How each model solves the same problems
Instead of “democracy versus anarchism”, compare the concrete ways collective problems get solved.
| Question | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How are decisions made? | Sovereign cantons (Landsgemeinde assemblies in rural cantons, councils in cities) linked by treaties; a diet of envoys bound by instructions; majority voting only for common lands.Popular assembly | A stratified random sample of 523 voters deliberated in moderated groups and plenaries and answered questionnaires before and after; no decisions were taken.Sortition / citizens' assembly | Unknown | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Arbitration by neutral cantons under alliance treaties; mediation by the diet; confessional peace treaties after civil wars.Arbitration | Balanced briefing materials, trained neutral moderators and competing experts structured disagreement. | Unknown | |
| How are public goods funded? | Communal alpine pastures and forests; cantonal defence; mercenary contracts financing governments; joint administration of condominiums. | Privately funded; produced published results, media coverage and a peer-reviewed study. | Unknown | |
| How is AI used? | None; a pre-modern confederation. | No AI role. | Unknown | |
| What are the main risks? | No common executive, religious civil war, oligarchic city rule, exploitation of subject lands, dependence on foreign pensions. | Self-selection into attendance; artificial setting; analysis by the method's designers; no institutional uptake. | Unknown |
This illustrates differences in design; it is not a universal claim about outcomes. Each cell links to mechanisms and the claims behind them.