{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_four_proposal_generalization60_20260803","cell_id":"bounded_rivalry_governance__religious_studies_theology","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"brg-rst-gateway-module-portfolio-01","proposal_index":1,"version":0,"title":"Bounded Portfolio Contest for a Shared Introduction-to-Religion Course","problem":"In a multi-tradition religious-studies department with fewer slots in its required introductory course than proposed modules, faculty teams compete for curricular inclusion because a selected module also brings teaching time, visibility, and influence over how the field is framed. If selection criteria and permitted advocacy are unclear, teams can improve their prospects by lobbying selectors, mobilizing students, overstating their tradition's representativeness, caricaturing neighboring approaches, coordinating reciprocal support, or investing excessive unpaid preparation time. The resulting selection can reward positional tactics and incumbent access rather than modules that best serve the course's stated learning purpose.","actors":["Faculty teams proposing modules","The department curriculum committee","An independent module-selection panel","The department chair and course director","Students enrolled in the introductory course","Teaching assistants and contingent instructors who must deliver selected modules","Scholars or community advisers consulted about represented traditions","Qualified faculty teams excluded from the current course"],"observable_state":"Across successive curriculum-selection cycles, records can be examined for a scarce and consequential set of module slots; uneven access to selectors; proposals or advocacy that make unsupported comparative claims about rival modules; reciprocal scoring, endorsements, or slot rotation among repeat participants; escalating proposal length and preparation labor; undisclosed conflicts; selection scores that poorly predict whether students can handle primary sources, distinguish internal and external perspectives, and compare traditions without caricature; and repeated incumbency without a usable route for qualified challengers.","consequence":"Curricular inclusion may become decoupled from the introductory course's learning goals, while excluded teams distrust the process, students encounter distorted comparisons or avoidable gaps, instructors absorb wasteful preparation work, and past winners gain influence over future eligibility and scoring.","affected_objective":"Select a feasible portfolio of introductory modules that jointly supports accurate primary-source interpretation, explicit distinction among emic, theological, and comparative-analytic claims, responsible comparison, student accessibility, and revisability without treating religious truth or the worth of traditions as contestable scores.","intervention":"Create a two-cycle, reviewable portfolio contest for the limited module slots. Before identities of entrants are known, the curriculum committee states the pedagogical purpose, number and duration of slots, eligibility rules, common proposal template, preparation-resource cap, prohibited advocacy, conflict rules, scoring rubric, portfolio-coverage criteria, evidence requirements, tie-breaks, and appeal route. An independent panel first scores eligible modules for pedagogical performance and feasibility, then selects the combination whose members add complementary coverage rather than simply taking the highest isolated scores. Religious truth, community worth, and popularity are excluded from scoring. One slot reopens on a scheduled challenger window; incumbents retain continuity only if they clear the published retention bar. Suspected reciprocal scoring or coordinated slot division is referred for separate review rather than treated as proof. After delivery, a review compares realized student work, instructor burden, complaints of misrepresentation, and portfolio concentration with the stated purpose and revises or retires the arena.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Rivalry purpose statement","domain_realization":"Use comparison among independently designed modules to reveal pedagogical quality and complementary approaches for one shared introductory course."},{"archetype_element":"Scarce prize or selection constraint","domain_realization":"A fixed number of course-module slots, associated teaching time, and curricular visibility."},{"archetype_element":"Competitor eligibility boundary","domain_realization":"Faculty-led teams may enter if they can document relevant competence, disclose conflicts and community relationships, use the common template, and commit to deliverability; doctrinal allegiance is neither required nor scored."},{"archetype_element":"Contest arena boundary","domain_realization":"Teams may submit evidence, answer standardized questions, and revise after common feedback. Private lobbying, harassment, student-pressure campaigns, misrepresentation of another proposal or tradition, undisclosed ghost production, and interference with rival pilots are prohibited."},{"archetype_element":"Performance metric and scoring basis","domain_realization":"Prepublished scoring covers source handling, clarity about standpoint, resistance to caricature, contribution to portfolio coverage, assessable student learning, accessibility, instructor feasibility, and maintainability; it does not rank religions or adjudicate theological truth."},{"archetype_element":"Fair process and due process","domain_realization":"Panel conflicts are disclosed, reasons and criterion-level scores are recorded, entrants receive a debrief, and a time-boxed appeal may allege procedural or factual error but may not demand favorable doctrinal judgment."},{"archetype_element":"Anti-sabotage and anti-collusion guardrail","domain_realization":"A common communication channel, documented endorsements, recusal rules, pattern screening across rounds, and graduated responses constrain attacks on rivals and reciprocal slot allocation."},{"archetype_element":"Externality and spillover boundary","domain_realization":"Selection includes delivery burden, accessibility, risks of community or tradition misrepresentation, and downstream maintenance costs borne by teaching assistants and future course directors."},{"archetype_element":"Escalation and arms-race damper","domain_realization":"A fixed proposal length, common evidence packet, limited presentation time, and declared preparation-hour ceiling prevent winning through sheer production capacity."},{"archetype_element":"Winner power and lock-in review","domain_realization":"Selected teams cannot write the next round's eligibility or scoring rules, underlying course materials remain transferable to authorized instructors, and a scheduled slot is available to qualified challengers."},{"archetype_element":"Learning and recalibration loop","domain_realization":"Post-delivery evidence is compared with the original purpose, including evidence from unsuccessful entrants and affected instructors, before the next rulebook is adopted."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"contest_rulebook","role":"Freezes eligibility, legal advocacy, scoring, conflicts, tie-breaks, and appeals before proposals are known, binding selectors as well as entrants.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, selectors could change criteria or tolerate favored forms of lobbying after seeing entrants, making differential outcomes difficult to interpret or contest."},{"mechanism_slug":"multiple_award_or_portfolio_selection","role":"Selects modules for their marginal contribution to the course as a whole, preserving rivalry while preventing one approach from occupying every scarce slot.","counterfactual_removal":"Without portfolio scoring, individually high-scoring but redundant modules could crowd out complementary coverage and convert selection into a single-axis ranking of traditions or methods."},{"mechanism_slug":"spending_cap_or_resource_cap","role":"Caps proposal length, presentation time, and declared preparation effort so access to assistants or discretionary time is not the main route to selection.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a cap, teams could enter an escalating production race that raises labor costs while revealing little about deliverable teaching quality."},{"mechanism_slug":"anti_collusion_monitoring","role":"Applies the same cross-round screen to reciprocal scoring, repeated endorsement clusters, and stable slot division, referring anomalies to a conflict review without inferring intent.","counterfactual_removal":"Without monitoring across rounds, an apparently orderly field could conceal reciprocal accommodation that blocks genuine comparison; treating the screen as a verdict would instead risk punishing innocent scholarly alignment."},{"mechanism_slug":"sabotage_or_foul_penalty_schedule","role":"Defines graduated, consistently applied responses to private lobbying, deceptive comparative claims, harassment, interference, and undisclosed coordination.","counterfactual_removal":"Without known consequences, damaging rival proposals could remain a cheaper winning strategy than improving one's own module."},{"mechanism_slug":"challenger_access_window","role":"Reopens one slot on a scheduled cadence with published qualification and retention thresholds, limiting incumbency without forcing wholesale annual redesign.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a credible reopening, initial selection could harden into control over future curriculum even when a qualified alternative later performs better."},{"mechanism_slug":"post_contest_impact_review","role":"Tests whether selected modules delivered the stated learning value, exported harms, imposed hidden labor, or accumulated rulemaking power, then changes or retires the next contest.","counterfactual_removal":"Without ex-post review, a gamed rubric or harmful selection could be repeated because success would be defined only as having won the initial score."}],"causal_chain":["A fixed introductory course creates fewer module slots than qualified teams seek, and selection carries teaching time and curricular influence.","Teams therefore have strategic reasons to affect both their own evaluations and rivals' chances.","When eligibility, advocacy, scoring, workload, conflicts, and reopening are weakly bounded, lobbying, negative comparison, reciprocal support, overproduction, and incumbency can become viable routes to selection.","A precommitted rulebook, resource cap, foul boundary, uniform collusion screen, independent judging, and appeal route raise the relative cost of positional tactics and make comparable pedagogical evidence more consequential.","Portfolio scoring makes a team's best competitive move the production of a strong module that adds nonredundant value, rather than claiming that one tradition or method should dominate the course.","A challenger window prevents a current win from becoming permanent control, while post-delivery review checks whether scored promise corresponded to student work, feasible delivery, and bounded harm.","If those links hold, continued rivalry supplies alternatives and effort while selection remains coupled to the course's pedagogical purpose; if they do not, the contest is revised or retired."],"baseline":"The comparison baseline is ordinary curriculum-committee bargaining: teams submit differently formatted pitches, the chair or committee negotiates a fixed set of slots, criteria and conflicts may remain partly tacit, advocacy effort is uncapped, decisions receive limited written explanation, incumbents continue by default, and later course outcomes do not systematically alter the next selection procedure.","nearest_rivals":["Guaranteed rotation or representation quotas: directly protect inclusion and predictability but do not use rivalry to compare module quality; they are preferable when representation is a noncontestable obligation.","Consensus-based co-design of one shared syllabus: reduces adversarial behavior and supports integration but may suppress genuine alternatives or permit vetoes; it is preferable when the course requires collective ownership more than selection.","Conventional blind peer review of individual modules: reduces identity effects but does not govern off-panel advocacy, proposal-resource escalation, portfolio complementarity, downstream harm, or incumbent lock-in.","Chair allocation based on enrollment forecasts and staffing needs: is administratively simpler but makes pedagogical quality and procedural contestability secondary to managerial judgment."