# Mediation

> Mediation is mapped as the bridge: it aligns parties with different interests around exchange, procedure, relationship, or shared threat.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:negotiation-coalition:mediation` |
| Family | Negotiation, Coalition & Mediation |
| Domain | Strategy |
| Kind | practice |
| Archetypal function | The Bridge |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Mediation belongs to the **Negotiation, Coalition & Mediation** 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

Mediation aligns parties with different interests around exchange, procedure, relationship, or shared threat, 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 Mediation, 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 Bridge.** Mediation is mapped as the bridge: it aligns parties with different interests around exchange, procedure, relationship, or shared threat.

## Gift

converts conflict into agreement and combined capacity; through Mediation, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

hides unequal leverage, sacrifices absent parties, or postpones necessary conflict; Mediation 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 Mediation 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 Bridge enters through Mediation. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

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

## Game function

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

## Relationships

- **translates into — Bargaining:** Bargaining translates into Mediation by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **enables — Facilitation:** Mediation enables Facilitation by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **translates into — Civic Republicanism:** Civic Republicanism translates into Mediation by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **distributes costs to — Mayor:** Mediation distributes costs to Mayor by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

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

- [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.
- [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`.
