Splitting Predicts Feudalization

When large groups cope with complex political trauma by 'splitting' (reducing opponents to all‑good or all‑bad), they outsource judgment to personalities and moral camps instead of institutions. Over time this converts citizens' loyalties into clientelist, personality‑based bonds and hollowed-out civic institutions, resembling a feudal order. — If true, it reframes polarization as not just argumentative breakdown but an institutional risk that can produce loyalty‑based, non‑programmatic power structures, changing what reforms are needed.