# Punctuated Equilibrium

> Punctuated Equilibrium 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:punctuated-equilibrium` |
| Family | Policy Change Mechanisms |
| Domain | Policy |
| Kind | process |
| Archetypal function | The Lever |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Punctuated Equilibrium 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

Punctuated Equilibrium 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 Punctuated Equilibrium, 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.** Punctuated Equilibrium 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 Punctuated Equilibrium, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

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

**Question:** What changes when Punctuated Equilibrium becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

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

## Relationships

- **depends on — Multiple Streams:** Multiple Streams depends on Punctuated Equilibrium by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **institutionalizes — Incrementalism:** Punctuated Equilibrium institutionalizes Incrementalism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **institutionalizes — Right-Libertarianism:** Punctuated Equilibrium institutionalizes Right-Libertarianism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **constrains — Inauguration:** Inauguration constrains Punctuated Equilibrium by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

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