A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 1
1. Question
Why does an approval procedure increase distrust in rule when only its form remains and its substance is lost?
2. Abstract
An approval procedure increases distrust in rule when only its form remains and its substance is lost because an approval procedure is originally an institutional operation that transforms rule into the will of the community and connects the judgment of the governing OS to the Execution Layer in a legitimate way.
An approval procedure is not a mere ritual. It is a connection procedure through which kingship, public office, institutions, war, reform, and other public decisions are accepted as the will of the community. Popular approval and civic recognition function as a device that transforms rule into the will of the community. They also transform obedience from mere subjection into self-involvement.
However, when only the form of approval remains and its substance is lost, the community no longer feels that “we approved this.” Instead, it feels that “we were made to have approved this.” At that moment, the approval procedure ceases to produce legitimacy. It becomes a device for staging legitimacy.
From the viewpoint of OS Organizational Design Theory, the hollowing out of approval procedures appears as a decline in H, that is, Human Resource Governance. In particular, the decline of PEV, the Validity of Rewards, Penalties, Promotion, and Demotion, and IC, Institutional Control, is important. When an approval procedure is no longer operated in substance, the institutional operation rate, which is a core element of IC, declines. As a result, PEV declines, and the health of H as a whole also declines.
When H declines, the OS can no longer correct and control the Execution Layer properly. In addition, the decline of IC also affects M, Maturity, and T, Trust, on the side of the Execution Layer. Therefore, the hollowing out of approval procedures is not a mere procedural problem. It is a structural problem that weakens the connection between the OS and the Execution Layer and increases distrust in rule.
3. Method
This study follows the structure of Three-Layer Analysis, or TLA.
In Layer 1, this study organizes the facts related to kingship, the Senate, the assembly, civic approval, the interregnum, the selection of kings, and the legitimation of royal power in Livy, History of Rome, Book 1.
In Layer 2, these facts are connected to structures such as kingship, the Senate, popular approval and civic recognition, institutional operation, legitimacy, approval procedures, the OS, Human Resource Governance, PEV, IC, M, and T.
In Layer 3, this study explains why the hollowing out of approval procedures does not strengthen legitimacy, but instead increases distrust in rule, from the viewpoints of TLA and OS Organizational Design Theory.
4. Layer 1: Fact
In Livy, History of Rome, Book 1, Roman kingship is not described as something established by force or bloodline alone. Kingship is the governing center supported by divine will, force, founding action, institutional design, popular approval, and senatorial approval.
The kingship of Romulus was established through city founding, augury, the integration of the people, the formation of legal order, and the establishment of the Senate. In other words, Roman kingship was not merely the rule of a strong man. It had to be connected to public order through communal approval and institutional design.
After the death of Romulus, there was no royal house that naturally inherited the throne. Therefore, the Fathers, who formed the Senate, operated the interregnum and managed the vacancy of kingship. After that, a structure was formed in which the people chose the king and the Senate approved that choice. This shows that kingship became a public governing center through popular approval and senatorial approval.
However, such approval procedures do not always function properly. Even if the assembly and the Senate exist, their approval can change into bribery, fear, performance, factionalism, favoritism, or mere ratification. In that case, the approval procedure no longer supports legitimacy. Rather, it becomes a device that uses institutional form to justify rule.
Here lies the danger of approval procedures. The existence of an institution itself does not guarantee legitimacy. What matters is whether the institution is operated in substance. If the institution remains but its substance is lost, the community no longer trusts that institution.
5. Layer 2: Order
In Layer 2, popular approval and civic recognition are understood as approval devices that transform rule into the will of the community. Kingship and public offices gain public form not only through force or bloodline, but also through the approval of the people. The purpose of this approval is to transform obedience from mere subjection into self-involvement.
Therefore, approval is an institutional conversion device. It allows the ruled side to receive a decision not as an order imposed from outside, but as a decision of its own community. However, when approval is distorted by bribery, fear, or performance, the form remains but substantive legitimacy collapses. This is the essential danger of formalized approval procedures.
The Senate is also deeply connected to approval procedures. The Senate is a higher-level decision-making body that strengthens kingship while also carrying its legitimation and continuity. It is connected to royal selection approval, the interregnum, the assembly, clan order, the aristocratic class, and decisions on diplomacy and war. It connects kingship to the continuity structure of the state.
However, senatorial approval can also become formalized. If the Senate becomes the king’s entourage, falls into factionalism or favoritism, and turns legitimacy review into a mere form, then the Senate no longer corrects kingship. It becomes a body that ratifies the privatization of kingship. In that case, the existence of approval itself becomes a source of distrust.
