# Party Machine

> Party Machine is mapped as the banner: it bundles identities, candidates, resources, policy, and discipline into durable competition.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:parties-factions:party-machine` |
| Family | Parties, Factions & Machines |
| Domain | Organizations |
| Kind | institution |
| Archetypal function | The Banner |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Party Machine belongs to the **Parties, Factions & Machines** 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

Party Machine bundles identities, candidates, resources, policy, and discipline into durable competition, 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 Party Machine, 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 Banner.** Party Machine is mapped as the banner: it bundles identities, candidates, resources, policy, and discipline into durable competition.

## Gift

coordinates large coalitions across time and scale; through Party Machine, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

turns representation into gatekeeping, patronage, and factional enclosure; Party Machine 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 Party Machine 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 Banner enters through Party Machine. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Party Machine becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

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

## Relationships

- **depends on — Caucus Faction:** Caucus Faction depends on Party Machine by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **institutionalizes — Patronage:** Party Machine institutionalizes Patronage by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **constrains — Water District:** Water District constrains Party Machine by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **amplifies — Red Tape:** Party Machine amplifies Red Tape by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Party Machine from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Party Machine 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 Party Machine: 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.
- [2024 Republican Party Platform](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-party-platform) — Republican National Committee, 2024. Party self-description and program; not an external assessment.
- [2024 Democratic Party Platform](https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/) — Democratic National Committee, 2024. Party self-description and program; not an external assessment.

---

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