Repair, Capacity, and Collapse: A Mechanistic Early-Warning Model of Political Rupture

Abstract Governance ruptures, coups, revolutions, and state collapses, occur when the capacity for repair fails to match accumulating violations of legitimacy, security, or welfare. This article introduces a Contradiction Debt (CD) model that formalizes this imbalance as the ratio of effective repair to total violation (R/V). Building on theories of grievance, capacity, and legitimacy (Gurr; Hirschman; Fearon & Laitin; Tilly; Skocpol), the CD framework quantifies how “repair deficits” erode trust and predict rupture timing. Using quarterly data from fifty-two cases (2005–2025), the model achieves discrimination comparable to leading indices (AUROC ≈ 0.54) but superior temporal precision, forecasting most ruptures within ± one quarter. Logistic regressions controlling for standard predictors show that the R/V ratio retains independent explanatory power, while decision-curve analysis confirms practical gains for preventive action. By linking grievances and state capacity through a measurable repair process, the CD model transforms opaque early-warning signals into interpretable diagnostics of governance strain, complementing event-based systems such as ACLED and ViEWS.