The same is true of kingship. Kingship is the governing center that carries founding, war, institutional creation, and judgment in one role. It is supported by military achievement, divine will, popular approval, senatorial approval, marriage networks, and crisis response. However, if approval and institutional design become hollow, kingship moves away from public order and approaches private rule, rule by fear, and usurpation.
From the viewpoint of OS Organizational Design Theory, the hollowing out of approval procedures can be understood as a decline in H, or Human Resource Governance.
H is the variable that shows whether the OS can properly control the organization through personnel, roles, rewards, penalties, promotion, demotion, and institutional operation. In a simplified form, H can be understood as follows:
H = Right Person in the Right Place × PEV
PEV means the Validity of Rewards, Penalties, Promotion, and Demotion. It shows the degree to which the OS can properly correct and control the Execution Layer through rewards, penalties, promotion, demotion, laws, rules, institutional operation, and informal judgments.
PEV can be organized as follows:
PEV = IC + NIC
Here, IC means Institutional Control, and NIC means Non-Institutional Control. This formula means that both formal institutional control and informal control compose the validity of rewards, penalties, promotion, and demotion.
IC can be organized as follows:
IC = Consistency of Written Institutions × Institutional Operation Rate × Moral and Ethical Realization Rate of Written Institutions
When an approval procedure becomes hollow, the institutional operation rate declines in particular. No matter how well-designed laws, rules, meetings, assemblies, senates, or review systems may be, they lose their power to justify governance if they are not operated in substance.
Even if institutional consistency is high, IC declines when the institutional operation rate is low. When IC declines, PEV declines. When PEV declines, the health of H as a whole also declines.
The decline of IC also spreads to the Execution Layer. In OS Organizational Design Theory, Maturity, or M, can be organized as follows:
M = (External Control IC + 1) × Moral Discipline MD
When IC declines, the power to correct human behavior through external control weakens. If Moral Discipline, or MD, is also insufficient, the Maturity of the Execution Layer declines. When M declines, the commands of the top OS are less likely to be reflected properly in the execution units.
Therefore, the hollowing out of approval procedures does not only lower H on the OS side. It also negatively affects M and T on the Execution Layer side. On the OS side, institutional operation becomes hollow. On the Execution Layer side, acceptance, trust, and self-involvement are lost. Both the ruling side, the OS, and the ruled side, the Execution Layer, deteriorate at the same time.
6. Layer 3: Insight
An approval procedure increases distrust in rule when only its form remains and its substance is lost because an approval procedure is originally an institutional operation that transforms rule into the will of the community and connects the judgment of the governing OS to the Execution Layer in a legitimate way.
An approval procedure is not a mere ritual. It is a connection procedure through which kingship, public office, institutions, war, reform, and other public decisions are accepted as the will of the community. When approval has substance, the community can receive rule as “our decision,” not as an order imposed from outside. At that moment, rule is transformed into the will of the community.
However, when only the form of approval remains and its substance is lost, this function reverses. The community no longer feels that “we approved this.” Instead, it feels that “we were made to have approved this.” At that moment, the approval procedure ceases to create legitimacy. It becomes a performance device for justifying rule.
From the viewpoint of OS Organizational Design Theory, this change appears as a decline in H. The hollowing out of approval procedures is a decline in PEV, especially a decline in the institutional operation rate within IC. Even if institutional consistency is high, PEV declines when the institution is not operated in substance. When PEV declines, the health of H as a whole also declines.
When H declines, the OS can no longer correct the Execution Layer properly. Who is approved? Who is promoted? Who receives authority? Which judgment is recognized as the will of the community? If these judgments are processed only formally and lose substantive review and correction, the Execution Layer stops trusting the institution.
This problem also spreads to Maturity, or M, and Trust, or T. When IC declines, the power to correct human behavior through external control weakens. If Moral Discipline, or MD, is also insufficient, the Maturity of the Execution Layer declines. In addition, when the institution is seen as not functioning, Trust in the Execution Layer also declines.
Here, the organization deteriorates on both sides: the OS and the Execution Layer. On the OS side, H and PEV decline, and institutional operation becomes hollow. On the Execution Layer side, M and T decline, and acceptance, trust, and self-involvement toward commands are lost. Therefore, the hollowing out of approval procedures is not a mere procedural problem. It is a structural problem that weakens the connection between the OS and the Execution Layer.
This structure is especially clear in popular approval and civic recognition. Popular approval and civic recognition are originally devices that transform rule into the will of the community. However, when approval is distorted by bribery, fear, or performance, the form remains but substantive legitimacy collapses. Precisely because the form of approval exists, distrust deepens. The community sees not “legitimate approval,” but “rule disguised as approval.”
