# Co-optation

> Co-optation is mapped as the aftermath: it converts defeat, repression, backlash, fatigue, and unintended effects into adaptation or decay.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:failure-learning:co-optation` |
| Family | Failure, Backlash & Learning |
| Domain | Strategy |
| Kind | mechanism |
| Archetypal function | The Aftermath |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Co-optation belongs to the **Failure, Backlash & Learning** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Co-optation converts defeat, repression, backlash, fatigue, and unintended effects into adaptation or decay, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Co-optation, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Aftermath.** Co-optation is mapped as the aftermath: it converts defeat, repression, backlash, fatigue, and unintended effects into adaptation or decay.

## Gift

preserves memory and makes strategy revisable; through Co-optation, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

romanticizes failure, blames participants, or repeats harm without accountability; Co-optation can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Co-optation to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Aftermath enters through Co-optation. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Co-optation becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**constraint.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Co-optation; another player names a countermove. Initiative 2.

## Relationships

- **constrains — Repression Success:** Repression Success constrains Co-optation by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **legitimizes — Absorption:** Co-optation legitimizes Absorption by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **amplifies — Nativism:** Nativism amplifies Co-optation by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **depends on — Foreign Aid:** Co-optation depends on Foreign Aid by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Co-optation from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Co-optation is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Co-optation: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [Why Civil Resistance Works](https://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780231156820) — Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, 2011. Comparative study of violent and nonviolent campaigns, with scope and coding limits.
- [Church Committee Reports](https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm) — U.S. Senate, 1975–1976. Investigations of intelligence abuses and subsequent oversight reforms.
- [V-Dem Dataset and Codebook](https://www.v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/) — V-Dem Institute, 2026. Comparative measurement of democratic institutions; indicators remain model-based measures.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
