Governments & Institutions
170 government entities explored through the lens of biology. Central banks as homeostatic regulators. Regulators as immune systems. International organisations as colonial organisms with consensus constraints.
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority manages over $1 trillion, wholly dependent on oil revenues transferred at the discretion of Abu Dhabi's ruling fami...
AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO is a federation of 60 national and international labor unions representing 12.5 million workers. It serves as the political voice of organ...
African Development Bank
The African Development Bank is the premier multilateral development finance institution for Africa, established in 1964. Unlike other regional develo...
African Development Bank
The African Development Bank is the only AAA-rated pan-African institution, but this rating depends on non-African shareholders. By statute, African m...
African Union
The African Union is Africa's continental organization of 55 member states, successor to the Organisation of African Unity (1963-2002). Despite having...
AICPA
AICPA is the national professional organization for CPAs in the United States, representing ~431,000 members (66% of licensed CPAs). Unlike ABA or AMA...
American Bar Association
The ABA is the largest voluntary professional association for lawyers in the United States, founded 1878. Despite representing only 12-15% of American...
American Medical Association
The AMA is the largest professional association of physicians in the United States - but only 15% of U.S. doctors are actually members (down from 75%...
American Psychological Association
APA is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States with 133,000+ members. It holds exclusive federal ac...
Argentina
Argentina's economic history is a case study in institutional path dependence: the country has defaulted on sovereign debt nine times, most recently i...
ASEAN
ASEAN is a regional intergovernmental organization comprising 10 Southeast Asian countries, founded in 1967. Unlike the EU, ASEAN operates on principl...
ASEAN Secretariat
The ASEAN Secretariat is the administrative arm of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with the smallest budget of any major regional organiza...
Asian Development Bank
The ADB is Asia's regional multilateral development bank, founded in 1966 with Japan and US as co-dominant shareholders (15.6% voting power each). Des...
Asian Development Bank
Japan and the United States together control 26% of ADB's votes, giving effective veto over major decisions requiring supermajority approval. Every AD...
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
AIIB is a China-led multilateral development bank launched in 2016 with $100 billion in authorized capital. It was created partly as an alternative to...
AUKUS (Australia-UK-US Security Partnership)
AUKUS has no formal decision-making structure or unified command — a headless partnership where each nation retains sovereign authority and decisions...
Australia
Australia is the only continent governed as a single nation, and its political system reflects the geographic reality: a federation of six states and...
Austria
Austria's political system operates through grand coalitions between the two major parties (SPO and OVP) for most of its post-war history — a consocia...
BaFin
BaFin's Wirecard failure is a textbook case of immune system misdirection. When the Financial Times and short-sellers flagged €1.9 billion in phantom...
Banco de México
Twelve consecutive rate cuts. From 11% to 7% in fifteen months. Banco de México has executed one of the most aggressive easing cycles in emerging mark...
Bank for International Settlements
The Bank for International Settlements is the central bank of central banks — a Basel-based institution where 63 central bank governors meet bi-monthl...
Bank of Canada
November 2022: the Bank of Canada reported its first-ever financial loss—C$522 million in a single quarter. The culprit was quantitative easing deploy...
Bank of England
The BoE is the world's second-oldest central bank (founded 1694) and model for modern central banking. Granted operational independence in 1997, it se...
Bank of Japan
The Bank of Japan is the world's most interventionist major central bank, having maintained near-zero or negative interest rates for 25+ years and acc...
Bank of Japan
The BoJ is the world's only central bank to own equities at scale, holding ~7% of Japan's entire stock market value. After three 'Lost Decades' fighti...
Bank of Korea
December 2025: the won hit 1,472 per dollar—the weakest since March 1998, when the Asian Financial Crisis was dismembering Korean conglomerates. Gover...
Bavaria
Bavaria functions like a mature beech forest—an ecosystem where the tallest trees (BMW, Siemens, Allianz) don't dominate through shade but sustain a d...
