# Elite Capture

> Elite Capture is mapped as the distortion: it shows how political capacities deform through scale, opacity, feedback failure, exclusion, or self-protection.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:pathologies:elite-capture` |
| Family | System Pathologies |
| Domain | Power |
| Kind | pathology |
| Archetypal function | The Distortion |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Elite Capture belongs to the **System Pathologies** 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

Elite Capture shows how political capacities deform through scale, opacity, feedback failure, exclusion, or self-protection, 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 Elite Capture, 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 Distortion.** Elite Capture is mapped as the distortion: it shows how political capacities deform through scale, opacity, feedback failure, exclusion, or self-protection.

## Gift

names mechanisms that otherwise masquerade as inevitability; through Elite Capture, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

becomes a cynical label that replaces causal analysis; Elite Capture 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 Elite Capture 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 Distortion enters through Elite Capture. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Elite Capture becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**constraint.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Elite Capture; another player names a countermove. Initiative 2.

## Relationships

- **mobilizes — Regulatory Capture:** Elite Capture mobilizes Regulatory Capture by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **institutionalizes — International Criminal Court:** International Criminal Court institutionalizes Elite Capture by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **depends on — Montgomery Bus Boycott:** Elite Capture depends on Montgomery Bus Boycott by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Elite Capture from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Elite Capture 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 Elite Capture: 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

- [Preventing Policy Capture](https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/preventing-policy-capture_9789264065239-en.html) — OECD, 2017. Mechanisms and safeguards concerning capture of public decision-making.
- [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.
- [Guidance for Regulation of Digital Platforms](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000387339) — UNESCO, 2023. Platform governance, expression, information integrity, and rights.

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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`.
