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? | Power concentrated in the party centre and in Xi Jinping as 'core'; central commissions chaired by Xi; presidential term limits removed in 2018; party bodies absorbed government functions. | Kings 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? | Party discipline commissions and supervisory commissions with extrajudicial detention (liuzhi); courts under party leadership; online petition and complaint platforms. | Brehon judges; sureties (naidm, ráth, aitire); distraint of livestock; ritual fasting against higher-ranking defendants; body-fines and honour-price compensation.Arbitration | Balanced briefing materials, trained neutral moderators and competing experts structured disagreement. | |
| How are public goods funded? | State-led industrial policy, poverty-alleviation campaigns, infrastructure; local governments squeezed by debt and reduced land revenue. | 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? | AI-enabled surveillance (facial recognition, big-data policing, IJOP in Xinjiang); algorithmic routing of citizen complaints. | None; a medieval legal order. | No AI role. | |
| What are the main risks? | Unchecked personal power and succession uncertainty, mass repression in Xinjiang and Tibet, surveillance, reduced local initiative, and policy errors without public correction.CLM-1095 | Status-graded and unequal protection, unfree labour, endemic raiding and dynastic war, and vulnerability to a centralising conqueror.CLM-0385 | Self-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.