The framework's predictions in [§9.3.3](<9.3.3 What is Predicted.md>) are weighed against the empirical and theoretical literature on representation-system performance.

*First.* Wealth-filtering produces population-direction deviation. Gilens and Page (2014; *Perspectives on Politics*) test policy outputs against population-preference data and find that policy tracks top-quintile preferences far more closely than median preferences across roughly two thousand US policy decisions. Bartels (2008; *Unequal Democracy*) traces the same pattern for senatorial responsiveness across decades. Page, Bartels, and Seawright (2013) directly survey wealthy Americans and find systematic divergence from median preferences on key policy questions, completing the causal triangle. The prediction is empirically confirmed.

*Second.* First-past-the-post produces minority-preference gaps. Lijphart (1999, 2012; *Patterns of Democracy*) compares majoritarian and consensus democracies across multiple metrics and finds consensus systems (proportional representation, multi-party coalitions, strong second chambers) outperforming majoritarian systems on representation quality, policy-outcome legitimacy, and minority-preference inclusion. Duverger's law as empirically tested across electoral systems confirms the FPTP-to-two-party-convergence prediction. The empirical record on PR-versus-FPTP outcomes broadly confirms the framework's prediction.

*Third.* Voter-suppression tracks structural-extraction logic. The US empirical literature on voter-suppression patterns (registration-barrier studies, polling-location-reduction analyses, voter-ID-impact studies, voter-roll-purge analyses) shows that the patterns systematically affect populations whose recognized direction would otherwise threaten extraction-tolerant policy outputs. The Brennan Center for Justice empirical compilations and the academic literature on voting-access disparities confirm the structural-extraction prediction.

*Fourth.* Information environment couples to representation quality. The empirical literature on misinformation effects on voting behavior (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017 on 2016 election misinformation; Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral 2018 on false-news spread) tracks population-level information-degradation effects. The Stanford Internet Observatory and similar bodies have surfaced disinformation campaigns targeting electoral periods; the strongest claim the framework needs is not that every campaign has a settled measurable persuasion effect, but that degraded information conditions can distort the recognized direction representation systems receive. The constitutive-coupling prediction is empirically supported.

*Fifth.* Captured systems produce wealth-preference-tracking outputs. See the first prediction's confirmation. The generalization of the Gilens–Page finding to other captured systems is supported by comparative-politics literature on regulatory capture across jurisdictions and policy domains.

*Sixth.* Direct democracy without deliberation underperforms. The deliberative-democracy literature (Habermas 1962, 1989, 1996; Fishkin's deliberative-polling experiments; Gutmann and Thompson on deliberative ethics) supports the framework's coupling of recognition quality to deliberative infrastructure. Empirical work on referendum outcomes versus deliberative-poll outcomes on the same questions documents the gap. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002; *Stealth Democracy*) register the population's own preference for representation-with-accountability over pure-direct-democracy on most questions.

*Seventh.* Representation systems resist anti-filtering reforms. The US empirical record on campaign-finance reform (Buckley v. Valeo, Citizens United, the BCRA reform-and-rollback cycle), lobbying-reform efforts, and media-ownership-rule consolidation confirms the structural-resistance prediction directly. The 50-year arc of progressively expanding wealth-filtering through a series of judicial decisions and regulatory rollbacks is exactly what the framework predicts.

*Direction-recognition confirmed by voting-system evidence.*

*Ireland and Australia (ranked-choice).* Ireland (since 1922) and Australia (since 1918) have operated ranked-choice systems long enough to establish stable patterns (Reilly 2001; Farrell 2011): lower rates of strategic voting, greater third-party viability, higher satisfaction among voters whose first choice did not win.

*Germany (mixed-member proportional representation).* Germany's MMP produces parliamentary composition that more accurately reflects the actual distribution of voter preferences than winner-take-all systems (Lijphart 1999). Parties with single-digit national vote shares that would be absent from a first-past-the-post parliament are represented in the Bundestag.

*Switzerland (direct democracy).* Switzerland's direct democracy (combining proportional representation with citizen-initiated referenda) takes direction-recognition further: the population can set the agenda, not only choose among options the system has pre-selected.

*Australia (compulsory voting) and France (automatic registration).* Australia's compulsory voting treats access as civic infrastructure the state is obligated to maintain, producing turnout above 90 percent and reducing the differential-access problem that systematically fails to recognize some directions. France's automatic registration for many citizens at age eighteen addresses the same problem from the supply side, without implying that all registration in France is fully universal or frictionless. These are partial implementations (each country has its own tensions and failures in other respects), but in the specific dimension of direction-recognition, each partial implementation produces the predicted partial result.

*The United States as diagnostic case in the other direction.* First-past-the-post, the Electoral College, campaign finance converting wealth into direction-setting power, and gerrymandering diluting votes at the moment of design are not independent failures. They are the predictable outputs of a mechanism not designed to recognize actual direction from all. They are also self-reinforcing, because the subset whose direction is amplified controls the mechanism's design. The patchwork of confirmations and diagnostics points at the same underlying structure: where the derivation's requirements are met, the predicted results follow. Where they are not, the predicted failures appear. A society that implemented all three (the conditions for maximum possibility, prevention-weighted justice, and genuine direction-recognition from all) would constitute, in political form, what the argument derives in structural form. No such society currently exists in full. The pieces do.

*On theoretical convergences.* The framework converges on conclusions independently reached in: deliberative-democratic theory (Habermas; Fishkin; Gutmann and Thompson), comparative consensus-democracy scholarship (Lijphart), epistemic-democracy theory (Landemore 2013; Goodin), capabilities-based political theory (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2006), and republican political theory (Pettit 1997 on freedom-as-non-domination). The convergence supports the robustness of the conclusions under alternate premises.

*What does not confirm the framework.* Strong-form pluralist accounts (Dahl's earlier work; Truman) predict that interest-group competition produces representative outcomes; the empirical record refuses this prediction. Strong-form public-choice accounts (Buchanan; Tullock) predict that representation systems are inevitably captured and that minimization of state capacity is the appropriate response; the framework precludes the inevitability claim while acknowledging the capture pressure as structurally derivable. Where the empirical record diverges from these accounts, the framework's predictions track the record. The confirmations stated in this subsection are made under engagement with the contested representation-theory opposition traditions [§9.3.1](<9.3.1 What is Disputed.md>) names at premise: epistocracy (Brennan, *Against Democracy* 2016; Caplan, *The Myth of the Rational Voter* 2007), competitive-elitism (Schumpeter, *Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy* 1942), and the trustee-versus-delegate model (Burke, *Speech to the Electors of Bristol* 1774; Pitkin, *The Concept of Representation* 1967). Those traditions are engaged at section length in [§9.3.1](<9.3.1 What is Disputed.md>), and the confirmation record stated here applies under that engagement.


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← [9.3.3 What is Predicted](<9.3.3 What is Predicted.md>) | [9.3.5 What is Concluded](<9.3.5 What is Concluded.md>) →