The same problem applies to kingship. Kingship is connected to public order through approval and institutional design. However, when approval becomes hollow, kingship moves away from public order and approaches private rule, rule by fear, and usurpation.
The same is also true of senatorial approval. The Senate is a higher-level decision-making body that strengthens kingship and carries its legitimation and continuity. However, if the Senate becomes the king’s entourage, falls into factionalism or favoritism, and hollows out legitimacy review, it no longer corrects kingship. It becomes a body that ratifies the privatization of kingship. From the viewpoint of the community, the approval procedure no longer appears to be a mechanism that controls the king. It appears to be a performance that justifies the king.
At this point, approval reverses from a device that creates trust into a device that creates distrust.
If there is no approval procedure, rule is understood as open coercion. However, if an approval procedure exists but its substance has been replaced by bribery, fear, performance, factionalism, favoritism, or mere ratification, the ruler can claim, “This was approved by the community.” Then the community experiences a double sense of subjection. First, it is ruled in substance. Second, it is treated as if it had agreed to that rule. This double structure deepens distrust even further.
Therefore, when only the form of an approval procedure remains and its substance is lost, distrust in rule increases. Approval is originally a device that transforms rule into the will of the community and legitimately connects the judgment of the governing OS to the Execution Layer. However, when approval becomes formalized and causes a decline in PEV and IC, H declines. When H declines, the OS can no longer correct the Execution Layer properly, and Maturity M and Trust T also decline. As a result, the approval procedure no longer creates legitimacy. It becomes evidence that legitimacy is being disguised.
Here lies the danger of hollow approval procedures.
7. Implications for the Present
This structure also applies directly to modern organizations.
Modern companies and organizations have many approval procedures, such as meetings, approval workflows, boards of directors, nomination committees, evaluation systems, audit systems, and compliance procedures. These systems are originally designed to justify decisions, form acceptance inside the organization, and connect upper-level judgment to the Execution Layer.
However, when only the form of these procedures remains and their substance is lost, distrust inside the organization becomes stronger. For example, meetings are held, but the conclusion has already been decided. Approval workflows exist, but they only ratify the intention of upper management. Evaluation systems exist, but treatment is actually decided by factions or personal preference. Compliance procedures exist, but inconvenient information is ignored.
In such a condition, the existence of an institution does not create trust. Rather, members of the organization begin to feel that “the institution exists, but it does not function.” This creates deeper distrust than the absence of an institution, because the organization appears to be using institutions to make its decisions look legitimate.
In terms of OS Organizational Design Theory, this is a decline in H. In particular, it is a decline in PEV and IC. When approval procedures become hollow, the institutional operation rate declines. When the institutional operation rate declines, formal Institutional Control, or IC, declines. When IC declines, PEV declines. When PEV declines, Human Resource Governance, or H, declines.
In an organization where H has declined, appropriate people are not approved, correct judgments do not pass through the institution, and inappropriate people or judgments are ratified. As a result, the Execution Layer stops trusting the institution. In addition, the decline of IC spreads to Maturity M and Trust T. The front line begins to think, “The institution will not function anyway.”
What matters in modern organizations is not merely having approval procedures. What matters is whether approval procedures are operated in substance. Institutions do not create trust by merely existing. They support organizational trust only when they are operated according to their purpose, correct wrong judgments, stop improper decisions, and allow proper judgments to pass.
8. Conclusion
An approval procedure increases distrust in rule when only its form remains and its substance is lost because an approval procedure is originally an institutional operation that transforms rule into the will of the community and connects the judgment of the governing OS to the Execution Layer in a legitimate way.
When approval has substance, the community can accept rule as “our decision.” But when approval becomes only a form, the community feels not that “we approved this,” but that “we were made to have approved this.” At that moment, approval changes from a device that creates legitimacy into a performance device for justifying rule.
In terms of OS Organizational Design Theory, this is a decline in H, especially a decline in PEV and IC. When approval procedures become hollow, the institutional operation rate declines, and IC declines. When IC declines, PEV declines. When PEV declines, the health of H as a whole also declines. When H declines, the OS can no longer correct the Execution Layer properly.
In addition, the decline of IC negatively affects Maturity M and Trust T. As a result, institutional operation becomes hollow on the OS side, while acceptance, trust, and self-involvement are lost on the Execution Layer side. Both the ruling side and the ruled side deteriorate.
Therefore, the hollowing out of approval procedures is not a mere procedural defect. It is a serious failure of the governing OS that weakens the connection between the OS and the Execution Layer, disguises legitimacy, and increases distrust within the community.
9. Sources
Titus Livius, History of Rome, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwaya, Kyoto University Press, 2008.
OS Organizational Design Theory_R1.30.14