Asymmetrical Documentary Operativity: When Documentary Limitations Constrain Reviewability Without Preventing Evaluative Use (Series Note 19)

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This publication is part of the series Public Analytical Notes within the community Criteriology in Practice: Public Analytical Notes, which presents short analytical contributions on evaluation, reviewability, reconstructability, and decision structures within institutional and administrative contexts. The present note introduces asymmetrical documentary operativity as a concept describing configurations in which documentary limitations constrain reconstructability or reviewability without correspondingly preventing an identifiable element from remaining evaluatively operative. It distinguishes evaluative operativity from procedural operativity and clarifies the relation between documentary conditions, continued evaluative use, and subsequent reviewability. The concept shifts analytical attention from whether documentation is present to whether documentary conditions affect evaluative use and subsequent reviewability differently. The note is descriptive and analytical. It does not establish causal claims, normative judgments, evidentiary conclusions, or legal conclusions. The concept is analytically related to prior work on reviewability, procedural operativity and substantive reviewability, operative registrations without identifiable evaluative basis, documentary shielding, analytical usability, and dimensions of non-identifiability.