The Civic Viability Assessment applies the nine-stage republican failure sequence documented by Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War to observable conditions in the American republic. Three analytical planes — Thucydides (historical pattern), Madison (founding design), and de Tocqueville (external baseline) — define the measurement space. The instrument operates in the present within that defined space.
Scores measure proximity to historical failure thresholds — not prediction. A composite of 67 means the republic is measurably closer to documented historical failure conditions than the founding baseline. It does not mean failure is imminent or certain. The founders built the architecture to absorb significant stress. The instrument measures how much absorption is occurring.
The Grand Jury Standard governs methodology: show what the evidence supports, stop where the evidence stops. The Zero Principle requires equal analytical standards applied to all political actors regardless of faction. Equal partisan discomfort is the proof of nonpartisan integrity. Both principles apply to every issue, every stage, every score.
The CVA applies Thucydides’ nine-stage republican failure sequence: Founding Conditions, Transmission Failure, Friction Removal, Vocabulary Capture, Demagogue Replacement, Catastrophic Overreach, Weaponized Institutions, Stasis, and Terminal Phase. Each stage is scored 0–100. Zero represents the founding baseline condition. One hundred represents the terminal condition as documented in historical collapse cases including Athens (338 BC), the Roman Republic (49 BC), and Weimar Germany (1933).
Equal analytical standards are applied to all political actors regardless of faction. No one’s zero is mathematically larger than another’s. If both parties are equally uncomfortable with the output, the instrument is working. Equal partisan discomfort is the proof of nonpartisan integrity — not a side effect of it.
Show what the evidence supports. Clarify versus prove. Stop where the evidence stops. The instrument does not conclude what cannot be established from the public record. Anonymous sourcing is treated as unverified inference unless corroborated by named sources or primary documents. The instrument is silent where the record is silent.
The CVA measures how close current conditions are to documented historical failure thresholds. It is not a prediction engine. A high score means the republic is measurably closer to conditions that preceded failure in historical cases — not that failure is certain or imminent. The founders built the architecture to absorb significant stress. The instrument measures whether the absorption is holding.
DISCLOSURE: This instrument was produced by human composition (PI) and the assistance of various AI models, including Anthropic. All assessments represent the analytical judgment of the author applied to documented publicly available sources. This is not partisan advocacy. Both parties are assessed against the same constitutional framework. Sources are cited in each issue’s stage assessment. · healthoftherepublic.com · Joseph Bruns, Principal Investigator