# Red Tape

> Red Tape 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:red-tape` |
| Family | Bureaucracy & Administration |
| Domain | Governance |
| Kind | institution |
| Archetypal function | The Machine |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Red Tape 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

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

## Gift

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

## Wound / Shadow

lets procedure become purpose and discretion escape visibility; Red Tape 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 Red Tape 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 Red Tape. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Red Tape becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**resource.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Red Tape; another player names a countermove. Initiative 3.

## Relationships

- **counteracts — Administrative Burden:** Administrative Burden counteracts Red Tape by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **amplifies — Implementation Gap:** Red Tape amplifies Implementation Gap by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **depends on — Demobilization and Reintegration:** Red Tape depends on Demobilization and Reintegration by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **amplifies — Party Machine:** 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 Red Tape from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Red Tape 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 Red Tape: 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`.