Belgium
Belgium has taken an average of 170 days to form a government after each election since 2007, with the 2010-2011 formation setting a world record at 5...
Brazil
Brazil operates as a federal presidential republic with 26 states and a Federal District. As Latin America's largest economy and most populous nation,...
California
California is the sea otter of American governance—a keystone species whose choices reshape entire ecosystems far beyond its borders. When California...
Canada
Canada's federal system distributes power across ten provinces and three territories with an equalization programme that transfers roughly $24 billion...
Central Intelligence Agency
The CIA has two functions that fight each other: sensing (intelligence analysis) and acting (covert operations). The Iraq WMD failure demonstrated wha...
CFA Institute
CFA Institute administers the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, the 'gold standard' credential for investment professionals. With 200,000+ char...
CFTC
The CFTC regulates derivatives markets—futures, swaps, and commodity derivatives—overseeing $500+ trillion in notional value with only ~700 employees...
Chile
Chile's economy is the most open in Latin America, built on copper exports that constitute roughly 50% of export revenue and fund a sovereign wealth f...
China
Party above state, parallel to state, enmeshed in every level of state. Under Xi Jinping, the idea of China converging toward liberal systems is "thor...
CME Group
On November 28, 2025, a cooling system failure at a single Illinois data center halted 90% of global derivatives trading. CME Group's systems went dow...
Colombia
Colombia's 2016 peace agreement with FARC ended a 52-year civil conflict that killed over 260,000 people, but implementation has been partial: former...
Competition and Markets Authority
The Competition and Markets Authority is the principal competition regulator in the United Kingdom. Formed in 2014 by merging the Competition Commissi...
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The CFPB was created by Dodd-Frank (2010) with a unique dual-insulation funding mechanism: it draws from Federal Reserve 'combined earnings' rather th...
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic's economy is the most manufacturing-intensive in the EU: industry accounts for roughly 30% of GDP, heavily integrated with German a...
Denmark
Denmark's flexicurity model combines one of the world's most flexible labour markets (easy hiring and firing) with generous unemployment insurance (up...
DTCC
DTCC is the backbone of US financial markets, processing $2.5 quadrillion ($2,500 trillion) in securities transactions annually. It settles virtually...
Egypt
Egypt's governance has been dominated by military officers since the 1952 Free Officers Revolution — Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and now Sisi all came fro...
Environmental Protection Agency
The EPA is the principal U.S. federal agency for environmental protection. With approximately 15,000 employees and a $9 billion budget (less than half...
ESMA
December 2025: crypto service providers without MiCA authorization received ESMA's final warning—activate wind-down plans or face enforcement. The tra...
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
The EBRD is unique among MDBs: founded in 1991 to promote market economies in former communist states, with explicit political conditionality requirin...
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
EBRD is a unique development bank with a democracy mandate written into its founding treaty. Created in 1991 to support post-Soviet transition, it has...
European Central Bank
The ECB is the central bank for the eurozone's 20 member states, responsible for monetary policy, euro stability, and banking supervision. Established...
European Central Bank
The ECB sets monetary policy for the eurozone's 350+ million people across 20 countries. Unlike national central banks, it must coordinate 20 differen...
European Commission
The European Commission is a siphonophore—a colonial organism where genetically identical individuals specialize into feeding, defense, and reproducti...
European Commission DG COMP
DG Competition is the European Commission's directorate enforcing EU competition law across 27 member states, making it one of the world's most powerf...
European Court of Human Rights
December 2025: Russia's Supreme Court declared the European Convention on Human Rights void within Russian territory. This completed what began in Mar...
European Court of Justice
Sixty percent of cases arrive as questions, not disputes. A national court in Lisbon or Helsinki encounters EU law it cannot interpret, stops proceedi...
European Medicines Agency
The EMA coordinates drug approvals across the European Union's 27 member states through centralized procedures. Established 1995 in London, relocated...
