# Military Coup

> Military Coup is mapped as the seized center: it changes rule by capturing command, disabling rivals, or hollowing institutions.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:coups-breakdown:military-coup` |
| Family | Coups, Breakdown & Consolidation |
| Domain | State Power |
| Kind | process |
| Archetypal function | The Seized Center |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Military Coup belongs to the **Coups, Breakdown & Consolidation** 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

Military Coup changes rule by capturing command, disabling rivals, or hollowing institutions, 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 Military Coup, 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 Seized Center.** Military Coup is mapped as the seized center: it changes rule by capturing command, disabling rivals, or hollowing institutions.

## Gift

can end paralysis or dislodge a failed regime; through Military Coup, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

substitutes coercive fact for public authorization and normalizes exceptional rule; Military Coup 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 Military Coup 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 Seized Center enters through Military Coup. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Military Coup becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

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

## Relationships

- **legitimizes — Coup d'État:** Coup d'État legitimizes Military Coup by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **mobilizes — Self-Coup:** Military Coup mobilizes Self-Coup by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **institutionalizes — Political Action Committee:** Political Action Committee institutionalizes Military Coup by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **constrains — Representative Democracy:** Military Coup constrains Representative Democracy by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

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

- [V-Dem Dataset and Codebook](https://www.v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/) — V-Dem Institute, 2026. Comparative measurement of democratic institutions; indicators remain model-based measures.
- [National Emergency Powers](https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/98-505) — Congressional Research Service, 2024. U.S. emergency authorities and congressional checks.
- [Charter of the United Nations](https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text) — United Nations, 1945. International institutional order, sovereignty, security, and cooperation.

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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`.
