AIM Framework glossary
Bootstrapping Sequence
Canonical definition
The Bootstrapping Sequence is the intervention ordering entailed by the Bootstrapping Principle: emergency A-provision, then urgency reduction, then diagnostic application, then systemic analysis, then reform coalition. Each phase creates the conditions for the next. Skipping A-provision means systemic explanations will be rejected in favour of the cognitively affordable Scapegoat narrative.
Explanation
The order is not a matter of programme design preference. It follows from what the architecture will and will not permit at each stage. Guarantee food, shelter and care first; urgency falls; only then will the diagnostic questions get a hearing; only after that does a structural account of the situation become something a person can hold; and only then can anything be organised around it. Begin at the third step and the sequence does not merely proceed slowly, it fails, because the audience will have adopted a cheaper explanation before the expensive one arrives.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct. Derived from the Bootstrapping Principle.