The predictions of [§9.2.3](<9.2.3 What is Predicted.md>) can be set against the empirical and theoretical record on two axes. The membership-extension axis (the three predictions [§9.2.3](<9.2.3 What is Predicted.md>) added about how the substrate crosses a drawn boundary) is set against the record on postwar reconstruction, the functionalist-integration tradition, the regime-change literature, and reparative claims. The base axis (the eight predictions about the face-to-face base) is set against the record on civic infrastructure, intergroup contact, and deliberation. The extension-axis confirmations come first.

*Capacity-crossing extension outlasts content-conditioned extension.* The postwar record distinguishes extension that crossed with capacity from extension that crossed with content. The Marshall Plan extended subsistence and reconstruction capacity without requiring the receiving polities to adopt a governance template, and the recognition it generated proved durable; the functionalist tradition in international relations (Mitrany, *A Working Peace System* 1943; Deutsch’s security-communities work; the Monnet-Schuman functional-integration design) documents the same pattern, that shared subsistence stakes generate allegiance structurally through interdependence rather than through demanded loyalty. The IMF’s structural-adjustment regimes and the conditionality-and-*acquis* model, by contrast, crossed with content (market liberalization required, governance reform required, body of law adopted) and met the cultural friction and contested reception the framework predicts of content-conditioned extension. The contrast tracks the capacity/content distinction, as predicted.

*Substrate withdrawal produces recognition-hardening.* The domestic record on substrate withdrawal matches the hardening prediction. Reconstruction’s substrate-extension-then-withdrawal (1865–1877) was followed not by reversion to the prior equilibrium but by the hardened recognition regime of Jim Crow; the broken-treaties record shows boundaries redrawn and substrate withdrawn followed by hardened exclusion rather than stable settlement (Mills, *Black Rights / White Wrongs* 2017; Coates, ‘The Case for Reparations’ 2014, develop the canonical analytic engagements; reparative-policy implications at [§9.13](<9.13 Justice.md>)). Withdrawal after extension produced recognition-hardening rather than reversion, as predicted.

*Regime-captured delivery fails, and the extension is owed as arrears.* Covert and overt regime change has a poor record of producing the conditions it was nominally extending (Downes and O’Rourke, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ *International Security* 41(2) 2016; O’Rourke, *Covert Regime Change* 2018): installing a governance form crosses with content, not substrate, and the recognition the extension reaches for does not follow, exactly as the regime-capture prediction holds. The same record confirms the arrears character the obligation carries ([§9.2.2](<9.2.2 What is Required.md>)). Where the instability that produces displacement and subsistence-scarcity is itself the downstream effect of prior intervention (structural-adjustment conditionality, covert and overt regime change, extractive arrangements), the substrate owed is owed as the discharge of accumulated arrears rather than as beneficence (Butt, *Rectifying International Injustice* 2009; Lu, *Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics* 2017). This does not reground the extension ([§8.12](<8.12 Morality.md>) already grounds it, and arrears is not a co-ground), but it defeats the framing of the extension as charity and sets its priority at the [§9.3](<9.3 Representation.md>) register. The delivery-failure is confirmed and the charity framing defeated, as predicted.

The base-axis confirmations follow.

*First.* Civic-infrastructure loss degrades recognition. Putnam’s *Bowling Alone* (2000) documents the long decline of US civic infrastructure across the second half of the twentieth century and its association with declining social trust and civic capacity; the social-capital literature that followed connects civic-infrastructure loss to measurable declines in the cross-group recognition the framework tracks. The digital expansion of the same decades did not offset the decline, as the framework predicts.

*Second.* The sign of contact tracks its structure. Allport’s contact hypothesis (1954) specified the conditions under which contact reduces prejudice (equal status, common goals, cooperation, institutional support) and Pettigrew and Tropp’s meta-analysis across 515 studies (2006) confirms both that contact under those conditions reduces prejudice and that contact lacking them does not reliably do so. The empirical record matches the modal-field prediction that the sign of contact tracks its structure rather than its quantity.

*Third.* Integration outcomes track contact structure. The school-desegregation research, Stephan’s (1978) review of post-*Brown* desegregation outcomes and Schofield’s (1991) work on the conditions under which desegregation improves intergroup relations, documents that integration outcomes vary with whether productive-contact conditions were supplied: desegregation that established equal-status cooperative settings produced the predicted recognition effects, while desegregation that produced unequal-status friction did not. The variation tracks the contact structure, as predicted.

