Glossary
Economy of Mechanism
Economy of mechanism holds that a system's design should be kept as simple as its actual requirements allow, because simplicity is what makes correctness verifiable — a reviewer can reason completely about a small, simple mechanism in a way that becomes practically impossible once a system accumulates enough incidental complexity. This isn't a preference for minimalism for its own sake; it's a recognition that complexity itself, independent of any specific identifiable flaw, is where unexamined gaps tend to hide.
In authorization design specifically, this favors a small number of clear, uniformly applied rules over a large number of special cases and exceptions — not because special cases are never warranted, but because each one adds a path that has to be independently reasoned about and kept correct as the system evolves.