Legitimacy Drift

How corrective institutions lose alignment over time—and the architectural safeguards that can prevent drift without abandoning legitimate claims.

SDGs:

The 60-Second Version

Corrective institutions—those established to remedy historical injustice—often follow a recurring trajectory: early legitimacy gives way to mission drift, polarisation, and declining trust.

This isn't inevitable. It's the result of a structural failure: legitimacy drift—the gradual misalignment between grievance-based authority and evolving empirical conditions.

Without architectural safeguards—revalidation windows, symmetry requirements, sunset operators, and protected feedback channels—corrective institutions tend toward permanent authority regardless of whether the original wrong persists.

The solution isn't to abandon corrective institutions—it's to build them with temporal governance from the start.

The Typical Drift Trajectory

Corrective institutions often follow this six-stage trajectory:

Founding Legitimacy

Institution established with clear corrective mission

High alignment between grievance claim and institutional action

Success Accumulation

Institution achieves some corrective goals, builds authority

Authority expands; scope begins to exceed original mandate

Mission Creep

Institution takes on adjacent concerns using original authority

Grievance authority applied beyond validated claims

Feedback Resistance

Evidence of mission completion treated as threat

Success would diminish authority; failure extends it

Legitimacy Brittleness

Institution can't absorb legitimate criticism

Small challenges trigger existential responses

Trust Collapse

Broader public loses confidence in institution

Polarisation and delegitimisation

Key insight: This trajectory isn't inevitable. It results from missing architectural safeguards. Institutions with temporal governance built in can remain corrective without drifting toward extraction.

Why This Matters

For Corrective Institutions

Understanding drift allows you to build safeguards from the start—maintaining legitimacy long-term rather than accumulating brittleness.

For Critics

Drift doesn't mean original grievances were invalid. It means institutions need temporal governance, not abolition.

For Institutional Designers

Build revalidation, symmetry, sunset, and feedback mechanisms in from the start. These protect both legitimacy and effectiveness.

For Society

Polarisation around corrective institutions often stems from drift. Architecture can prevent this without abandoning justice.

Part of the LGIT Series

This paper provides the temporal alignment layer for Legitimacy-Grievance theory. It answers: how do corrective institutions lose alignment over time?

Paper 1: Grievance Without Decay

The foundational theory of legitimacy cycles

Paper 2: Moral Fragility Cycles

Diagnosing when grievance governance becomes fragile

Paper 4: Political Economy of Permanent Grievance

Grievance as capitalised political asset

Read the Paper

Explore the full framework for legitimacy drift and architectural safeguards.

View Paper

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