Repeatable structural failures that reliably produce instability, capture, or collapse.
Anti-Patterns describe how systems fail, not who is at fault.
They function as diagnostic warnings: recurring configurations that appear stable or rational while actively eroding legitimacy, resilience, or accountability.
Anti-Patterns are not problems to be “fixed” directly. They are conditions to be designed against, often requiring multiple reinforcing patterns to counteract.
- Authority Outrunning Capacity Anti-Pattern
- Buffer Depletion Anti-Pattern
- Capture Spiral Anti-Pattern
- Civil–Military Role Collapse Anti-Pattern
- Debt Amplifier Buffer Anti-Pattern
- Epistemic Capture Anti-Pattern
- Evidence Bypass Governance Anti-Pattern
- Extractive Dependency Trap Anti-Pattern
- Frankenstein Syndrome Anti-Pattern
- Governance–Operations Collapse Anti-Pattern
- Guardrail Erosion Anti Pattern
- Illusion of Control Through Initial Force Anti-Pattern
- Institutional Amnesia Anti-Pattern
- Institutional Load Failure Anti-Pattern
- Institutional Memory Amputation Anti-Pattern
- Legibility Collapse Anti-Pattern
- Monetary Authority Capture Anti-Pattern (Hard, Soft, and Coercive)
- Opaque Transparency Loop Anti-Pattern
- Parasitic Buffer Substitution Anti-Pattern
- Personal–State Fusion Anti-Pattern (Cultural Institutions Variant)
- Quarterly Extraction Anti-Pattern
- Sovereign Rendition Anti-Pattern
- Systemic Enshittification Anti-Pattern
- Tokenized Oversight Anti-Pattern