimed? to be a successor? in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Master_of_France : "The position" (Grand Master of France) "was a successor to the earlier positions of Mayor of the Palace and Seneschal of France.") "Under the Merovingian dynasty, the mayor of the palace (Latin: maior palatii or maior domus) was the manager of the household of the Frankish king. During the second half of the seventh century, the office evolved into the "power behind the throne". At that time the mayor of the palace held and wielded the real and effective power to make decisions affecting the kingdom, while the kings were increasingly reduced to performing merely ceremonial functions, which made them little more than figureheads (rois fainéants, 'do-nothing kings'). The office may be compared to that of the peshwa, shōgun, sarvadhikari or prime minister, all of which have similarly been the real powers behind some ceremonial monarchs. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneschal "The word seneschal (/ˈsɛnəʃəl/) can have several different meanings, all of which reflect certain types of supervising or administering in a historic context...Most commonly, a seneschal was a senior position filled by a court appointment within a royal, ducal, or noble household during the Middle Ages and early Modern period – historically a steward or majordomo of a medieval great house.[1][2] In a medieval royal household, a seneschal was in charge of domestic arrangements and the administration of servants,[3] which, in the medieval period particularly, meant the seneschal might oversee hundreds of laborers, servants and their associated responsibilities, and have a great deal of power in the community, at a time when much of the local economy was often based on the wealth and responsibilities of such a household. A second meaning is more specific, and concerns the late medieval and early modern nation of France, wherein the seneschal (French: sénéchal) was also a royal officer in charge of justice and control of the administration of certain southern provinces called seneschalties, holding a role equivalent to a northern French bailiff (bailli). ... The scholae in the late Roman Empire referred to the imperial guard, divided into senior (seniores) and junior (juniores) units. The captain of the guard was known as comes scholarum.[8] When Germanic tribes took over the Empire, the scholae were merged or replaced with the Germanic king's warband (cf. Vulgar Latin *dructis, OHG truht, Old English dryht) whose members also had duties in their lord's household like a royal retinue.[9] The king's chief warbandman and retainer (cf. Old Saxon druhting, OHG truhting, truhtigomo OE dryhtguma, dryhtealdor), from the 5th century on, personally attended on the king, as specifically stated in the Codex Theodosianus of 413 (Cod. Theod. VI. 13. 1; known as comes scholae).[10] The warband, once sedentary, became first the king's royal household, and then his great officers of state, and in both cases the seneschal is synonymous with steward. ... In late medieval and early modern France, the seneschal was originally a royal steward overseeing the entire country but developed into an agent of the crown charged with administration of a seneschalty (French: sénéchaussée), one of the districts of the crown lands in Gascony, Aquitaine, Languedoc and Normandy. Hallam states that the first seneschals to govern in this manner did so by an 1190 edict of Philip II. The seneschals also served as the chief justice of the royal courts of appeal in their areas and were occasionnally seconded by vice-seneschals. The equivalent post throughout most of northern France was the bailiff (bailli), who oversaw a bailiwick (bailliage). "

so it sounds like in France, there were the Sénéchal, Chambrier, Connétable, Bouteiller and Chancelier. In English, seneschal, chamberlain, constable, butler, and chancellor. This was around the 12th century ("Around the 12th century, the list of Great Officers settles down to the senechal, constable, chancellor, butler and chamberlain." -- https://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/officiers.htm) ("The kings no longer changed their capitals as they had done during the age of agricultural economy ; Paris became their permanent residence. Here they were surrounded by a band of high court officials. There were five chief officials, the Senechal, the Chancelier, the Bouteiller, the Connetable, and the Chambrier." -- https://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/james-bryce-bryce/the-book-of-history-a-history-of-all-nations-from-the-earliest-times-to-the-pre-ala-597/page-41-the-book-of-history-a-history-of-all-nations-from-the-earliest-times-to-the-pre-ala-597.shtml). These were called the Grands Officiers (Great Officers), and at least later on they were called Grands officiers de la couronne de France (Great Officers of the Crown of France), but I'm not sure if the "...of the Crown of France" part was present early-on (when the seneschal was still one of them).

Sénéchal was originally highest in rank, but was deleted rather early because the role was getting too powerful. Connétable was next in rank (I think? not sure), and at least for some period later on was certainly first in rank. ("The office of senechal was abolished in 1190 because its holders were acquiring too much power. Over the course of the Middle Ages, kings tried to similarly curb the other officers. The office of constable was abolished in 1627..." -- https://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/officiers.htm). Otherwise I'm not sure about rank.

In England, there were the "five departments", Chapel (and chancery) (Lord Chancellor), Chamber (Master/Lord Great Chamberlain), Hall (about 4 stewards who rotated), buttery (butler), constabulary-marshalsea (constables and master-marshal). Chapel was spiritual, Chancery was secretarial, Chamber was personal and financial, Hall and buttery seems to be residence/entertainment/guests/food/drink, constabulary-marshalsea seems military. Which is justice?

