Kaiying Historical Systems Analysis (KHSA): A Reporting Standard for Multiscale Historical Organizational Claims

Historical explanation often treats states, dynasties, armies, provinces, fiscal systems, and other persistent organizations as causal objects even though they do not possess unitary minds. Existing literatures already provide mature concepts for multilevel organization, state infrastructural power, decentralization, subsidiary autonomy, resource dependence, counterfactual feasibility, source criticism, qualitative transparency, reporting standards, and process tracing. The problem addressed here is therefore not a lack of concepts. It is a reporting problem: in fragmentary historical cases, researchers can move among scales, source roles, actor knowledge, subunit dependence, and higher-level intervention capacity without making the inferential basis of those moves inspectable. This paper presents Kaiying Historical Systems Analysis (KHSA) as a reporting standard, not as a standalone theory of historical change or a replacement for established inferential methods. KHSA uses six mandatory records when their target is load-bearing: (1) a Scale Declaration; (2) a KHSA Claim Record that freezes the focal claim, materiality threshold, read state, and relevant coding scope; (3) a Source-Role Registry that records claim fit, source genealogy, analysis genealogy, shared-failure exposure, and failure-mode closure; (4) an Actor-Observation Record; (5) a fixed six-row Action-Path Record distinguishing STANDING, AD HOC, ABSENT, INDETERMINATE, NOT ASSESSED, and OUT OF SCOPE; and (6) a symmetric Reproduction-Dependence Channel Record reported separately from higher-level reconfiguration capacity. KHSA claims no theoretical novelty for the distinction between local capability and higher-level control, for qualitative transparency, or for explicit uncertainty coding. Related separations and reporting practices already exist in Mann’s despotic/infrastructural power distinction, the Regional Authority Index, multinational-subsidiary research, Tang fanzhen scholarship, Annotation for Transparent Inquiry, JARS-Qual, Seshat’s coding practice, historical source criticism, qualitative preregistration, and process-tracing methodology. KHSA’s residual contribution is narrower: it adds analysis genealogy and converts established source-filiation/shared-failure criticism into mandatory frozen claim-level entries; it fixes the top-level decomposition and first-material-step standing-apparatus test for historical action paths; and it applies symmetric, predeclared anchors to subunit reproduction dependence while requiring higher-level reconfiguration to be evidenced separately. After rule closure, the protocol was executed on three frozen Tang fanzhen Succession calibrations and one paired macro-reconfiguration action calibration. Zhaoyi (843–844), Weibo (812), and Chengde (820) all coded LOW Succession Reproduction Dependence with MEDIUM confidence and no threshold- or window-sensitivity flip, but through three different mechanisms: persistence under explicit denial, endogenous provider substitution before recognition, and local reproduction followed by successful center-directed substitution through voluntary compliance. The Zhaoyi paired macro action was INITIABLE and EXECUTABLE while its STANDING-APPARATUS status remained INDETERMINATE. These results are reported as LOW-side execution calibration and false-HIGH stress testing, not as full polarity validation: no determinate HIGH Succession case is claimed here. Its practical test is whether it makes disagreement locatable and, where a discriminator is defined, adjudicable.