# Policy Window

> Policy Window 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:policy-window` |
| Family | Policy Change Mechanisms |
| Domain | Policy |
| Kind | process |
| Archetypal function | The Lever |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Policy Window 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

Policy Window 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 Policy Window, 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.** Policy Window 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 Policy Window, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

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

**Question:** What changes when Policy Window becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

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

## Relationships

- **mobilizes — Agenda Setting:** Agenda Setting mobilizes Policy Window by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **distributes costs to — Multiple Streams:** Policy Window distributes costs to Multiple Streams by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **counteracts — Rumor Cascade:** Rumor Cascade counteracts Policy Window by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **legitimizes — Fact-Checking:** Policy Window legitimizes Fact-Checking by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

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

---

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