Part III — The public power that serves it

17. How Public Power Is Built

Rights need institutions that can act, but a duty to help cannot justify every power claimed in its name. The design divides power by place and function, requires each office to show its authority, and preserves essential duties when an office is vacant or a government cannot be formed.

How can a proposal become law without disagreement becoming a permanent veto? The ordinary-bill cases distinguish Assembly passage, a reasoned return by the Regions Council and repassage. Other cases ask what authority remains when competence is disputed or a government cannot be formed.

Which tier holds which power

Power is divided among common, regional and local tiers, with different limits at each. The common tier's competence is enumerated — it holds what is listed and nothing else, and there is no residual or inherent common power to fall back on. Regional legislatures hold the remainder. Local self-government and its minimum competences are guaranteed rather than delegated at pleasure, and every locality must have accountable elected representation and enough lawful authority to do what it is given.

Subsidiarity keeps a function local unless cross-boundary effects, common equality or capacity require regional action. That necessity must be shown publicly and remain open to review. Common action still needs an enumerated competence. Displacement can be challenged in court and must be no broader than its grounds require. While the question is open, the disputed power stays with its last uncontested holder. Where there is no uncontested holder, an interim allocation may hand over only what is needed to preserve the floor and prevent irreparable harm, and it settles no competence.

What no tier may do is lower universal standing, the floor, equality, due process, core liberties or the commons limits. Equalisation and portability are the reason decentralisation cannot manufacture a cheaper class of resident: what is owed does not change when somebody crosses an internal border.

The bodies, and what none of them may do alone

The People's Assembly makes ordinary law and authorises revenue and spending. The Executive Council administers and executes the law under the Assembly's confidence. Review and remedy do not return to the same hand merely because it performed the act.

The ordinary-bill cases make the division concrete. A complete record of first passage, an unused return and public reasons gives the Regions Council authority to return that bill once. In the control, the record lacks the required unused-return finding and no return authority follows. A separate complete record of Assembly repassage under the same rule establishes its lawmaking authority. The Council cannot demand an extra threshold or an indefinite interval. Its objection requires reconsideration without acquiring a permanent veto over ordinary law.

These are distinct supplied records for the stages, not evidence that a bill was debated or enacted. The lawmaking power also supplies neither revenue nor spending authority; each needs its separate authorisation. Execution belongs to the Executive Council under its own mandate. Court review does not become an executive function merely because the executive must give effect to law.

Regional legislatures supply proportionate delegations to the Regions Council. Its equal aggregate regional weight is a territorial exception confined to its limited mandate, not a second population-based chamber.

No institution may establish the decisive facts of its own legitimacy, judge them, execute the result, audit itself and supply the final remedy. Dividing those functions creates routes for challenge; it does not prove that their holders are independent in practice.

What a public result has to contain

A claim that the Assembly repassed a bill still needs a trustworthy basis. The same problem arises whenever a recorded public decision is supposed to change who may act. A result needs both a decision and a way to challenge whether the record includes the people entitled to take part.

An election, a confidence decision, an initiative, a referendum, an amendment, a recall, an appointment, a removal, a succession or a secession all need the same thing before anything may be done on them: an authenticated, contestable record that identifies its authorised writer, the exact attested roster, a separate external assurance that the roster is complete, the proposal or candidate, person-bound effective submissions, the tally rule, the result, a challenge and recount route, correction, independent certification, and the source version the result affects. Missing approval never counts as approval.

The process separates roles. Election administration authenticates and classifies submissions. Independently authored assurance attests that the roster is complete. A result service computes and certifies under the legal rules. Authorised institutions then perform the removal, installation or transfer. Completeness needs redundant or alternate writers, because whoever can withhold it could otherwise block every authority that depends on it.

Without independent assurance, a supplied smaller roster does not reveal whether eligible people were omitted. The model can reason over a snapshot, count supplied witnesses and aggregate supplied weights. This constitutional route nevertheless relies on supplied result and completeness certificates; it does not authenticate them, resolve conflicting submissions or operate the changing electoral roll. A successful formal result proves no universal inclusion in an election.

Keeping public decisions answerable

Permission to act in an office is not the permanent answerability described earlier. A current, independently reviewed finding can withhold permission for an affected act without ending anyone's answerability or taking their standing, floor, ballot, speech or right to challenge.

Who controls the payment or the act

The political-money record must name the nominal payer and the controlling payer, as well as the kinds of payer, instrument and recipient. A shell name alone is not enough. Enterprise treasuries, unions and voluntary civic associations remain different kinds; relabelling cannot replace examination of who controls the payment. Missing information is not a finding of guilt.

An office's own, household or controlled-entity interests can require recusal and independent handling of the affected matter. Gifts from counterparties and dealings through former holders face relationship-bound limits. This is not a general ban on private employment. Amounts and cooling-off periods are left to ordinary law.

Office holders, candidates, parties and named political actors owe proportionate disclosure. The reader owes action on it. A separately established failure by that reader creates a duty on an independent alternate; silence alone proves neither the undisclosed fact nor misconduct by the bearer. These duties do not require publishing protected small-payer identities.

Who can participate and challenge

A district plan may not be drawn to entrench a party, coalition or incumbent, or to dilute a protected ground. The finding must establish the forbidden purpose; an outcome alone does not establish it. Independent electoral and constitutional review remain available, with protected-ground dilution also reaching equality review.

Elected members and groups that record that they do not support the government hold equal access to the information it supplies the Assembly, independent challenge, and a place in proceedings the majority cannot withdraw. The right does not depend on a party label. An association that fields candidates must provide member-elected leadership, member-controlled selection, equal member voice and free exit. A failure concerns the affected selection, not members' ballots or their candidacy by another route. It creates no power to ban a party.

A finding about a coordinated operation concerns its coordination and control, not what any person believes or whether an opinion is true. Consequences require the separate public-scale finding and remain limited to the affected function: disclosure, attribution, access, audit, challenge and remedy. An uncoordinated speaker is outside this route.

How somebody comes to hold an office

An office is not a person's property and it is not a gift. Independent appointments run on open nomination, reasoned qualification review and divided appointing sources. Mandates are staggered and nonrenewable, and removal is for stated cause after independent fact-finding and confirmation by another body.

It is unlawful for one current government, chamber, party coalition, profession or appointing source to hold majority appointment control of a court or an independent oversight body. Divided sources do not by themselves prove that the same coalition does not control them. The records allow direct and de facto control to be stated and challenged. They do not demonstrate that capture has been detected or prevented.

Every office needs a democratic or legal source, a mandate, a jurisdiction, a delegation boundary, conflict and recusal rules, a finite end condition, a successor, a review route and a duty to give public reasons. Exact durations and calendars are implementation choices inside those constraints, and they need their own source-bound temporal contracts: the custody route cannot be borrowed as an office term or an election clock.

When nobody can agree

Failure to form a government does not create emergency power. The last lawful government continues under a tightly limited caretaker mandate: it preserves the floor and essential legal continuity, administers existing law, and may take no avoidable irreversible policy action. When independently supplied time evidence establishes the constitutional deadline, ordinary caretaker authority ends and the electoral body has both a duty and the authority to call a fresh election. Missing or disputed time evidence cannot preserve ordinary incumbent power.

The fresh-election case tests the point at which authority follows. A complete record includes matching source, evidence and review findings that the deadline has passed. The electoral body derives authority to call the election. In the control, those findings are withheld while the rest of the record remains; the authority does not derive. Naming a deadline and an electoral body cannot substitute for the required finding, and that finding still does not establish that a vote took place.

Budget deadlock cannot suspend the floor or essential services. The treasury functions continue the last lawful authority for an enumerated continuity set only, with a public basis, independent audit, expedited court review and a source-bound end. Deadlock authorises no new programme and no permanent spending power.

The Assembly removes a government only by choosing its successor, and a certified successor immediately ends the predecessor's authority. An outgoing holder's refusal to acknowledge the result, hand over records or leave office does not extend the mandate. Historical answerability survives removal; current office and current power do not. No required reviewer may turn silence into approval, and no unavailable reviewer may acquire a permanent withholding veto: every consequential route needs a predeclared alternate with the same limits.

Leaving

A region may leave through an agreed constitutional settlement. Its referendum may open negotiations and does not accomplish an exit. Exit requires federal agreement, a constitutional-rights review, settlement of borders, assets, debts, commons, floors and minority protections, and final ratification by the affected population. A declaration on its own has no legal effect.

The settlement has to carry the people, not just the map: continuing protection for those who lose membership, prevention of statelessness, the position of residents who do not move, cross-border family and cultural relations, treaty succession, and the disposition of records that affect individual rights. Where an exit would transfer, extinguish or irreversibly impair collective land or resource title, the actual collective consent requirement applies.

The armed forces' mandate is external only, so the republic holds no military instrument against a unilateral exit. Legal invalidity, ordinary policing under the imminent-threat-to-life standard, and negotiation are the responses available, and defence, trade, border, payment and service levers may not be turned against a region seeking or completing a lawful exit.

The child with nobody

Nell remains a person and is owed expression. The vocabulary entries supply no office, ballot, void or prisoner conclusion for the child.

The ombudsperson and rights advocate have mandates to assist people unable to act alone. The institutions must serve Nell without making officeholding or political eligibility a condition of help. A mandate does not establish that a helper arrived.

Authority and performance

A complete power record establishes the specified legal authority, not a staffed or funded institution, a convened Assembly or an election held. Seats, selector allocations and calendars must be implemented within the constitutional constraints. Actual independence and performance need evidence beyond the rules.

The structure gives each public act a source, limits, an end and a route to challenge. The next chapter turns to the person who helps authorise that structure, including the voter whom the State has confined.