Coalition Dissolution: How Drift Ends — and Why It Sometimes Doesn't

Coalition drift is a lifecycle phenomenon. Coalitions form when agents share context, stabilize when agents reinforce each other’s inferences, propagate drift across workflows, and eventually dissolve — or fail to dissolve. Coalition formation is inevitable. Coalition dissolution is not. This paper explains how coalitions dissolve, why some persist longer than expected, and why others never fully dissolve — leaving behind long-lived drift artifacts that contaminate future workflows. Dissolution is not the end of drift. It is the beginning of drift containment. Governance must track dissolution events because this is where drift becomes either contained or institutionalized.