A Recurring Capture Pattern in Democratic Governance: Why policies converge toward short-term optimization

Public policies tend to converge toward short-term optimization, even when long-term outcomes are institutionally prioritized. This paper documents a Recurring Capture Pattern (RCP) observed inrepresentative democratic governance and policy evaluation systems.Under the institutional condition ofa temporal structure in which policy evaluation cycles are shorter than the timerequired for policy impacts to emerge,individually rational behavior systematically converges not towardlong-term institutional adaptation and sustainable public policy improvement,but towardshort-term evaluation optimization behavior.As these behaviors accumulate, they alter the operational conditions of the system itself,resulting inthe increasing dependence of policy evaluation and political decision-making onshort-term measurable indicators,and reinforcing the same behavioral convergence through a recursive institutional feedbackloop.The pattern ultimately producesa structural decline in the institutional capacity for long-term policy adaptation,indicating a structural misalignment between institutional objectives and rational behavioraladaptation.This paper analytically describes the structural relationship between institutional design andrational behavioral adaptation.The document does not propose policy implementation, funding structures, normative policyevaluation, or institutional deployment strategies, but instead presents design principles andoperational modules as analytical references for institutional design.