The Chapel—led by the lord chancellor—served the king's spiritual and secretarial needs

("By the time of Henry I (r. 1100–1135), the royal household was divided into five departments as described in the Constitutio Domus Regis. The Chapel—led by the lord chancellor—served the king's spiritual and secretarial needs. Subordinate to the chancellor was the master of the writing office (or chancery) who supervised the clerks who wrote various government documents. The Chamber was the main financial office within the king's government and also saw to the king's personal needs. The Chamber was led by the master chamberlain (Latin magister camerarius, later called the Lord Great Chamberlain), lesser chamberlains, and other officials. The next department was the Hall, led by the stewards who probably were four in number and served in rotation. The buttery was led by the butler. The constabulary-marshalsea constituted the outdoor staff (including a large number of hunting officials) under the authority of the constables and master-marshal. These officers also supervised the knights of the royal household, who formed the backbone of the king's army. Knights of the familia militaris or military household were often young men from prominent families for whom receiving military training in the king's household was considered a great honor. Others were younger sons forced to make their own way in the world.[2]" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Households_of_the_United_Kingdom)

The constable "is very much in parallel with the Court of the Lord Constable, later called curia militaris of Court of Chivalry, which existed in England at the same time." -- https://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/officiers.htm. "The Grand Master of France (French: Grand Maître de France) was, during the Ancien Régime and Bourbon Restoration in France, one of the Great Officers of the Crown of France and head of the "Maison du Roi", the king's royal household. The position is similar to that of Lord Steward in England...The position was a successor to the earlier positions of Mayor of the Palace and Seneschal of France. " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Master_of_France

so it sounds like in France, putting aside the political power derived from their roles serving the king's household, the politically powerful subset of the 5 offices and their politically powerful functions were the following 4 roles: seneschal (administration of King's household and manor), chamberlain (most secretarial), constable (military), and chancellor (justice, also promulgation of royal acts/decrees ("Chancelier was the second officer of the crown (first officer after 1627). His function was that of head of the administration of justice. In ceremonies, he sat to the left of the king. His function was originally to be Keeper of the Seals, and to seal all royal acts, without which the acts were not valid." -- https://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/officiers.htm) ("responsible for seeing that royal decrees were enrolled and registered by the sundry parlements, provincial appellate courts. However, since the Chancellor was appointed for life, and might fall from favour, or be too ill to carry out his duties, his duties would occasionally fall to his deputy, the Keeper of the Seals of France (Garde des sceaux de France)." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_France)). later: wait, i think the chamberlain and butler both did finances, so the butler may belong on this list too?

and in England, putting aside the political power derived from their roles serving the king's household, the politically powerful 5 subset of the offices and their politically powerful functions were: Chancellor (secretarial/documents), Chamber (finance), miliary.

"A chamberlain (Medieval Latin: cambellanus or cambrerius, with charge of treasury camerarius) is a senior royal official in charge of managing a royal household. Historically, the chamberlain superintends the arrangement of domestic affairs and was often also charged with receiving and paying out money kept in the royal chamber" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamberlain_(office)

note: "Sous les Mérovingiens, les officiers de la couronne furent le maire du palais, les ducs ou gouverneurs des provinces, les comtes ou gouverneurs des villes, les comtes du palais, le comte de l'étable qui devint le connétable, le référendaire qui se transforma en chancelier, le chambrier ou chambellan. " -- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_office_de_la_couronne_de_France

-- so the union of the roles in the previous section (the royal household of King Henry I as described in the Constitutio Domus Regis, and the grand chambrier de France TODO in France, when? maybe the Merovingian dynasty?):

the political powerful subset:

English officer name N/A? TODO but https://pase.ac.uk/reference/glossary.html says a "sewar" was quite high; but https://www.google.com/search?q=%22sewar%22+%22royal%22+%22steward]] has no good hits so maybe this is different? So should we say N/A or should we say Sewar / Steward / dish-bearer / Disc thegn / Discifer?in England: master of the chancery / writing office, who was subordinate to the chancellor in England ; in France: Chamberlain (Chambrier)"constabulary-marshalsea"? TODO is the really an English great office's name, or is it not a unified office and the author was just comparing it to the French Constable? (that's the office name; this office was "under the authority of the constables and master-marshal". These officers also supervised the knights of the royal household, who formed the backbone of the king's army" [17] (French constable is Connétable, and French for marshal is maréchal)N/A Chamberlain


