The Vision

The leaders you admire—the executives who navigate complexity, the founders who build lasting organizations—share something in common: they understand how institutions work. They can reference the Roman Senate, the Hanseatic League, and the East India Company because they see patterns across history that others miss.

civstudy exists to build this intellectual capital. We map how institutions accumulate power, how they adapt and endure, and why some collapse while others persist for millennia. This isn't history as trivia—it's history as strategy.

Methodology

Domain Classification

Each institution is categorized by its primary domain: governance, economic, religious, knowledge, social, legal, or military. Many institutions span multiple domains, but we assign the most central function. For example, the Catholic Church is classified as religious despite its historical political and economic roles.

Large Language Models

Nearly all content on this site was produced by Claude Opus 4.5, Anthropic's most capable model at the time of publication. I have performed spot checks on the entries, but the epistemic standards of this website are Claude's epistemic standards, not mine. Claude aims for accuracy, nuance, and scholarly balance, but AI-generated content may contain errors or reflect the limitations of its training data. If you notice any inaccuracies, please reach out.

Spaced Repetition

Our learning system uses FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), one of the most accurate memory algorithms available. It predicts exactly when you're about to forget something and schedules reviews at the optimal moment—maximizing retention while minimizing time spent reviewing.

Acknowledgements

This project has been shaped by the writing and conversations of many thinkers who have influenced my understanding of institutions and their role in human civilization: