# Pilot Program

> Pilot Program is mapped as the lever: it moves an issue from agenda through formulation, authorization, implementation, feedback, and revision.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:policy-change:pilot-program` |
| Family | Policy Change Mechanisms |
| Domain | Policy |
| Kind | process |
| Archetypal function | The Lever |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Pilot Program belongs to the **Policy Change Mechanisms** 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

Pilot Program moves an issue from agenda through formulation, authorization, implementation, feedback, and revision, 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 Pilot Program, 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 Lever.** Pilot Program is mapped as the lever: it moves an issue from agenda through formulation, authorization, implementation, feedback, and revision.

## Gift

turns political demand into durable material effect; through Pilot Program, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

creates symbolic wins, implementation gaps, and benefits captured by organized interests; Pilot Program 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 Pilot Program 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 Lever enters through Pilot Program. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Pilot Program becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**role.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Pilot Program; another player names a countermove. Initiative 5.

## Relationships

- **counteracts — Incrementalism:** Incrementalism counteracts Pilot Program by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **amplifies — Policy Diffusion:** Pilot Program amplifies Policy Diffusion by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **translates into — Municipality:** Municipality translates into Pilot Program by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **enables — Unfalsifiability:** Pilot Program enables Unfalsifiability by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

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

- [Introduction to Political Science](https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-political-science) — OpenStax, 2022. Comparative institutions, political behavior, and public policy foundations.
- [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.

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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`.
