Knowledge Atlas · Reference
Glossary & ontology
Terms are defined once and translated with care — terminology must survive translation intact.
P
- Participatory budgeting
- A process in which residents decide directly how to spend part of a public budget.
- Phalanstery
- Charles Fourier's design for a self-contained community and its building, housing a 'phalanx' of roughly 1,500 people (Britannica) on an agrarian-handicraft economy with shared halls, workshops and dining.
- Plebiscite
- A direct popular vote on a question of broad political importance, such as sovereignty or a ruler's mandate. Usage overlaps with 'referendum' and varies between countries and periods.
- Plural voting
- A franchise in which some voters have more than one vote, usually by property, education or occupation, while others have one.
- Pluralism (political)
- The view that a political system is healthiest when power is dispersed among many competing groups and interests, rather than concentrated in a single centre; also, the fact of diversity of values and groups.
- Plurality voting
- A single-winner rule under which the candidate with the most votes wins, even without a majority. Often called first-past-the-post.
- Polyarchy
- Robert Dahl's term, literally 'rule by many', for a regime with elected officials, free and fair elections, near-universal suffrage, free expression, alternative information and autonomous associations. It describes real regimes that approximate democracy.
- Polycentric legal order
- A legal system in which several rule-makers and courts overlap and parties may choose or be assigned among them.
- Polycentricity
- A system with many formally independent centres of decision-making that take each other into account (Ostrom, Tiebout and Warren).
- Pop-up city
- A temporary residential gathering, lasting weeks or months, organised to test shared rules and community life.
- Popular assembly
- A meeting of all eligible members that debates and decides directly.
- Popular sovereignty
- The principle that ultimate political authority rests with the people, from whom government derives its legitimacy.
- Prediction market
- A market in which people trade contracts whose payoff depends on a future event, so prices can be read as probability estimates.
- Proof of personhood
- A way to show that an online account belongs to a unique living human, without necessarily revealing who they are.
- Proportional representation
- A family of electoral systems designed so that parties win legislative seats roughly in proportion to the votes they receive, usually through multi-member districts or a compensatory tier.
- Public good
- A good that no one can easily be excluded from and whose use by one person does not reduce its availability to others — e.g. national defence, basic research.
- Public sphere
- In Habermas's usage, the realm of social life in which private persons come together to form public opinion by rational discussion, independent of the state and the market.