Structural Dynamics: A Systems Theory of Sovereignty and Answerability Under Pressure

Cheap coherence has become a defining condition of modern life: AI systems and institutional media can generate fluent, stance-aligned narratives at scale, making “sounding true” easier than remaining in contact with what is true. Structural Dynamics formalizes this as a systems theory of sovereignty and answerability under pressure. Building on the Structural Intelligence distinction between coherence (K) and contact (C), the paper models stability as a function of enforceable revision (Rv), binding (B), repair capacity (Rep), maintenance cost (M), invariance (I), fixed worth (W), and environmental viscosity (Dmim). It introduces dynamic operators—drift velocity (vD), contact half-life, and maintenance conservation (internal/exported/deferred)—and hardens the theory against gaming via irreversibility and witness/trace. A minimal audit protocol operationalizes the model across individuals, institutions, and AI-mediated systems, and a simulation note illustrates slow drift and threshold collapse in high-status institutions. Structural Dynamics is offered as a “physics of agency” in cheap coherence regimes: a compact grammar for predicting brittleness, detecting coherence-theater, and distinguishing correction that binds from correction that performs.