# Classical Liberalism

> Classical Liberalism is mapped as the civic compact: it orders politics around rights, representation, pluralism, commerce, citizenship, and reform.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:ideologies-liberal:classical-liberalism` |
| Family | Liberal, Republican & Centrist Traditions |
| Domain | Ideology |
| Kind | ideology |
| Archetypal function | The Civic Compact |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Classical Liberalism belongs to the **Liberal, Republican & Centrist Traditions** 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

Classical Liberalism orders politics around rights, representation, pluralism, commerce, citizenship, and reform, 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 Classical Liberalism, 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 Civic Compact.** Classical Liberalism is mapped as the civic compact: it orders politics around rights, representation, pluralism, commerce, citizenship, and reform.

## Gift

protects individual freedom and institutional contestation; through Classical Liberalism, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

naturalizes market power, proceduralism, or exclusion from citizenship; Classical Liberalism 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 Classical Liberalism 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 Civic Compact enters through Classical Liberalism. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Classical Liberalism becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**leverage.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Classical Liberalism; another player names a countermove. Initiative 1.

## Relationships

- **enables — Liberalism:** Liberalism enables Classical Liberalism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **constrains — Modern Liberalism:** Classical Liberalism constrains Modern Liberalism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **constrains — Election Subversion:** Classical Liberalism constrains Election Subversion by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **distributes costs to — National Rebirth Myth:** National Rebirth Myth distributes costs to Classical Liberalism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

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

- [The Federalist Papers](https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text) — Library of Congress, 1787–1788. Arguments for the U.S. constitutional design; read as advocacy, not neutral description.
- [Universal Declaration of Human Rights](https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights) — United Nations, 1948. International human-rights framework.
- [Introduction to Political Science](https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-political-science) — OpenStax, 2022. Comparative institutions, political behavior, and public policy foundations.

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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`.
