Published on August 19, 2024 2:05 PM GMT
One big hole in my set of frames and models of the world is that I don't understand how government works. I don't understand how the government of my native country (France) works, I don't understand how the government of the country I live in (UK) works, I don't understand how the governments of countries that matter for international coordination (US, China, Russia, Europe (not a country, but relevant player)) work.
I would like to fix this, both for my own understanding and because that sounds quite relevant to my own decisions about prioritizing various kind of works on preventing AI risks.
So I'm looking for resources that actually explain and distill:
- How various government works in detailsHow the laws are conceived, passed, discussedHow international treaties are negotiated and appliedWhat are the influences of the general opinion, the press, lobbying, all these different actors.
I'm aware that these technically fall into very different fields of studies, and jobs, and topics, but I'm hoping that there might be, somewhere, a synthesis.
To give a vibe of the ideal resource, it would be something like what Steve Byrnes would write if he was distilling political science and law making and international treaties instead of neuroscience.
I don't expect to get that sadly, but still curious to see if there are obvious resources that I couldn't find on quick google and asking around.
(Note: I'm really, really not interested in resources that try to make a point about some people being bad, some form of government being worse, all that stuff. Not saying it's not potentially important in general, just not useful for the kind of model I want to build. I'm much more interested in good descriptive compressions than in normative arguments)
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