From Universal Claims to Regime Atlases: Empirical Prediction Architecture for Deficit-Fractal Governance

This working paper defines how Deficit-Fractal Governance prediction families are translated into empirical regime-atlas cells. It does not claim global validation of DFG. Instead, it establishes the methodological interface between the theoretical architecture developed in Papers 1–3 and the separately registered DFG Empirical Programme. The paper organizes empirical claims into regime-bounded prediction families, including cascade operating-point criticality, hierarchy scaling, capacity dynamics, critical slowing down, and spectral recovery. It clarifies that τ≈3/2\tau \approx 3/2τ≈3/2 is a mean-field branching-regime marker rather than a universal empirical exponent, and that λ2\lambda_2λ2 is a topology or mixing predictor rather than a generic recovery-time predictor. Incompatible empirical cells are treated as regime-boundary markers rather than automatic theory-level falsifications. This is Paper 4 of the six-part DFG Unified Interaction Field Theory Series.