An open instrument for citizens
The Captured Republic measures the distance between the rights a state guarantees on paper and the access a citizen can use without knowing someone. The law on the books is the easy half. Whether it answers when you knock is the half that decides who the state serves.
The idea
A captured state is rarely a broken one. The courts sit, the registry opens, the budget passes, the election is held. Capture lives in the gap between all of that working on paper and a citizen being able to use it without a patron, a connection, or a bribe.
Corruption indices count what changes hands. This measures something quieter and harder to buy back: the distance between the right you were promised and the access you can actually reach. A country can score clean on graft and still leave most of its people outside the counter, waiting for someone to know someone.
Name that distance and you can measure it. Measure it and you can close it.
Two instruments
The Captured Republic is built around a matched pair. The first names how far a republic has been captured. The second names what recovery actually looks like, in things a citizen can open, follow, and appeal.
The framework
Capture is not one failure. It runs through the ledgers where a state keeps its promises, and each one can be read for the same gap. The index and the toolkit are both built on them.
Who it is for
The same instrument answers two needs. A citizen wants to know where the state stands and what to ask for. An institution wants a sourced measure it can defend.
Removing a ruler is the easy part. Rebuilding the ledgers is the hard part, and the part that decides whether the next government inherits a republic or a machine. This is where the hard part starts.