AIM Framework glossary
Succession Decoherence Principle
Canonical definition
The Succession Decoherence Principle establishes that complete capture of institutional buffers by a single authority produces Forced Quiescence, a state of artificial stability in which mimetic competition, Confabulation accumulation, institutional competence decay, A-floor contingency, and I-domain destruction accumulate without correction. The apparent stability of the system is inversely proportional to its resilience against leadership transition: the more complete the capture, the more thoroughly every independent mechanism that could manage succession has been eliminated. Upon the incumbent's removal, Accumulated Mimetic Debt decoheres simultaneously across all suppressed channels, producing cascading failure on compressed timescales. Succession crisis severity is therefore a structurally necessary consequence of the completeness of prior buffer capture, not a contingent feature of individual succession arrangements.
Explanation
When a dictator controls everything, the country looks stable, but that stability is fake. All the problems that independent institutions would normally fix are just piling up invisibly. When the dictator dies or is removed, everything breaks at once, and the more total the control was, the worse the collapse. This isn't bad luck, it's architecture. The very thing that makes the regime look stable is the thing that guarantees a violent transition.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle.