The framework's reading of representation as the mechanism by which the political community recognizes the direction its participants want to maintain, set alongside the structural-extraction account, yields predictions about how representation systems perform.

*First.* Representation systems that filter through wealth will systematically deviate from population direction. Where campaign finance, lobbying access, regulatory-revolving-door incentives, and media-ownership filters interpose between population direction and policy output, policy outputs track wealth-preferences over population-preferences in proportion to the strength of the filtering. The deviation is not a contingent failure of integrity; it follows mechanically from the structural-extraction logic applied to representation infrastructure.

*Second.* First-past-the-post electoral systems will converge on two-party domination and produce systematic representation gaps for minority preferences. Representation as direction-recognition implies that electoral architectures restricting recognition to a binary fail to recognize sub-population direction beyond the binary; minority-preference populations are systematically under-represented relative to proportional or ranked-choice systems.

*Third.* Voter-suppression patterns will track the same structural-extraction logic as economic extraction, scale-symmetrically. Voter-suppression efforts (registration barriers, polling-location reduction, voter-roll purges, identification requirements imposed on populations with structural ID-access barriers) appear at every scale at which they can be implemented; their pattern tracks the structural-extraction account, concentrating registration access at points where population direction would otherwise threaten extraction-tolerance.

*Fourth.* A misinformed electorate cannot recognize direction accurately. Representation quality and information-environment quality are constitutively coupled. Where the information environment ([§9.4](<9.4 Information.md>)) is degraded by engagement-optimization, concentrated ownership, or deliberate disinformation, recognition capacity is degraded in proportion. Representation reform without information-environment reform produces smaller effects than reformers expect.

*Fifth.* Captured-by-wealth representation systems will produce policy outputs that track wealth preferences over population preferences directly. The Gilens–Page (2014) finding that US policy tracks the top of the distribution far more closely than the median is the framework's central representation prediction confirmed before the framework was formulated. The prediction here generalizes the finding: any representation system with wealth-filtering at scale comparable to the US case produces similar policy-tracking patterns.

*Sixth.* Direct-democracy implementations without strong deliberative infrastructure will underperform representative-with-deliberation alternatives for complex policy. Considered direction-recognition for sustained maintenance depends on deliberative infrastructure: informed publics, deliberation venues, expert input filtered through accountability. Pure-direct-democracy on complex technical questions, without that infrastructure, produces systematic policy-outcome failures relative to representative-with-deliberation alternatives.

*Seventh.* Representation systems will systematically resist reforms that would reduce wealth-filtering. Institutional actors who benefit from wealth-filtering systematically deploy the structural-extraction maintenance channels to prevent reforms (campaign-finance reform, lobbying restrictions, media-ownership limits) that would reduce their advantage. The resistance is a function of the structural exposure of those benefiting from current filtering, not a contingent political fact.

*Eighth.* Negative campaigning will decline structurally under non-binary representation. Where the political system stops running on binary occupancy of office, negative campaigning declines structurally, not as a function of candidate virtue. Under FPTP and two-party occupancy, defeating the opponent equals winning, so negative campaigning is structurally rational. Under proposal-based representation that recognizes direction across multiple recognized options, running down opponents fails to recognize direction at all; what recognizes direction is pitching something the recognizing population genuinely benefits from. Comparative-politics data already partly confirms the pattern (the comparative record is mixed rather than settled: negativity persists under proportional representation, often redirected among several competitors). The framework derives the structural reason underneath the empirical pattern.

*Ninth.* Continuous-participation representation, technology-enabled, will outperform episodic-electoral representation on direction-recognition accuracy. Representation systems combining continuous public direction-recognition (approval voting on proposals, direction-setting input, implementation review, sunset votes) with deliberative integration by representatives outperform either pure episodic-electoral systems or pure direct-democracy systems on the margins most relevant to direction-recognition: accuracy of recognized public direction, integration quality, capture resistance, and implementation review. The synthesis routes simultaneously around the direct-democracy-without-deliberation underperformance (the sixth prediction) and the wealth-filtering of representation-without-continuous-recognition (the first and fifth predictions). Candidates run on integration capacity and integration track record rather than on ideology or charisma; proposals genuinely beneficial across districts can scale beyond the proposer's district by the same recognition mechanism that would have rejected imposition top-down. The prediction is one positive design within the framework's constraints, not the only such design; multiple framework-compatible designs are predicted to outperform extraction-tolerant alternatives, and the synthesis named here is the worked-out demonstration that positive design is possible within the preclusions.


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← [9.3.2 What is Required](<9.3.2 What is Required.md>) | [9.3.4 What is Confirmed](<9.3.4 What is Confirmed.md>) →
