About

What CARO is

CARO is a research organisation. It maintains a standard for measuring governance fairness and the method that applies it, and studies how governance works in practice. Field measurement in Bangladesh is carried out by CARO Bangladesh Society, an independent Bangladeshi body.

The organisation

FoundedDecember 2023
BasedWashington, D.C. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit
FundingIndividual contributions. No institutional or government funding received
caroglobal.orgCARO’s publishing and outreach site. The same organisation; this site holds the standard, the method and the research
WorkResearch and publication
CARO is funded by individuals. It has received no institutional or government money, and accepts no funding that gives a funder any say over a finding.

What CARO does and does not do

Does

  • Maintains the standard — Equitism, the Meta-Right, Fairocracy, the UFDS
  • Maintains the Fairness Index method, its formulae and its versioning
  • Studies governance in Bangladesh, its primary case, and in other countries
  • Writes and publishes the constitutional architecture
  • Keeps the register of who applies the standard
  • Researches AI governance and safe AI, from 2027, as an extension of its work on epistemic asymmetry
  • Answers criticism of its work in writing, and revises where the criticism holds

Does not

  • Run field programmes
  • Carry out field measurement in Bangladesh
  • Fund, certify, endorse or audit any body that applies the standard
  • Hold seats on, direct, or act for any such body
  • Take a position on any party, candidate or election, anywhere

History

  1. December 2023

    CARO’s work began

    Founded to test one claim: that the fairness of a governance system is a structural property, and that how people judge it can be measured.

  2. 2024 – 2026

    Civic programmes across Bangladesh

    Training, civic education and a network of 2,259 verified participants across 211 constituencies and eight divisions, built to establish whether people could be trained to take governance measurements to a standard.

  3. April 2026

    The instrument was tested

    Twenty-five questions, five domains, 86 valid consented responses. Overall Fairness Index 1.74 out of 5.00, every domain below 2.00. Not nationally representative, and published with that stated. It established that the method produces differentiated, interpretable results on a real population.

  4. 1 November 2026

    CARO Bangladesh Society was founded

    An independent Bangladeshi body, governed by its own members. Field measurement in Bangladesh is carried out by it.

  5. From November 2026

    A research organisation

    CARO maintains the standard and the method, studies governance in Bangladesh as its primary case, and prepares Bangladesh — the Architecture. Research on AI governance and safe AI begins in 2027.

The independence of the work

A published finding is not altered, withheld or withdrawn at anyone's request, and nothing inferred is presented as measured.

A published finding may be corrected only by the procedure of the methodology itself. The correction, its reason and its author are published alongside the original, which stays available.

Contact

Corrections to anything published here are welcome and will be published with their date. If you apply the standard, telling CARO keeps the register accurate.

Using the standard →