The design process

Help us find where this fails.

This is not an invitation to agree with the design. Agreement is not what we need from experts. We need your expertise.

Submit one hard case, identify one failure mode, propose one fix, or review one research question. This page explains exactly what happens to your contribution, who decides when we disagree, and what you get in return.

The Process in Sixty Seconds

1. 1Design. The framework is drafted in the open, with a version number and a change log.
2. 2Adversarial review. Lawyers, scholars, and practitioners attack the draft: scenarios, failure modes, critiques.
3. 3Public testing. Revisions return to the public in preregistered national studies to see whether support survives the details.
4. 4Revision. When an attack gets through, the design changes until the attack fails.
5. 5Publish everything. The new version, the evidence, and the dissent go on the public record. Then the loop repeats.

The loop is already running. The current framework has a public version history, a preregistered replication study behind it, and published instruments, data, and analysis on honestgovernmentresearch.org.

Your Role, by Expertise

The unit of contribution is small and specific. Nobody is asked to master the entire design before contributing, and nobody is asked to endorse anything at any point.

• Legal scholars

  First askIdentify the strongest legal objection to one proposition in the current design and write a short critique of whether it is curable.

  Substantive critiques are published under your own name as citable design critiques, with the Institute’s response published separately. You can state plainly that you reject our preferred solution.

• Practicing and retired lawyers, judges

  First askA thirty to forty-five minute failure-mode review of one scenario: where would this break in litigation, administration, standing, remedy, or strategic behavior?

  One scenario review can lead to a small red-team panel or a recurring case docket. Contributions can be named, anonymous, or private, your choice.

• Political scientists and public-administration scholars

  First askGive us one institutional failure scenario and one measurable prediction. Under what condition would this rule produce strategic accusations, risk aversion, or selective enforcement?

  Design claims become preregistered hypotheses with public instruments, data, and code. Genuinely collaborative research follows normal authorship standards.

• Economists and mechanism designers

  First askA mechanism audit of one rule: actors, incentives, private information, strategic moves, and the pathological equilibrium if there is one.

  A successful break is a first-class contribution here, publishable even if the Institute rejects your proposed fix.

• Everyday Americans

  First askDo what no expert can do for you: say what is clear, what is confusing, what is convincing, and what is not. Or submit the situation you most want this framework tested against.

  Public comprehension results feed every revision, and scenarios from the public enter the same stress-testing queue as expert submissions.

Experts do not vote on public opinion, do not speak for the Institute, and do not become endorsers by participating. Standing research-advisor roles are offered after a first contribution, not before.

What Happens When You Criticize Us

Every substantive submission gets a disposition on the record. Nothing disappears into a suggestion box. The possible outcomes:

• Adopted. The design changed because of the critique. The change log links back to it.
• Partially adopted. Part of the critique produced a change; the response explains which part and why.
• Tested, not adopted. The concern was tested (legally or empirically) and the current design held. The reasoning is published.
• Deferred. The critique is real but depends on decisions not yet made. It stays open on the record.
• Outside scope. The submission is preserved and the reason it falls outside the current design is stated.

Rejection does not erase a critique. The critique, the response, and the current design stay visible side by side, and named dissent stays named. We will never summarize your view more strongly than you approved.

The Compact With Contributors

• Acknowledgment within two business days; triage within ten. A substantive disposition for accepted critiques normally within thirty days, unless the question requires a study.
• You choose how your contribution appears: under your name, anonymously on the public record, or privately to the team.
• Publication of a critique never implies that you endorse the right, the current draft, the Institute, or any advocacy.
• Material edits to a published contribution require your approval.
• No contributor, donor, or adviser has veto power over the design. Named experts do not substitute for public measurement: after expert-driven revisions, the design returns to preregistered public testing.

Who Decides What Changes

Open review works only when decision rights are explicit. Institute design staff prepare revisions and own draft dispositions. Outside reviewers advise; no individual reviewer has veto authority. Research-method decisions follow the preregistered protocols. The Institute’s governing body owns final institutional publication.

Where the Institute disagrees with a contributor, the disagreement is recorded, not resolved by prestige.

The Public Design Process

The framework is not finished, and finishing it is not a small-team job. Around mid-October, together with the results of the independent replication study, the Institute plans to open the design process to the public.

Two invitations go out at once. Scholars, lawyers, universities, and researchers are invited to examine the framework and how it would be implemented and enforced the way they examine any hard problem: question it, model it, test its assumptions, and help make it stronger. And everyday Americans are invited to do what no expert can do for them: say what is clear, what is confusing, what is convincing, and what is not.

The goal is fixed: government service that is honest with the public it serves. The way that standard is incentivized and enforced is flexible, and it is exactly the part the public process exists to refine. When an attack on the design gets through, the design changes until the attack fails, and the fix goes on the public record. Agreement is not what we ask for. Expertise is.

Get Involved

Pick the role that fits how you want to contribute. Every submission is read by the team.

The Institute is asking for research, criticism, and design refinement. Advocacy for the proposed law is conducted separately by The Right to Honest Government Action, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The two organizations are legally distinct.