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The intervention has a distinct rationale only if the department deliberately retains a scarce, strategically interdependent selection arena to elicit alternative modules and effort, while the combined boundaries keep winning coupled to portfolio-level pedagogical contribution. If scarcity can be removed, inclusion is an entitlement, or collaboration alone produces the needed alternatives, bounded rivalry is not the appropriate design.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The department's formally authorized curriculum committee retains authority over course requirements and slot allocation; relevant faculty-governance, accessibility, employment, research-ethics, and institutional-review bodies retain their existing jurisdictions. The selection panel may recommend outcomes but may not adjudicate religious truth, institutional doctrine, personnel status, or community legitimacy.","authorized_first_step":"Conduct a read-only, de-identified audit of one department's existing records from up to three completed selection cycles: code the announced criteria, proposal burden, conflicts, advocacy channels, decision reasons, appeals, repeat winners, and available downstream course evidence using a preregistered coding guide. Participation in any supplementary interviews is voluntary, and no live curriculum decision is changed.","excluded_actions":["Ranking religions, denominations, communities, or theological truth claims","Changing curriculum, teaching assignments, budgets, employment, admissions, or student grades during the first evidence step","Publicly identifying alleged colluders, saboteurs, complainants, students, or unsuccessful teams","Treating pattern screens or complaints as findings of intent or misconduct","Using student mobilization or community pressure as a competitive score","Collecting protected student or personnel data without the required authorization","Piloting a live contest or withholding ordinary educational access without separate approval"],"halt_rollback":"Halt the audit if de-identification cannot prevent deductive identification, records lack authorized access, participation appears coerced, or coding begins to evaluate religious truth or protected identity. Destroy working linkage keys under the approved records protocol, retain only permitted aggregate observations, issue no participant-level finding, and return any proposed rule change to ordinary faculty governance."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Completed-cycle records show stable, preannounced criteria; comparable proposal burdens; disclosed and managed conflicts; reasoned decisions; no meaningful cross-round reciprocal pattern or off-arena advocacy; accessible challenges; genuine incumbent turnover; and selected modules whose downstream student work and delivery burden align with the stated learning objectives. That pattern would undermine the claim that rivalry governance is the relevant missing structure.","problem_falsifier":"The problem is falsified for the studied setting if module slots are not meaningfully scarce, teams' outcomes are not strategically interdependent, curricular inclusion carries no contested advantage, or observed selection differences are adequately explained by transparent pedagogical and staffing constraints rather than gaming, sabotage, collusion, escalation, or lock-in.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is disfavored if an authorized comparison over two later cycles shows that the governed arena does not improve the correspondence between selection scores and downstream learning or feasibility evidence, does not reduce unexplained proposal burden or procedural disputes, or instead increases caricature, strategic behavior, exclusion, and administrative labor relative to the baseline or a non-rival alternative.","risks":["Formal scoring could imply that traditions themselves are being ranked even when only modules are scored.","Published criteria could redirect gaming toward easily documented learning proxies.","Resource caps could disadvantage challengers who must build materials that incumbents already possess.","Pattern monitoring could mistake shared intellectual commitments or common constraints for collusion.","Confidential complaints and foul rules could be weaponized against unpopular scholarship.","Portfolio coverage criteria could freeze coarse or contested classifications of traditions.","Challenger windows could create churn that weakens long-term course maintenance.","Independent review could become administratively expensive or transfer curricular judgment away from accountable faculty.","Required documentation could increase uncompensated labor for contingent instructors or small teams."]},"next_evidence_step":"Using only authorized internal records, sample up to three completed module-selection cycles in one department. Before inspection, define event codes for slot scarcity, proposal effort, selector contact, comparative claims, endorsements, recusals, criterion changes, score reasons, appeals, repeat selection, and available post-delivery indicators. Have two coders independently code a de-identified subset, reconcile disagreements, and construct a process trace linking competitive moves to decisions. Compare that trace with explicit alternative explanations such as staffing coverage, accreditation constraints, and scheduled rotation. The bounded output is a go/no-go recommendation for designing a prospective simulation; it is not a misconduct finding or authorization to change the course.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Not applicable: this is the first sealed proposal in the session, so no earlier proposal is available for comparison.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":[],"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"evidence_changes":[],"claim_changes":[]}}