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? | General secretary and Politburo until 1989–90, then a partly elected Congress of People's Deputies, an executive presidency (1990) and increasingly assertive republican governments. | 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 | Collective 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 office | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Negotiation of a new union treaty, televised parliamentary debate, and in several republics the use of troops against protesters. | 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. | |
| How are public goods funded? | The planned welfare state continued, but shortages, inflationary finance and falling output eroded provision from 1989. | 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. | |
| How is AI used? | None. | No AI role. | None at system level; digital government grew late in the period. | |
| What are the main risks? | Economic collapse from half-finished reform, ethnic conflict, a hard-line coup, and the disintegration of the union.CLM-1116 | 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-1091 |
This illustrates differences in design; it is not a universal claim about outcomes. Each cell links to mechanisms and the claims behind them.