# Public Comment

> Public Comment is mapped as the machine: it turns political goals into repeatable decisions by specialized permanent organizations.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:bureaucracy-administration:public-comment` |
| Family | Bureaucracy & Administration |
| Domain | Governance |
| Kind | institution |
| Archetypal function | The Machine |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Public Comment belongs to the **Bureaucracy & Administration** 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

Public Comment turns political goals into repeatable decisions by specialized permanent organizations, 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 Public Comment, 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 Machine.** Public Comment is mapped as the machine: it turns political goals into repeatable decisions by specialized permanent organizations.

## Gift

creates continuity, expertise, memory, and scale; through Public Comment, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

lets procedure become purpose and discretion escape visibility; Public Comment 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 Public Comment 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 Machine enters through Public Comment. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Public Comment becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**event.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Public Comment; another player names a countermove. Initiative 4.

## Relationships

- **translates into — Procurement:** Procurement translates into Public Comment by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **enables — Notice and Comment:** Public Comment enables Notice and Comment by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **translates into — Satanic Panic:** Public Comment translates into Satanic Panic by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **distributes costs to — Wealth Tax:** Wealth Tax distributes costs to Public Comment by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Public Comment from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Public Comment 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 Public Comment: 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.
- [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`.