European Union
Eighty percent. That's how often the EU Council of Ministers achieved consensus from 2010 to 2024, despite qualified majority voting being available f...
FAA
The FAA regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the United States, from aircraft certification to air traffic control to pilot licensing. With over...
FDIC
Before FDIC existed, bank failures were contagious. Between 1930 and 1933, over 9,000 banks failed—not because they were all insolvent, but because de...
Federal Communications Commission
The FCC regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. With only 1,512 employees overseeing a...
Federal Reserve System
In spring 2025, when President Trump publicly questioned Fed decisions and attempted to fire Governor Lisa Cook, something measurable happened: inflat...
Federal Security Service (FSB)
The FSB is an autoimmune system that attacks its own body's cells. Navalny was shadowed on 30+ flights over three years before being poisoned with Nov...
Federal Trade Commission
The FTC embodies the paradox of American regulatory capacity: immense statutory authority that oscillates between aggressive enforcement and strategic...
Financial Conduct Authority
£176 million in fines during 2024—a 230% increase from the previous year. 1,456 firms lost their authorization to operate. The Financial Conduct Autho...
Financial Stability Board
The FSB is the immune system's signaling network without its killer cells. Born from the 2008 crisis wreckage, the G20 created a body to coordinate gl...
Finland
Finland's governance produced the world's most admired education system through a counterintuitive strategy: eliminating standardised testing, grantin...
FINRA
FINRA is a regulatory chimera: a private corporation wielding governmental powers without governmental constraints. It oversees 3,300+ broker-dealers...
Fitch Ratings
Fitch is the spare tire of global credit ratings—essential when you need a third opinion, but never the primary choice. S&P and Moody's each command ~...
Florida
Florida is America's third-most-populous state and a perennial electoral swing state whose 30 electoral votes make it decisive in presidential electio...
Food and Drug Administration
The FDA regulates food safety, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, cosmetics, and tobacco products - about 25% of all consumer spending in the US. As th...
France
France operates as a semi-presidential republic with a unique dual executive - both a directly elected President and a Prime Minister accountable to P...
Germany
Ordoliberalism—the word sounds academic, but it explains why Germany's far-right AfD, founded by economists in 2014, claims the same market-order trad...
GIC Private Limited (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation)
GIC manages Singapore's foreign reserves with an estimated $800-900 billion in assets, operating alongside Temasek in a dual-fund architecture that fe...
Government Pension Fund Global (Norges Bank Investment Management)
Norway's Government Pension Fund Global is the world's largest sovereign wealth fund at over $1.8 trillion, owning roughly 1.5% of every listed compan...
Greater London Authority
London is a coral reef—a living structure that took centuries to build and now supports an entire ecosystem of financial species that couldn't survive...
Greece
Greece's 2009-2018 debt crisis remains the most severe sovereign financial collapse in developed-world history: GDP contracted by 25%, unemployment ex...
Green Climate Fund
The Green Climate Fund's actual disbursement rate reveals a massive promise-delivery gap. As of late 2024, the GCF had approved $15.9 billion across 2...
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
HKEX is a placenta—connecting two financial circulatory systems that cannot safely merge directly. On one side, mainland China with capital controls a...
Hong Kong Monetary Authority
July 2025: the Hong Kong dollar touched 7.85—the weak-side boundary. The HKMA sold $2.55 billion to defend the peg. This intervention is not discretio...
Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing serves as a geographic arbitrage gateway between China's closed capital markets and the international financial syste...
IAEA
The International Atomic Energy Agency holds a contradictory dual mandate: promoting peaceful nuclear energy while preventing nuclear weapons prolifer...
ICSID
December 2025: A UAE investor filed a $28.9 billion claim against Guinea over a mining dispute. A German food company sought €90 million from China. A...
IEEE
IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization with 485,000+ members, dominating standards for networking (WiFi 802.11, Ethernet 802....
India
Fifty percent of the world's digital transactions. Not 5%, not 15%—half of all real-time digital payments globally flow through India's UPI system. In...
