Rule of law as institutional substrate — contract enforcement, judicial independence, equal treatment before the law. Upstream of most other axes.
Presidential decree No. 849 of 13 May 2000 created seven federal districts (Central, Northwestern, Southern, Volga, Urals, Siberian, Far Eastern) each headed by a plenipotentiary presidential envoy (polpred). Reorganised supervision of federal agencies in regions and reduced regional-governor autonomy — core early move of Putin's 'vertikal vlasti'.
Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.
Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".
Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.