Escalation of Authority

Definition

Escalation of Authority is the study and design of how people establish, exercise, verify, delegate, constrain, revoke and recover control within delegation and authority.

Why this matters

Failures in escalation of authority can expose people to identity fraud, unauthorised decisions, coerced data use, loss of access, unfair exclusion, surveillance and diminished human agency.

Research questions

How can escalation of authority be designed and governed so that identity, consent and authority remain accurate, understandable, revocable, contestable and aligned with the person’s actual intentions?

Hypotheses

A purpose-limited, evidence-backed and revocable approach to escalation of authority, with explicit authority boundaries and human-readable controls, will improve user agency, reduce misuse and increase decision legitimacy compared with opaque, bundled or non-revocable approaches.

Proposed methods

policy and standards analysis; consent-flow mapping; identity and access-control testing; user research; threat modelling; adversarial simulation; usability and comprehension testing; audit-log analysis; rights-impact assessment; methods adapted specifically to Escalation of Authority

Stakeholders and beneficiaries

individuals; families; workers; consumers; platforms; governments; identity providers; regulators; legal practitioners; financial institutions; health and social services