On the Economics of Wasatiyyah and Mizan Implications for decision making under complexity

Abstract

Wicked problems in economics and public policy characteristically involve objectives that compete for scarce resources while remaining simultaneously indispensable. Conventional decision architectures address this by weighting such objectives within a scalar objective function - a procedure that admits an objective into the model while permitting its independent standing to disappear through compensation. This paper sets out the analytical content of two Qurʾānic principles that jointly repair this defect. Wasaṭiyyah names the state of simultaneous two-dimensional flourishing and therefore presupposes the Axiom of Irreducible Duality: where two dimensions are independently constitutive of a system’s purpose, neither may be eliminated, absorbed, or collapsed into a composite measure. Mīzān grounds the Axiom of Non-Substitutability, which is formalised here through a weakest-link Mīzān gap under which a surplus on the stronger dimension does no work whatever. A second, Euclidean metric is retained for a distinct purpose - measuring joint convergence and penalising imbalance - yielding a two-metric architecture in which constraint and objective are separated rather than conflated. The paper specifies the rubric-construction rule, distinguishes unconditional non-substitutability from the critical floors that govern when intervention becomes mandatory, and positions the result against the safe-minimum-standard, strong-sustainability, and non-compensatory multi-criteria literatures, which converge on the same structural insight from independent premises.