Indonesia
Indonesia governs the world's largest archipelago — over 17,000 islands, 275 million people, and 700 languages — through a presidential system that de...
Inter-American Development Bank
The Inter-American Development Bank lends roughly $13 billion annually to Latin American and Caribbean nations — approximately 6% of the region's esti...
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The IPCC doesn't conduct research — it synthesises existing literature. While the public perceives thousands of climate scientists doing original work...
International Court of Justice
The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, settling disputes between states and issuing advisory opinions. Only 73 of 193 UN membe...
International Criminal Court
The ICC is the world's only permanent international court for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression. In 25 years: only 10-11 c...
International Monetary Fund
The IMF is the central institution of the international monetary system, providing financial assistance to countries in crisis and surveillance of glo...
International Organization for Standardization
ISO's 25,000+ standards cost money to access, creating a paywall on public goods — standards increasingly mandated by governments become de facto law,...
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICANN controls the internet's address book — the Domain Name System that maps human-readable names to machine-readable IP addresses. This gives it the...
Ireland
Ireland transformed from one of Western Europe's poorest economies to one of its richest in a single generation — the Celtic Tiger boom driven by aggr...
Israel
Israel operates under a parliamentary system with proportional representation and no minimum threshold that matters — parties with as few as 3.25% of...
Italy
Sixty-eight governments in 78 years. Average tenure: 13 months. The Italian Republic has churned through more cabinets than any comparable democracy—n...
Japan
Sixty to seventy percent. That's how much of their project timeline Japanese companies dedicate to consensus-building before a single implementation s...
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange had its worst IPO year in three decades in 2025—just £184 million raised through September. Amsterdam now captures more Euro...
Malaysia
Malaysia's political system was dominated by a single coalition (Barisan Nasional, led by UMNO) for 61 years until its defeat in the 2018 election — o...
Mercosur
Mercosur is South America's customs union of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay (Venezuela suspended since 2017). Despite being a 'customs union...
Mexico
Mexico's federal system grants significant autonomy to 31 states and Mexico City, but real power has historically concentrated in the presidency — a s...
Monetary Authority of Singapore
Most central banks adjust interest rates. Singapore adjusts the exchange rate. This isn't idiosyncrasy—it's niche-specialization. When imports constit...
Moody's
Moody's is a gatekeeper paid by those it gates. The company rates $6 trillion of debt annually, and that rating determines whether pension funds can b...
Mossad
Mossad's June 2025 'Operation Red Wedding' killed 30 Iranian generals in minutes. A bomb placed two months earlier in a Tehran guesthouse assassinated...
NASDAQ
February 8, 1971: cathode-ray terminals flickered to life displaying bid and ask prices for over-the-counter securities. Trades still happened by tele...
National Labor Relations Board
The NLRB enforces US labor law under the National Labor Relations Act (1935), overseeing union elections and investigating unfair labor practices. Des...
Netherlands
The Netherlands governs through the polder model — a consensus-based approach born from the literal necessity of cooperative water management. No sing...
New York City
New York City is an ant colony operating at human scale—8.3 million organisms packed into 302 square miles, differentiated into specialized castes (fi...
New York Stock Exchange
Dark pools now execute more trades than the NYSE. In the last quarter of 2024, public exchanges handled less than half of all US stock trades for the...
New York Stock Exchange
The NYSE is a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, an Atlanta-based company that bought it for $11 billion in 2013. The exchange generates only ab...
New Zealand
New Zealand's Mixed Member Proportional electoral system, adopted in 1996 after a binding referendum, produces coalition governments that closely refl...
Nigeria
Nigeria is Africa's largest economy and most populous nation, but its federal structure distributes oil revenue through a formula that incentivises st...
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NATO's consensus rule means any single member can paralyse the entire alliance for domestic political reasons. Turkey blocked Sweden's membership for...
Norway
Norway's governance model demonstrates what happens when a resource-rich democracy creates institutional constraints before resource wealth arrives. T...
