Can the implementers prevent capture, including their own collusion?

A design can distribute official titles while leaving one coalition in control. The test concerns practical control over the full decision chain.

SIRDA editorial hypothesis

Separating appointments, evidence access, funding, adjudication, and implementation can make a coalition's attempted takeover detectable and contestable. The design must identify actors outside each plausible controlling coalition who retain information and practical means of challenge. This hypothesis fails if implementers can remove those safeguards using powers the founding arrangement grants them.

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The argument

In the Plan A discussion, Thane Ruthenis presents the X* objection: implementers can choose a neighboring version of a safety plan that concentrates power in their hands. The inquiry treats that as an attack on its own proposed architecture.

Start with a control map. Who chooses the evaluators, pays the investigators, sees confidential evidence, appoints the judges, applies restrictions, and hears appeals? Follow ownership, funding, career incentives, and appointment rights across the map. Formal separation needs a practical mechanism for challenge at every consequential concentration.

Random selection from qualified pools is one mechanism to examine. It may complicate targeting a panel in advance, but pool selection, funding, and influence after appointment remain vulnerabilities. The research task is to identify the conditions under which counter-agency survives coordinated pressure and the coalitions against which it offers little protection.

Sources: 1a3orn: AI 2040: Is it Actually a Deal?; OECD: Preventing Policy Capture.

How to test it

Give an adversarial team the lawful powers and realistic resources of a plausible coalition. Ask it to capture the institution without violating the proposed constitution. A public record should show what the coalition controlled, what exposed the attempt, and what could actually stop or correct it.

Sources

AI 2040: Is it Actually a Deal?

Critique and replies on international decision procedures, disagreement, and concentration of power.

Preventing Policy Capture: Integrity in Public Decision Making

Analysis of capture mechanisms and institutional responses.

Related Ecosystem

Related failure conditions

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