Governments do not suffer from a shortage of decisions. They suffer from the difficulty of making decisions that are simultaneously informed, legitimate, explainable, contestable, and capable of being revised when reality refuses to cooperate.
The premise
The book treats public reasoning as an institutional process in its own right. A public question passes through framing, evidence, research design, disagreement, values, authority, implementation, monitoring, and reopening. Political choices occur throughout that chain, not only at the final vote.
The Reasoning Polity is a general framework for studying that process. It can be taught, criticized, compared, and applied without depending on any particular software platform.
AI analyses. Humans authorise.
Analytical competence is not political legitimacy. A model can be accurate without possessing standing; a recommendation can be persuasive without carrying legal authority.
The Asterbridge method
Asterbridge is a fictional polity used as a controlled teaching laboratory. Across the book, students build one cumulative Decision Dossier rather than completing unrelated exercises. Later evidence can change the meaning of earlier evidence, implementation can expose hidden assumptions, and decisions can be reopened without erasing their history.