Essays

Analysis of mechanisms, not motives

These essays explore how accountability weakens through pressure, hesitation, and ambiguity. They focus on structural patterns that repeat across institutions, rather than individual actors or events.

Essay: Measuring DoD Telework as a Program, Not a Preference

DoD’s revisions to civilian telework and remote work policy highlight a recurring governance problem: flexibility exists as a set of permissions until it is translated into measurable program objectives, constraints, and reviewable outcomes.

Essay: Conditional Enforcement of Federal Resources as State-Level Pressure

A mechanism-focused look at how federal funding conditions, grant administration, and enforcement discretion can function as political pressure on states—and how the process reshapes intergovernmental relations even when formal censorship is absent.

Documenting Moral Resistance

How documenting acts of moral resistance under coercion can break cycles of intimidation.

Essay: Federal Enforcement Operations, Use-of-Force Events, and Public Pressure Without Censorship

A mechanism-focused look at how federal enforcement actions—especially disputed use-of-force incidents—convert operational decisions into public pressure and procedural scrutiny without relying on censorship.

Essay: Oversight Gaps in Federal Awards and the Quiet Growth of Fraud Risk

A mechanism-first look at how incomplete adoption of oversight and fraud-prevention practices in federal awards can raise risk, even when program goals are widely supported.

Essay: Recycling Water at Scale as a Program: How Interior Learns, Tightens, and Repeats

Large-scale water recycling is often discussed as infrastructure, but it also functions as a repeatable program: applications, selection gates, cost-share rules, compliance review, and monitoring. GAO-26-107888 describes how Interior iterates on that process to reduce execution risk while responding to freshwater scarcity.

Essay: Targeted States as Political Pressure Points

Political campaigns often treat socially tense issues as deployable levers: they concentrate attention on electorally meaningful states, elevate symbolic conflicts, and use recurring coverage cycles to create sustained pressure. Minnesota offers a case where national messaging, local incidents, and media amplification interact in ways that can reshape incentives for officials and communities.

Essay: Investigating Federal Incidents: Jurisdictional Disputes Over ICE Shooting Probes

When a federal enforcement incident results in death or serious injury, the investigative process often becomes a jurisdictional negotiation. This essay explains how states seek involvement, what constraints federal systems impose, and where discretion and oversight shape accountability.

Essay: How SEC Staff Reports Shape Capital Raising Without Changing the Rules

SEC staff reports are a disclosure-and-feedback mechanism: they document observed market practices, translate them into an oversight narrative, and shift expectations even when no rule changes. That public record can affect how issuers, intermediaries, and investors price risk, choose pathways, and anticipate review.

Essay: How Hybrid Outreach Events Turn Rules Into Workable Compliance

Regulatory outreach events—especially hybrid sessions—operate as a process layer between formal rules and day-to-day implementation, translating requirements into shared procedures and reducing avoidable compliance friction for smaller regulated firms.

Essay: Oversight Gaps and Funding Discontinuity in U.S.-Supported UN Education Programs (West Bank and Gaza)

A mechanism-focused look at how federal funding conditions, congressional reporting requirements, and reliance on external implementers shaped U.S. Department of State oversight of UN education-related efforts in the West Bank and Gaza—followed by funding discontinuation when reporting and verification gaps persisted.

Essay: Banning Lawmaker Stock Trading as a Self-Binding Accountability Mechanism

A ban on stock trading by lawmakers functions less as a single ethics gesture than as a repeatable institutional process: coalition-building, drafting constraints, routing the proposal through committees, and designing enforceable compliance rules that reduce conflicts of interest.

Essay: Prediction Markets and Political Events: Prices as a Public Signal

Political prediction markets turn news, priors, and private research into continuously updated prices that resemble probabilities. Recent growth highlights a repeatable mechanism: when settlement rules are clear, trading becomes an alternative channel for public engagement and information aggregation.