*Fourth.* Distributional stratification reproduces recognition inequality. The historical record of stratified disinvestment in the base, FHA redlining (1934–1968), post-*Brown* school resegregation, public-pool closures during desegregation, third-place loss in deindustrialized formerly-segregated neighborhoods, tracks the predicted reproduction of recognition inequality along the same lines, confirming that stratified access to the base stratifies the recognition it produces.

*Fifth.* Deliberative venues produce better-tethered direction. Fishkin’s deliberative-polling experiments document that face-to-face deliberation systematically shifts and informs participants’ recognized positions relative to unstructured aggregation, and the Irish Citizens' Assembly outcomes (2016–2018 and 2022–2023) on abortion, climate, and biodiversity document face-to-face deliberative venues producing recognized direction that purely digital aggregation did not, on questions the wider polity had been unable to resolve. The empirical record matches the prediction.

*Sixth.* Resilience tracks the base. Klinenberg’s *Heat Wave* (2002) documents that neighborhood-level differences in face-to-face civic infrastructure predicted survival differences during the 1995 Chicago heat wave, and *Palaces for the People* (2018) generalizes the finding across disaster, public-health, and democratic-resilience outcomes. Resilience tracks the strength of the base, as predicted.

*Seventh.* Inherited calibration persists until exposure updates the field. The contact literature combined with the evolutionary-mismatch and coalitional-psychology account (Kurzban, Tooby, and Cosmides’s (2001) demonstration that coalitional out-group coding is rapidly updated by cues of cooperative structure) supports the prediction that out-group wariness persists until productive-contact exposure updates the modal field, and that unproductive contact reinforces the prior; the same Pettigrew–Tropp record that confirms Prediction 2 confirms the directionality here.

*Eighth.* The base is non-substitutable. Putnam and Klinenberg together, with the comparative civic-infrastructure literature, document that face-to-face civic infrastructure carries outcomes (from disaster survival to democratic resilience) that digital infrastructure has not been shown to replace at comparable exposure. The non-substitutability prediction is supported across multiple outcome metrics.

*On theoretical convergences.* The framework reaches the same destination separate traditions reached on other grounds: the classical tradition that located community’s binding force in metaphysical participation while tracking a real mechanism of mutual recognition (Augustine’s *civitas*; Aquinas’s common good; Hegel’s *Sittlichkeit*); the deliberative-democratic account of the public sphere as constitutive infrastructure (Habermas [1962] 1989, [1992] 1996); the social-capital documentation of the base (Putnam 2000; Klinenberg 2002, 2018); and the affiliation capability Nussbaum develops (*Women and Human Development* 2000; *The Cosmopolitan Tradition* 2019). The convergence across independent grounds supports the robustness of the conclusion.

*What does not confirm the framework.* Strong-form cyber-utopian accounts predict that networked mediation can fully constitute political-community recognition without a face-to-face base; the record shows mediated communities producing real but sub-population recognition that has not been shown to ground population-scale direction-recognition, so the strong form is not confirmed. Strong-form Rawlsian accounts predict that overlapping consensus on a political conception suffices without the recognition base [§8.12](<8.12 Morality.md>) grounds; the record on polarization and recognition failure under intact formal-liberal institutions refuses the strong form. Where the framework’s predictions and these accounts diverge, the record is on the framework’s side; where the accounts are read narrowly, the framework grants what they get right ([§9.2.1](<9.2.1 What is Disputed.md>)).

The confirmations stated here are made under the engagement with the cyber-utopian / networked-community defense (Benkler 2006; Shirky 2008) and Rawlsian political liberalism (Rawls 1993) that [§9.2.1](<9.2.1 What is Disputed.md>) conducts at section length, and apply under that engagement.

*What is confirmed.* On the membership-extension axis, the record on postwar reconstruction, the functionalist-integration tradition, the regime-change literature (Downes and O’Rourke 2016; O’Rourke 2018), and reparative claims (Butt 2009; Lu 2017) supports the [§9.2.3](<9.2.3 What is Predicted.md>) extension predictions: capacity-crossing extension outlasts content-conditioned extension, substrate withdrawal hardens recognition, and regime-captured delivery fails to produce the recognition the extension reaches for. On the base axis, the empirical record across civic-infrastructure decline, intergroup-contact studies, integration outcomes, stratified disinvestment, deliberative experiments, and disaster resilience supports the [§9.2.3](<9.2.3 What is Predicted.md>) predictions, and multiple independent traditions converge on the framework’s conclusion. The institutional-design implications are drawn at [§9.2.5](<9.2.5 What is Concluded.md>).


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← [9.2.3 What is Predicted](<9.2.3 What is Predicted.md>) | [9.2.5 What is Concluded](<9.2.5 What is Concluded.md>) →
