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?A 60-member Grand and General Council elected by proportional representation; two Captains Regent elected every six months; a Congress of State as government; frequent referendums.Initiative and referendumA stratified random sample of 523 voters deliberated in moderated groups and plenaries and answered questionnaires before and after; no decisions were taken.Sortition / citizens' assemblyKings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated.
How are conflicts resolved?Ordinary courts and a guarantor body on the constitutionality of laws; the Regency Syndicate hears complaints about former Regents.Balanced briefing materials, trained neutral moderators and competing experts structured disagreement.Brehon judges; sureties (naidm, ráth, aitire); distraint of livestock; ritual fasting against higher-ranking defendants; body-fines and honour-price compensation.Arbitration
How are public goods funded?Health care, pensions, schools and infrastructure funded by taxes and contributions; defence and much of the economy depend on Italy.Privately funded; produced published results, media coverage and a peer-reviewed study.Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works.
How is AI used?No specific role for AI.No AI role.None; a medieval legal order.
What are the main risks?Conflicts of interest in a very small elite; corruption; economic dependence on Italy and on the EU's terms.Self-selection into attendance; artificial setting; analysis by the method's designers; no institutional uptake.Status-graded and unequal protection, unfree labour, endemic raiding and dynastic war, and vulnerability to a centralising conqueror.CLM-0385

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