Publishing a ruler's undertakings in permanent public form binds the ruler, by making departure from them visible.
Ashoka had his undertakings carved on rocks and pillars across the empire, in local scripts, stating what he had renounced and what officials were required to do. The mechanism is a commitment device: an obligation that everyone can read is one the ruler cannot quietly abandon, and the medium was chosen so that it could not be revised.
In practice
- A firm that publishes its supplier payment terms finds its own finance department bound by them.
- A government that legislates a target rather than announcing it has made missing the target a legal event.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works