Architectural Patterns for Economic Systems: A Design Framework for Legitimate, Failure-Resistant Political Economy

Many recurring failures in economic systems persist across ideological frameworks because they arise from structural design choices rather than from incentives, implementation errors, or moral failure. This paper introduces an architectural approach to political economy, formalising a pattern language of reusable structural responses to predictable failure modes under conditions of power, uncertainty, and strategic behaviour. Political economy is treated as the design of legitimate, enforceable constraints that prevent systemic breakdown. To ensure internal consistency, the paper defines a fixed grammar centred on constraint, failure mode, legitimacy, enforcement, and value, and then derives a set of architectural patterns presented with a consistent schema. Foundational patterns include the Measurement-Coordination Split, Protected Core Constraints, Negative Feedback for System Stability, Polycentric Governance as Fault Tolerance, and Bounded Adaptation Layers. Derivative patterns address the recognition of value and the time dynamics of measurement and policy, including Legitimacy-Conditioned Value Signals and Slow Measurement, Fast Policy Response. The paper positions architectural patterns as a meta-framework that constrains the space within which economic theories, models, and policy programmes can be implemented without predictable fragility. It does not propose a unified economic theory or prescribe distributive outcomes. Instead, it provides a disciplined method for evaluating whether proposed systems preserve signal integrity, resist constraint erosion, embed stabilising feedback, localise failure, and sustain legitimacy through enforceable and contestable rules.