Polity Atlas

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?Bonfire groups and four neighbourhood assemblies; a general assembly; a Concejo Mayor of twelve K'eris chosen by open vote for three years; specialised operational councils.Popular assemblyKings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated.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
How are conflicts resolved?Neighbourhood and general assemblies, a communal justice council, and recourse to federal electoral and constitutional courts against the state.Brehon judges; sureties (naidm, ráth, aitire); distraint of livestock; ritual fasting against higher-ranking defendants; body-fines and honour-price compensation.ArbitrationBalanced briefing materials, trained neutral moderators and competing experts structured disagreement.
How are public goods funded?Community security patrols, forest protection and reforestation, water and municipal services funded by transfers and communal enterprises.Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works.Privately funded; produced published results, media coverage and a peer-reviewed study.
How is AI used?No specific role for AI.None; a medieval legal order.No AI role.
What are the main risks?Pressure from organised crime and avocado expansion; exclusion of dissenters, women or youth; open voting; dependence on government transfers.Status-graded and unequal protection, unfree labour, endemic raiding and dynastic war, and vulnerability to a centralising conqueror.CLM-0385Self-selection into attendance; artificial setting; analysis by the method's designers; no institutional uptake.

This illustrates differences in design; it is not a universal claim about outcomes. Each cell links to mechanisms and the claims behind them.