ORIGINAL: paradigm
[snip]
In terms of Britbrat's post about dihedral moving the aircraft aerodynamic center, that is completely false. Wing anhedral is destabilizing in the lateral mode, but has no effect on the longitudinal mode. I find that when we talk about aircraft stability, most people think of simply longitudinal stability and where the c.g. is relative to the a.c., but wing dihedral affects the lateral stability of the aircraft, which is just as important.
Varying dihedral on a given airplane
does change the three-dimensional position of the aerodynamic center. This in turn causes nonlinear variation of the pitching moment coefficient with AOA. See chapter 4 of
Mechanics of Flight by Phillips.