# Negative Partisanship

> Negative Partisanship 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:negative-partisanship` |
| Family | Parties, Factions & Machines |
| Domain | Organizations |
| Kind | institution |
| Archetypal function | The Banner |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Negative Partisanship 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

Negative Partisanship 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 Negative Partisanship, 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.** Negative Partisanship 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 Negative Partisanship, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

turns representation into gatekeeping, patronage, and factional enclosure; Negative Partisanship 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 Negative Partisanship 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 Negative Partisanship. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Negative Partisanship becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

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

## Relationships

- **distributes costs to — Polarization:** Polarization distributes costs to Negative Partisanship by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **depends on — Big Tent:** Negative Partisanship depends on Big Tent by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **constrains — Craft Unionism:** Negative Partisanship constrains Craft Unionism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **amplifies — Digital Democracy:** Digital Democracy amplifies Negative Partisanship by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

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

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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`.
