Authority Contraction and Refusal as Safety Invariants in Autonomous Systems

This publication is part of a Broader work (full dissertation / SAB 2026):Authority, Refusal, and Resilience in Autonomous Systems — DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18431599 • Record + PDF: https://zenodo.org/records/18431599 This publication:In this publication, the Stable Authority Boundary is formalized as a design invariant governing safe system behavior. It formalizes the principle that authority in autonomous systems must be explicitly bounded, degrades under uncertainty, and must never escalate implicitly. Legitimate execution of critical actions depends on validated coordination conditions, and refusal to act under insufficient authority is treated as correct and necessary behavior rather than failure. The work…