Levels of rules — operational, collective-choice, constitutional, meta; nesting and level-shifting
The idea
Rules nest: operational rules govern day-to-day action; collective-choice rules determine who may change operational rules and how; constitutional-choice rules determine who crafts collective-choice rules; a rarely analyzed metaconstitutional level (cultural constraints on what counts as legitimate) underlies all (Ostrom 2007, pp. 44–45; McGinnis pp. 8–9). Two consequences: changes at one level occur within a "fixed" deeper level, and deeper rules are costlier to change, which stabilizes expectations (Ostrom p. 44). Collective-choice activity = prescribing, invoking, monitoring, applying, enforcing rules (p. 46). Level shifts happen inside ordinary interaction without notice — the boss/employee "change the way we do X" example (p. 33). McGinnis adds the level-shifting strategy: actors ill-served in one arena move the question to an adjacent level, "also known as forum-shopping" (p. 9).
The Nostr engagement
Mapping: operational = posting, muting, reporting, filtering; collective-choice = relay policy changes, client defaults, allowlist edits, NIP adoption by implementations; constitutional = the NIP process and protocol core; metaconstitutional ≈ cryptography and key-ownership norms, changeable in principle but treated as fixed ({{ref:concept-governance-as-software|Governance as software}}). Nostr's distinctive property: all three levels emit the same observable substance (events, commits, config), so level shifts that Ostrom says pass unnoticed leave a timestamped trail — {{ref:claim-formation-observable|Formation is observable for the first time}}. Forum-shopping is institutionalized as costless relay exit: {{ref:concept-exit-voice|Exit, voice, and forking}}, {{ref:concept-interjurisdictional-competition|Interjurisdictional competition}}. Note the strain: most users never touch a relay's collective-choice arena (Ostrom's p. 32 condition for escaping open-access tragedy), yet governance still works — {{ref:q-does-competition-improve-governance|Q: Does interjurisdictional competition yield better governance?}}.
Sources
- Ostrom 2007, pp. 44–46 (levels, Figs. 2.2–2.3), 33 (unnoticed shift), 24 (challenge 5), 32 (collective-choice access). - McGinnis, pp. 8–9 (§6 incl. 6.4 meta, 6.5 level-shifting).
Related: - {{ref:emergentgov|Index}} - {{ref:src-ostrom-irc-iad|Ostrom 2007}} - {{ref:src-iad-guide|McGinnis 2010/2011}} - {{ref:concept-iad-framework|The IAD framework}} - {{ref:concept-rule-types|The seven rule types}} - {{ref:concept-polycentricity|Polycentricity}} - {{ref:claim-relay-spectrum|The relay spectrum}} - {{ref:q-maturation-hypothesis|Q: The maturation hypothesis (flagged conjecture)}}