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 dominant presidency with a small circle of security-service and business allies; a Duma controlled by United Russia; regional governors appointed (2005–2012) or elected under filters. | 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 | Kings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated. | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Courts that rarely ruled against the Kremlin in political cases; elite disputes settled by the president; selective prosecution of rivals. | 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? | Pensions, wages and infrastructure financed largely by oil and gas revenue; a reserve fund built in the boom years. | 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 algorithmic governance; growing use of digital surveillance and online censorship by the end of the period. | None at system level; digital government grew late in the period. | None; a medieval legal order. | |
| What are the main risks? | Dependence on hydrocarbon rents, erosion of the institutions that could replace leaders, and escalating repression and external aggression. | Corruption, local debt and land seizures driven by growth targets, environmental damage, factionalism, and rules on succession without independent enforcement.CLM-1089CLM-1091 | 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.