civic-proof: a research site.
中文 ← mashbean.net

Series

The civic-proof series

A reading order. Twenty-five main articles, four retrofit anchors, one Taiwan deep-dive, one series capstone, one academic 0' restatement, and one Danielle Allen bridge — written between late March and mid-May 2026 by mashbean during a Fellowship at the Allen Lab, Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center. All pieces are work-in-progress.

▸ Start here

Three pieces if you have an hour. Skip the rest until you want to dig.

▸ Origin

The presentation at the Allen Lab Fellow Meeting on 17 April 2026 that started the series. Mashbean's voice, casual register; everything below is its unfolding.

▸ Normative anchors

The political-philosophical floor. Arendt's plurality, Habermas's validity, Pettit's contestation, Mouffe's agonism — the four-component conjunction the Public Realm Floor rests on.

▸ Engineering bearings

Where the floor meets concrete designs. Wallets, AI-agent delegation, civic-action receipts, selective-disclosure UX, the wallet-as-essential-facility argument, no-phone-home.

▸ Cases & comparative

Taiwan as a democratic-frontline deep-dive, Nordic BankID, cross-jurisdictional redress, DNS-vs-identity, and a cross-national quantitative test.

▸ Stress tests & boundary conditions

Where the framework gets pressure-tested: age verification's structural slippage, the passport-rooted paradox, pseudonymous participation, Sybil-resistance trade-offs, civic burden redistribution, inclusion rights.

▸ Retrofit anchors

Earlier empirical pieces, written before the series was a series, later folded in as anchors.

▸ Capstone, 0' restatement, AllenBridge

The series tries to close itself three times: the original capstone, the academic 0' restatement, and the Danielle Allen bridge essay.

▸ See also