Inclusive Institutional Design

North's comparative analysis of economic development demonstrated that institutional frameworks designed with broad participation produce better outcomes than frameworks designed by narrow elites. The reason is informational: the displaced worker knows something about the experience of displacement that the policymaker does not. The teacher in the classroom knows something about the reality of AI-assisted learning that the educational administrator does not. The parent lying awake at three in the morning knows something about the stakes of the transition that the technology executive does not. Institutional design incorporating this distributed knowledge produces frameworks better adapted to the actual conditions they are meant to govern. Inclusive design is costly — slower than expert-driven design, producing messier compromises, requiring forums and processes that enable meaningful participation by people whose time and attention are already consumed by navigating the transition. But the cost of inclusive design is lower than the cost of exclusive design, because exclusive design produces frameworks that serve the designers at the