Crisis, Cascades, and Regime Transitions: Structural Distinctions in Systemic Dynamics is a revised theoretical preprint and structural clarification paper. It examines the conceptual compression produced when localized crises, cascading propagation, and regime transitions are treated under the generalized language of crisis. The paper argues that these three classes of systemic behavior differ not by intensity, visibility, or scale alone, but by their relation to bounded perturbation, cross-domain propagation, and the admissibility of stabilization mechanisms. The paper defines a localized crisis as a bounded perturbation within a regime whose interpretative categories, indicators, models, and response logics remain admissible. It defines a cascade as a propagation process through existing couplings, in which stress spreads across subsystems or domains without necessarily transforming the background conditions of the regime. It defines a regime transition as a transformation of the conditions under which prior stabilization mechanisms, model assumptions, indicators, coordination logics, and evaluative frameworks retain validity. The contribution is classificatory and non-prescriptive. The paper introduces no predictive thresholds, early-warning metrics, operational diagnostics, intervention protocols, decision rules, or regime-management instruments. Its purpose is to reduce diagnostic drift by separating disturbance from propagation, propagation from transformation, and structural readability from operational control. It is intended for use in scientific, technical, institutional, ecological, informational, and systemic-risk contexts where high informational density and repeated disruption can obscure the structural status of observed instability.
Vien Nguyen Son (Fri,) studied this question.