AIM Framework glossary
Institutional Capture
Canonical definition
Institutional Capture is the condition where a leader with appointment power who is themselves M-Captured systematically installs M-aligned personnel across judicial, military, administrative, and informational institutions, producing an institutional architecture that amplifies Mimetic escalation, suppresses corrective feedback, and compresses the temporal distance between individual M-shock and societal crisis, regardless of the institutional safeguards that existed prior to the capture sequence.
Explanation
Institutional Capture is the mechanism by which the Leadership Compression Principle produces civilisational risk. A single M-Captured leader cannot impose crisis through personal action alone, they require compliant institutions. Institutional Capture provides this compliance by replacing personnel at key nodes with individuals whose own M-profiles ensure loyalty to the leader's status project rather than to institutional function. The capture proceeds through appointment cascades: the leader appoints a loyalist to head an agency; the loyalist replaces senior staff; the new staff reshape operational norms. Within months, an institution that previously served A-provisioning or I-enabling functions becomes an instrument of M-escalation. Historical pattern: the process is visible in the early stages of every authoritarian consolidation, and its speed correlates with the breadth of executive appointment power. See M-Capture, Leadership Compression Principle, Crisis State Architecture.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.
Derivation
Chapter 17, Section 17.7.3; Chapter 20, Section 20.5; Chapter 17, Section 17.1.3.