OCC
The OCC's real power isn't bank supervision—it's definitional control over what counts as a 'bank.' National bank charters come with federal preemptio...
OECD
The OECD publishes 500 reports annually. None of them are binding. This is the organization's defining feature: it wields influence without enforcemen...
Ontario
Ontario is Canada's most populous province and economic engine, generating roughly 39% of national GDP. The provincial government wields significant p...
OPEC
OPEC is a cartel of 13 oil-producing nations that attempts to coordinate petroleum production to influence global oil prices. Founded in 1960 by Iran,...
OSHA
OSHA is the federal agency responsible for workplace safety in the United States, covering 130 million workers at 8 million worksites. Established 197...
Pakistan
Pakistan's governance oscillates between civilian and military rule with a regularity that suggests the pattern is structural, not accidental: the mil...
People's Bank of China
The PBoC is the central bank of China, managing the world's second-largest economy and maintaining the world's largest foreign exchange reserves ($3.3...
People's Bank of China
The PBoC is China's central bank, managing monetary policy, exchange rates, and a $3.2 trillion foreign reserve stockpile. Unlike Western central bank...
Philippines
The Philippines operates as a presidential democracy with a political system dominated by dynastic families — roughly 70% of congressional representat...
PhRMA
PhRMA is the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, representing 31 major drug manufacturers. It has spent over $551 million on lobbying since 1...
Poland
Poland's economy is the European Union's growth outperformer: GDP has roughly tripled since EU accession in 2004, driven by manufacturing integration...
Portugal
Portugal's economy illustrates the long-term consequences of imperial overextension followed by abrupt contraction. The 1974 Carnation Revolution ende...
Prudential Regulation Authority
The PRA exists because the FSA tried to do everything and failed at the critical moment. When Northern Rock collapsed in 2007—the first UK bank run in...
Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is the most politically concentrated sovereign wealth fund on Earth. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman simultaneo...
Qatar
Qatar is the world's richest country per capita, governed by the Al Thani family as an absolute monarchy where the Emir serves as head of state, head...
Reserve Bank of Australia
The RBA is Australia's central bank, managing an economy that went 28+ years without recession (1991-2020) primarily by riding China's commodity super...
Reserve Bank of India
The RBI is India's central bank, managing the world's fifth-largest economy and overseeing a banking system where 70% of assets are in government-owne...
Russia
Russia's governance structure is formally federal with 89 subjects, but effective power radiates from the Kremlin through a vertical of command that r...
S&P Global
S&P Global is one of three dominant credit rating agencies (with Moody's and Fitch), whose ratings determine borrowing costs for $100+ trillion in glo...
San Francisco
San Francisco is a cautionary tale in positive feedback loops—a 47-square-mile peninsula where every success intensifies conditions for failure. The c...
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy where the King serves simultaneously as head of state, head of government, and custodian of Islam's two holiest m...
Scotland
Scotland is a lichen—two distinct organisms fused into something that functions as one but could, theoretically, survive apart. The fungal partner (En...
Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)
MI6's oversight crisis reveals a paradox: as the intelligence budget grew by £3 billion since 2013, the committee watching it was forced to shrink. Th...
Securities and Exchange Commission
The SEC is the primary U.S. regulator of securities markets, responsible for protecting investors, maintaining fair and efficient markets, and facilit...
Shanghai
Shanghai is China's financial capital and the country's largest city by GDP, operating under a municipal government that reports directly to Beijing r...
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation demonstrates what happens when two apex predators share a habitat. Russia has systematically used the SCO's cons...
Shanghai Stock Exchange
The Shanghai Stock Exchange is a greenhouse—a controlled environment where the state determines which companies grow. CSRC decides who lists, when the...
Shenzhen
Shenzhen is bamboo: a 1980 fishing village that achieved the fastest urban growth in human history by combining biological principles—primary successi...
