Sanction Incidence in Asymmetrical Relational Structures: A Preliminary Generative Relational Account of Burden Propagation and Power Reproduction

This article examines how sanctions directed at formally accountable actors generate heterogeneous burdens within historically constituted relations. Research on collateral consequences and symbiotic harms documents burdens borne beyond nominal sanction targets; scholarship on power-dependence, epistemic injustice, and institutional oversight addresses complementary mechanisms. Building on these literatures, the article asks when actors possess feasible decision rights over sanction implementation, how alternative choices could alter burden incidence, and whether later relations become more or less contestable. The analysis separates authorization, execution, experienced incidence, potential pathway steering, exercised control, and changes in effective opportunities for independent review. A preliminary generative relational representation specifies typed sanction episodes, heterogeneous burden domains, conditional propagation, and admissible histories. Constructed countermodels show that formal sanction records and observations of immediate burdens may underdetermine causal conclusions within the stipulated model classes. Comparisons across households, workplaces, public authority, and assistance settings preserve differences in legal competence, institutional purposes, and remedial duties. A proposed research protocol specifies evidential requirements, rival explanations, and safeguards for participants. The formal results are conditional; the manuscript reports no original fieldwork or findings about identifiable persons. Its proposed contribution is a testable integration of burden incidence, decision rights, and historical feedback, subject to comparison with simpler explanatory approaches.