{
  "id": "rising-power.upward",
  "term": "rising power",
  "sense": "upward",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 16,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A collective self whose reach over others is read by both as wider over time, so current walls read as set for a smaller self.",
  "folk_gloss": "a country whose strength and influence are growing",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "reach.action",
      "power.over",
      "others.distinct-entities",
      "read.information",
      "wide.spatial",
      "time.dimension",
      "current.present",
      "wall.range-end",
      "set.fix",
      "small.size",
      "self.personal"
    ],
    "interaction": "Its reach drifts upward while the walls between it and others were set when it was smaller; both sides read the gap, so the rising self presses to reset them and the others read that pressure as a threat.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "walls outgrown by the reach they were set for",
      "a trajectory read by both parties at once",
      "strain produced by a gap in time, not by any single act"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Thucydides wrote that what made the Peloponnesian War inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta.",
      "domain": "history"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "sleeping-giant.unread",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "a sleeping giant's reach is unread by itself; a rising power reads its own reach widening"
    },
    {
      "id": "country-in-decline.downward",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the same reading with the slope reversed"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "a rising power",
    "emerging power",
    "emerging powers",
    "rising power",
    "rising powers"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-rising-power.upward"
}