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 stratified random sample of 523 voters deliberated in moderated groups and plenaries and answered questionnaires before and after; no decisions were taken.Sortition / citizens' assemblyCollective leadership in the Politburo Standing Committee; party control of personnel through the Organization Department; local governments ran economies and piloted policies under central veto.Term limits and rotation of officeKings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated.
How are conflicts resolved?Balanced briefing materials, trained neutral moderators and competing experts structured disagreement.Party discipline commissions, courts under party leadership, petition offices; mass protest met with repression, most lethally in June 1989.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?Privately funded; produced published results, media coverage and a peer-reviewed study.Fiscal decentralisation with local land revenues; infrastructure and education expanded rapidly; health and pension coverage rebuilt in the 2000s.Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works.
How is AI used?No AI role.None at system level; digital government grew late in the period.None; a medieval legal order.
What are the main risks?Self-selection into attendance; artificial setting; analysis by the method's designers; no institutional uptake.Corruption, local debt and land seizures driven by growth targets, environmental damage, factionalism, and rules on succession without independent enforcement.CLM-1089CLM-1091Status-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.