RELATIONAL COHERENCE THEORY: A Descriptive Framework Under Construction

Some things hold. Some things drift. Some things break. Relational Coherence Theory examines how systems resolve under constraint - what happens when consequence can no longer be deferred, feedback can no longer be suppressed, and a system is forced to reveal itself. Across physical, political, and organizational systems, the same five properties recur when structure is observed without interpretive overlay. Those properties don't predict outcomes. They make structure visible before and after fracture occurs. They explain, with precision, why coherent systems hold, why drifting systems accumulate variance, and why coercive systems produce the sudden failures that always appear, in retrospect, inevitable. A bridge does not fail because the load exceeded a number. It fails because the structure lost its capacity to redistribute. Feedback was present. The system could not respond to it. Fracture was not a surprise. It was the only remaining resolution. The same logic holds across every domain where constraint is real and consequence cannot be indefinitely deferred. RCT does not prescribe behavior, recommend action, or resolve the questions that motivated the framework. What the reader does with what becomes visible is outside its scope - and outside its interest. This is a framework for seeing what was already there.