An agent-based model of rule-governed (religious) communities in which networked agents observe one another’s conduct, sanction deviation,
and decide whether to remain. The model separates two structural conditions for durable capture. First, whether an enforcement apparatus
activates: agents punish deviation only where conduct is observable (the code-geometry parameter sigma) and where sanctioning is
institutionally rewarded (pi), a joint threshold in which neither condition alone suffices. Second, whether members’ exit is foreclosed: an
outside-option degradation (delta) that can be imposed exogenously or allowed to drift with enforcement activity. Punishment concentrates in
a small, endogenously recomputed enforcer cadre, but that concentration is produced by an institutional privilege bundle (a punishment
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