French officer name (French translation)	functions (only the politically powerful ones listed here)	older, household functions	at the time period under discussion (TODO: specify which years), was there a great office with these functions in England only, France only, or both
Mayor of the Palace / Seneschal (Maire du palais / Sénéchal)	administration of King's household and manor	head of the royal household TODO confirm	France only [[but_the_household_portfolio_is_later_moved_to_the_Grand_Master,_which_is_like_an_English_steward?]]
most secretarial, documents	France:Chamber	both [[but_only_one_of_the_main_officers_in_France?]]
constable (Connétable)	military	England: the outdoor staff (including a large number of hunting officials)) [[note: this comes from latin "comes stable", count of the stable, but I don't think this role principly involves horses in either England or France by the time period that we are talking about (other than that knight ride horses) TODO confirm that and cite]]	both? TODO or one, or neither? see the todo earlier in this entry ; also note that at some point of the l'époque carolingienne, the Constable is left out: "Le bouteiller est alors un des quatre grands officiers de la cour, avec le chancelier, le chambrier et le sénéchal." -- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouteiller
chancellor (Chancelier, Référendaire)	justice, also promulgation of royal acts/decrees	chapel, even in France? TODO confirm	France only [[but_the_household_portfolio_is_the_same_as_the_English_Chancellor?]]	TODO France only? who is in charge of Justice in England? Who promulates royal decrees in England?
Chambrier and Bouteiller [[Sous les premiers Capétiens, le grand chambrier gérait le Trésor royal (ou Trésor du roi) avec le grand bouteiller." -- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_chambrier_de_France]]	finance	England: Chamber France: chamberhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambre_du_Roi https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_chambrier_de_France, TODO what is the household role of the grand Bouteiller in France at this time?	both

and other roles without political power or solely concerned with the king's household, what what their role was:

butler (Bouteiller): buttery (that is, wine) [[in_France,_the_Bouteiller_was_also_sometimes_a_cupbearer_on_special_occasions?]]
Lord Steward / Grand Master (Sovereign Master of the Hotel of the King / Souverain Maître d'hôtel du Roi' / Grand Maître d'hôtel du Roi / Grand Maître de France): Household (TODO), Hospitality (TODO nothing I read used the word hospitality; is that word appropriate? If so, either find a citation using that word, or mention how I'm using it and explain why) / England:Hall
in England: the Hall is "led by the stewards who probably were four in number and served in rotation." -- [18]
in France: the Grand Master "was a successor to the earlier positions of Mayor of the Palace and Seneschal of France. " -- [19]
see also: "maî·tre d'hô·tel / maître d': the person in a restaurant who oversees the waitpersons and busboys, and who typically handles reservations. the manager of a hotel." -- Google's English dictionary (see also https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ )
constabulary-marshalsea: "The constabulary-marshalsea constituted the outdoor staff (including a large number of hunting officials) under the authority of three to four constables and a master-marshal." -- [20], citing Green, Judith A. (1986). The Government of England under Henry I. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511560248. ISBN 9780511560248 (alternate, search).
TODO: any others?

summary table of roles:

portfolio administration of King's household and manor secretarial, documents, signing charters and letters military justice, promulgation finance/tax N/A? TODO N/A? TODO


French official's name	English official's name	associated houshold role in France	related household role(s) in England
Maire du palais / Sénéchal	TODO	head of the royal household TODO confirm	TODO
Chambrier	master of the chancery / writing office, who was subordinate to the chancellor	Chamber	related to Chapel
Connétable	constables and master-marshal	none (TODO confirm)	outdoor staff including hunting
chanceller	TODO	chapel? TODO confirm	TODO
chambrier, bouteiller	chamberlain	chamber, wine	head of royal household TODO confirm
Bouteiller	butler	buttery (wine) and cupbearer	buttery
Steward / Grand Master (Sovereign Master of the Hotel of the King / Souverain Maître d'hôtel du Roi' / Grand Maître d'hôtel du Roi / Grand Maître de France)	Lord Steward	TODO head of the household? hospitality?

In other words, I'm not sure (TODO) if there are any roles that were held by a single great official in both of France and England at the times under discussion. In France, they had single great officals for administration of King's household and manor, military, justice/promulation, and two great officials involved in finances/tax, one of which also did secretarial. In England, they had a single great official for finance, a subofficial for secretarial, and apparently multiple military officials (constables and the master-marshal) TODO, and TODO who did justice in England?.

later?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curia_regis

later, " In the hierarchical order established by Henry III in 1582, the Great Officers of the Crown of France were:

1. Constable of France (French: Connétable de France), the First Officer of the Crown and highest commander of the French army, until the position was suppressed in 1626. 2. Grand Chancellor of France (French: Chancelier), ran the judicial system. The chancellor was assisted in his tasks by the Keeper of the Seals. 3. Grand Master of France (French: Grand maître de France), similar to the title of High Steward, was head of the King's Household. 4. Grand Chamberlain of France (French: Grand chambellan de France), in charge of the king's chamber, with additional duties. ... " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Officers_of_the_Crown_of_France

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