Singapore
S$2 million annually. That's what Singapore pays its Prime Minister—among the world's highest government salaries—based on explicit policy that compet...
South Africa
South Africa's governing African National Congress won every election from 1994 to 2024, but its vote share declined from 69% to 40%, forcing the part...
South Korea
South Korea's economy is dominated by chaebols — family-controlled conglomerates (Samsung, Hyundai, SK, LG) that collectively generate revenue equival...
Spain
Spain's system of autonomous communities grants regions variable self-governance — the Basque Country and Navarre collect their own taxes, while most...
Sweden
Sweden's governance model combines a strong welfare state with a remarkably competitive market economy — a combination that economic theory suggests s...
SWIFT
SWIFT is the world's premier financial messaging network, connecting 11,500+ banking organizations across 235+ countries, processing ~45 million messa...
Swiss National Bank
The SNB is Switzerland's central bank, unique for its massive balance sheet (~100% of GDP), $172B in US equity holdings, publicly traded shares, and t...
Switzerland
Switzerland's direct democracy system is unique among major economies: any citizen can challenge a parliamentary decision through referendum (requirin...
Taiwan
Taiwan's governance exists in a state of productive ambiguity: the Republic of China constitution claims sovereignty over all of China, the People's R...
Texas
Texas operates as the American economy's most successful invasive species—a regulatory environment so optimized for corporate relocation that it has f...
Thailand
Thailand has experienced 13 successful military coups since 1932 — the most of any modern state — creating a governance cycle where elected government...
Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Tokyo is the world's largest proof that human cities can function like insect colonies—37 million people in the greater metropolitan area, yet trains...
Turkey
Turkey's 2017 constitutional referendum transformed the parliamentary system into an executive presidency, concentrating powers that were previously d...
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business lobbying organization, spending more on lobbying than any other entity in America. From 1...
UK Competition and Markets Authority
The Competition and Markets Authority is the UK's primary competition and consumer protection regulator, formed in 2013 by merging the Office of Fair...
UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
The MHRA became the UK's standalone drug regulator post-Brexit, having previously operated as part of the EU's centralized system. It gained global at...
UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)
UNCTAD was born in 1964 as the institutional home of the G77 developing-country bloc, founded at the same conference by Raúl Prebisch to challenge the...
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven emirates where Abu Dhabi and Dubai exercise power disproportionate to the constitutional design. Abu...
United Kingdom
No constitutional court can strike down Acts of Parliament. Unlike virtually every other democracy, the UK Supreme Court has no power to overrule the...
United Nations
Russia: 129 vetoes. United States: 89 (51 specifically protecting Israel). United Kingdom: 29. China: 19. France: 16. As of September 2025, the Securi...
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The UNFCCC has operated for over thirty years without agreed voting rules because Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and OPEC allies blocked adoption of the rules...
United States
Fifty state-level bills addressing federal-state power balance were introduced in the first two months of 2025 alone. The federal budget runs a $1.8 t...
US Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission enforces antitrust and consumer protection laws in the United States, sharing jurisdiction with the Department of Justice...
US Food and Drug Administration
The FDA regulates drugs, biologics, medical devices, food safety, and cosmetics—affecting roughly 25% of the US economy. Established 1906 following Th...
Vietnam
Vietnam's Communist Party governs a one-party state that has produced one of the developing world's most impressive growth trajectories through Doi Mo...
World Bank
The World Bank is the world's largest multilateral development lender, providing financing and technical assistance to developing countries. Founded a...
World Customs Organization
The World Customs Organization controls the global language of trade classification — the Harmonized System that determines what every product is call...
World Health Organization
The WHO is the UN specialized agency for international public health, with 194 member states. It sets international health standards, monitors disease...
World Trade Organization
The WTO's dispute settlement system — once called the 'crown jewel' of international trade law — has been dead since December 2019. The United States...
WTO Appellate Body
The WTO Appellate Body was the final arbiter of international trade disputes until December 11, 2019, when US blocking of all appointments killed it....