Structural Misclassification

This preprint develops Structural Misclassification as a task-relative diagnostic framework for cases in which an institution acts on a real and locally actionable manifestation while the operative problem object remains causally inadequate for a different institutional task. The framework distinguishes signal, manifestation, institutional representation, problem object, operative address, generator, and pathway consequence. A positive classification requires a consequentially stabilised problem object, an independently specified generating relation, failure to preserve that generator as an action-relevant object, uncertainty, or route, and a materially non-coextensive operative address at the resolution required by the declared task. Structural Misclassification is explicitly distinguished from incomplete knowledge, factual error, simplification, fragmentation, poor outcomes, bias, or intent. The paper develops a falsifiable pre-empirical translation architecture with prospective scope and generator declaration, linked evidence of consequential control and generator preservation, active rival testing, and protected outcomes for indeterminacy, mixed mechanisms, rival dominance, translation failure, theorem tension, and construct collapse. This is Paper V in the research programme Fragmentation, Capacity, and Queue Formation in Complex Institutional Systems.