{
  "id": "interregnum.no-setter",
  "term": "interregnum",
  "sense": "no-setter",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 15,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "A time between two who set a group's walls, when no one sets them, so what happens then sets who sets them next.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "time.dimension",
      "groups.collection",
      "wall.range-end",
      "set.fix",
      "happen.event-occurrence",
      "next.temporal",
      "power.over",
      "persist.continue"
    ],
    "interaction": "The old setter's walls persist only as long as nothing tests them, and the next setter is not yet there to hold them; between the two, the rules of neither fully apply, and whatever happens in the gap tends to decide who sets the walls after.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "walls that persist with no one holding them",
      "a gap that decides what ends it",
      "a vacancy bounded in time by a setter on each end"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "During a papal vacancy, between one pope's death or resignation and the next election, the College of Cardinals may not change the laws of past popes or the rules for electing the next.",
      "domain": "politics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "power-vacuum.absent-setter",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "interregnum: a time bounded by one setter before and one after; power vacuum: a region where power is expected and absent, with no next setter in view"
    },
    {
      "id": "lame-duck.ending",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "lame duck: power still held while others' model has ended it; interregnum: the power has ended and the next has not begun"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "interregna",
    "interregnum",
    "interregnums"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-interregnum.no-setter"
}