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?Decisions by the president, ratified by parliament and the People's Council (Halk Maslahaty); constant rotation and purges of officials.Kings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated.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?Courts subordinate to the executive; closed trials, incommunicado detention and psychiatric confinement of dissidents.Brehon judges; sureties (naidm, ráth, aitire); distraint of livestock; ritual fasting against higher-ranking defendants; body-fines and honour-price compensation.ArbitrationParty discipline commissions, courts under party leadership, petition offices; mass protest met with repression, most lethally in June 1989.
How are public goods funded?Free gas, electricity, water and salt from 1993; cheap flour and fuel; prestige projects funded from off-budget gas revenue while health, education and pensions were cut.Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works.Fiscal decentralisation with local land revenues; infrastructure and education expanded rapidly; health and pension coverage rebuilt in the 2000s.
How is AI used?None.None; a medieval legal order.None at system level; digital government grew late in the period.
What are the main risks?Unchecked control of resource rents, total information control, collapse of public services, arbitrary repression, and dependence on gas export routes controlled by neighbours.CLM-1192Status-graded and unequal protection, unfree labour, endemic raiding and dynastic war, and vulnerability to a centralising conqueror.CLM-0385Corruption, 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.