Refusal as a Legitimacy-Preserving Enforcement Act

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 Refusal as a Legitimacy-Preserving Enforcement Act Autonomous and AI-driven systems frequently treat refusal—the decision not to execute an action—as a failure condition, a denial of service, or an instance of excessive conservatism. This framing implicitly assumes that legitimate authority is expressed primarily through action, and that non-action represents degradation. As autonomous systems increasingly operate under conditions of uncertainty, degraded coordination, and ambiguous integrity, this assumption becomes…