A political system where the foundational and sovereign institution is the popular assembly—a regular, face-to-face gathering of all citizens in a given area for the purpose of debate, legislation, and administration. This society scales through nested assemblies, where local assemblies send recallable delegates to regional or thematic councils with strictly limited, imperative mandates. It is direct democracy made infrastructural, demanding high participation and thriving on small-scale, decentralized organization. The assembly is the literal and figurative town square where society is continuously made and remade.
Example: Historical Ancient Athens, for its citizen male population, was an Assembly-Based Society with its Ecclesia. A modern speculative vision is found in the Cantonalist movement during the Spanish Civil War, where towns and cities in Aragon and Catalonia were run by worker and neighborhood assemblies, attempting to build a society from the assembly hall outward before being crushed.
by Dumu The Void February 5, 2026
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