Aretae keeps trying to define formalism in one or two sentences, and I keep feeling very dissatisfied with the definitions. So I decided to think about it a bit, and try to create a succinct summary of formalism. Unfortunately, I could not get close to one sentence. Part of the problem is that formalism is not so much an ideology, but rather a collection of practical wisdom gathered from the study of past and present polities. Thus I cannot really reduce formalism to one sentence without stripping away all its unique insights. So here is the shortest I could make it - formalism in 16 sentences. If you want a full 2,500 word version, check out my draft of principles of formalism.

Authority is conserved. For any possible action that affects multiple people, some one (or some group) must have the ultimate decision making authority. Good governance is thus a matter of putting the decision making authority in a chain of accountability that ends with people who have the personal incentive or disposition to make a just decision. From the study of history, formalists have observed the following general truths about how this is to be done:

• Rulers chosen by a lawful process have far better records than rulers who take power through violence or fraud.

• Fixed share systems (like joint stock corporations) are more efficient and less prone to conflict than non-fixed distributive systems (like when voting blocks can organize and vote to transfer slices of the national pie to themselves).

• popular democracy is a destructive form of government because factions and parties form that expend all their energy engaged in destructive conflicts over dividing the pie, rather than figuring out how to grow the pie.

• managed democracy is not a responsible form of government, because the media, academia, and civil service are not held accountable for their decisions. Plus it still has the problems of popular democracy, only in a less virulent form.

• A government is a property owner, it owns an alloidial title to a very large territory. If you wish to deny its legitimacy or redirect its flow of rents (taxes), expect violent resistance from the beneficiaries/controllers of the government.

• If you have a good government, you also want that government to be a strong government.

• Coherent governance structures are generally more responsible than fractured structures, since in a fractured system each faction will enrich itself at the expense of the whole.

• Property rights and simple, negative law are essential, because they bar people from getting wealthy by stealing the pie, and therefore force people to grow the pie in order to better themselves.

• The best governments have been strong enough to enforce property rights and rule of law over a large territory, but possessed enough wu wei to not inflict large amounts of oppressive positive law.

• A constitution cannot enforce itself, and therefore must be designed to be a stable Schelling point for the military.

If I really stretch myself, perhaps I can get the summary down to four sentences: "The state's ownership of its country should be legitimized. The benefits of the state converted into shares. Only the responsible should get voting shares. The state is thus converted from a destructive roving bandit to a stationary bandit that will act out of enlightened self-interest."

Heck, let's try for one sentence: "The ruling elite should be converted from a destructive roving bandit to a responsible, property owner acting out of enlightened self-interest."

Hey, I'm on a roll. Let's go for four words and alliteration: "Sovereignty should be securitized"

That one sentence is not perfect though. So if you're going to criticize my Finbarrian Formalism, attack the sixteen sentence version, or even my 2,500 draft of the principles of formalism.

While we're defining "formalist", I should briefly talk about the word "reactionary". Being hardcore property rights and against democracy was the conventional wisdom hundreds of years ago, but is considered evil and anti-progressive today. Since the formalist reads and learns and derives many principles from these past thinkers, a formalist is thus a reactionary. Not all reactionaries are formalist, but all formalists are reactionary.

For myself, I consider my reading of history and of the present to be reactionary. I consider my prescription for the future to be formalist. I don't like to use the word reactionary for my prescriptions since I tend to propose an amalgamation of past ideas plus the best of the present, with some modern twists. Calling my prescriptions reactionary can be a little misleading, although not entirely inaccurate. I don't advocate a straight up restoration of the Stuarts (although it is possible that restoring the Stuarts would be better than the existing rulers in Britain).