Essay: Political Turnover Mechanisms in Open-Seat Elections

An open congressional seat can trigger a predictable entry-and-winnowing process: recruitment networks expand the field, ballot rules and fundraising narrow it, and party and constituent decisions select a replacement. A crowded Georgia contest illustrates how turnover is structured less by a single moment and more by gates, incentives, and timing.

Essay: Tariffs as International Pressure in Territorial Disputes

Tariffs can function less as trade policy and more as a repeatable mechanism for geopolitical pressure: a reversible economic constraint that changes bargaining conditions without direct military force. Using reported tariff pressure tied to Greenland as an example, this essay explains how the process works and why it recurs.

Essay: Advisory Committees as a Rulemaking Input Channel at the SEC

A regulatory advisory committee is a structured way to gather stakeholder input without turning every policy question into a formal rule proposal. Using the SEC’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee vacancy process as a case, this essay explains how membership selection, meeting procedure, and publication norms shape what advice reaches rulemaking.

Essay: Dig Once as a Coordination Mechanism on Federal-Aid Highways

Federal “dig once” requirements operate less like a single construction mandate and more like a coordination process between transportation agencies and broadband/utility actors. This essay explains the procedural steps—designation of coordinators, utility-work notice systems, and review timing—and why implementation friction tends to appear at the state level.

Essay: How a DoD Business-System Modernization Program Reaches Abandonment

A mechanism-focused look at how governance gates, unclear ownership, and unmanaged integration risk can turn a large Defense Department IT modernization effort into an eventual cancellation and reset.

Essay: Contempt of Congress as an Oversight Escalation Pathway

A congressional contempt citation is less a single act than a staged process: subpoenas, negotiation, committee approval, chamber referral, and enforcement choices. Its practical effect depends on institutional discretion, legal constraints, and the incentives of actors who control timing and follow-through.

Essay: Oversight by Contract in the Federal Organ Transplantation Program

A mechanism-focused look at how HHS uses assessments, monitoring, and contract structure to manage weaknesses in a high-stakes, contractor-run public program—and what that pattern suggests for healthcare system management.

Essay: Executive Power Expansion as a Governance Process

A mechanism-first look at how executive power can expand inside a constitutional democracy through delegation, discretion, and institutional routing—using President Trump’s recent term as a case study for how guardrails are tested and re-shaped.

Essay: Executive Power vs. Judicial Oversight as a Risk-Management System

An executive branch and the courts interact through injunctions, appeals, and compliance pathways that translate constitutional conflict into timing, discretion, and institutional strain. This essay describes the mechanisms that turn judicial review into a practical constraint—and how a presidency can test those constraint channels.

Essay: Executive Power Consolidation Through Loyal Actors

A mechanism-focused look at how executive authority can consolidate when decision pathways are staffed by loyal actors, reducing internal guardrails and weakening self-restraint through changes in review, discretion, and accountability.

Essay: Airports as Transit Gateways: How Access Programs Reduce Road Congestion

Airport-to-region transit links are built through a repeatable process: align agencies, adapt infrastructure to aviation constraints, and use pricing and information incentives to shift trips from roads to rail and buses. The same mechanism applies to other high-demand destinations where curb space and roadway capacity are limited.

Essay: Shared Decision-Making Agreements with Tribes as Institutional Self-Restraint

Shared decision-making agreements with Tribes can function as a procedural constraint on agency discretion, converting broad government-to-government commitments into repeatable steps for public land and water management. This essay explains the mechanism, common workflow components, and how similar structures transfer to other governance settings.

Essay: Leadership Appointments as an Oversight Steering Mechanism at the PCAOB

SEC appointments to the PCAOB can shift oversight direction without changing statutes or formal rules, mainly by reallocating discretion across inspections, enforcement, and internal governance. This essay explains the procedural pathway and why leadership turnover functions as a repeatable steering mechanism in regulatory systems.

When Truth Becomes Optional

How accountability weakens without anyone being silenced

Pressure Works Better Than Censorship

Why modern power prefers hesitation over suppression

Corporate Power and the Fog of Accountability

How incentives replace censorship in modern institutions

Ownership, Power & Media

Why structure changes incentives without requiring bad faith