In Apple City’s old quarter there is no parking after ten at night; a resident who disagrees parks there anyway and gets a ticket. This series asks how a government judges in particular situations, and to whom, and for what, its judgments must answer. First it clears away what a government is not: not an end, not a subject, not a duty-bearer, not a “we”; holding office and carrying out are not legitimacy; nor is it the source of basic rights.

A woman kept a stall on Levee Street for twenty years; she has died, and her daughter wants to carry it on. The rules say nothing of succession, so as a new application she is fortieth in line. Who makes a government’s judgments, in whose name they take effect, to whom and for what they answer; why rules cannot judge in anyone’s place and “I was only following the rules” shields no one; and what is left to ask when a question is heard but moves nothing.

In one night and one day Apple City laid hands on people three times: a patrol officer pinned down a man with a bottle, a social worker took a child away, the Tax Office froze a shopkeeper’s account. None waited for consent, and they did not rest on the same thing. On what grounds a government compels and where it stops: stopping, enforcement and substitute exercise each go along a chain of their own; compulsion must itself be a limit, and may protect channels but not maintain a direction.

In the winter of Year 7 the application counter of Apple City’s Housing Department is open as usual, but the assessment post has been empty for three years, and twelve hundred applications for a heating subsidy lie unprocessed. On paper the subsidy lacks nothing; it simply does not operate. What a government guarantees: for basic rights it gives backing and enforcement, not the core; for embedded recognition-based rights it keeps three things, no de-righting, no empty shell, withdrawal or amendment made in public and open to questioning; a guarantee kept does not make power legitimate by itself, and taxes are not the price of one.

Willow Ferry lies downstream of Apple City, and its intake shows a substance above the standard; Apple City answers in two sentences: “Our releases comply with the permit. The residents of Willow Ferry are not residents of Apple City.” One matter, several levels of government: every level is a construct, and there is an interior beyond the jurisdiction; who checks Apple City, and why the separation of powers follows conditions and is required at a threshold; the upper level does not swallow the lower, and the lower does not seal off exit.

On the night of the flood, Apple City’s mayor declared a state of emergency: a curfew, a high school requisitioned, residents outside the levee told to leave. The water went down in two weeks; three months later the renewal order still gave as its reason “The river is rising.” What holds in an emergency and what may go faster; how emergency powers are re-examined when their term runs out; who determines an emergency and who can bring it to an end; and, with three hundred beds for five hundred people, how a transition is made and responsibility attributed when something cannot be achieved.

In the autumn of Year 5 a parent asks: the water went down long ago, so why has the school not been returned? The hotline says it is outside its remit; the state ombudsman takes the complaint and looks into it, and a month after its report the emergency order ends. Who calls power to account, whether calling to account has a final bearer, and whether, once the question is answered, anything can actually move: the four functions of control, what follows a closed case, how a grant is taken back, capture, the cost of exit, the voting-position. The series closes here: a government can never be perfect, so the close lies not in completion but in being open to questioning.