Glossary

A

Against Majoritarianism

The corpus's standing argument that a bare majority, on its own, is not a sufficient basis for a legitimate or durable decision. It holds that numbers must be paired with deliberation, evidence, and safeguards for those who would otherwise be outvoted.

Assembly

see Sortition Assembly

Shorthand for a Sortition Assembly: a body of residents chosen by lottery to deliberate on a defined question and produce recommendations.

B

Binding recommendation

A recommendation that takes legal effect once it has passed both the assembly that produced it and the Direct Approval of residents. Until both steps are complete, an assembly's output is advisory, not law.

C

Civic Commonwealth

The system of governance DD&SA proposes for the British Isles, built on sortition and direct resident approval, in place of the Westminster model. The word "commonwealth" signals shared ownership of public decisions rather than rule handed to a representative class.

Civic (as a prefix)

The corpus attaches "Civic" to each domain it designs — Civic Justice, Civic Policing, Civic Education, Civic Transparency — to mark that the domain is governed by the shared architecture and answerable to residents, not run as a self-contained department.

Civic Standard

The canonical house template applied to every document in the corpus: the shared typography, structure, cover format, and reference-code convention. It is what makes sixty-plus separate instruments read as one coherent body of work.

Corpus

The complete body of DD&SA instruments — constitutional articles, the blueprint, sector frameworks, and supporting papers — that together describe the whole architecture.

Crisis override / Leadership Crisis Continuity

The part of the architecture that governs genuine emergencies — moments when ordinary, unhurried deliberation is impossible. It defines who may act, within what limits, and how normal resident-led process is restored, so that speed in a crisis never becomes a permanent concentration of power.

D

Deliberation

The structured process by which an assembly receives evidence, questions experts, tests assumptions, and weighs trade-offs before deciding. Deliberation is deliberately distinct from debate: the aim is a considered, defensible judgement, not winning an argument.

Direct Approval

The resident vote that confirms or rejects an assembly's recommendation before it can become binding. It keeps the final word with residents as a whole, rather than with the sampled assembly alone.

Direct Democracy

Residents deciding major public questions themselves, rather than delegating those decisions for years at a time to elected representatives. In DD&SA it is paired with sortition so that the work of preparing decisions is done by a fair cross-section of residents.

F

Foundational Blueprint

The founding design document of the corpus, setting out the architecture's structure, principles, and the way its institutions fit together. Later editions exist because the Blueprint is revised as structural weaknesses are identified and resolved.

Framework

used in place of "policy"

A standing structure that defines how a domain is governed and decided, rather than a fixed position handed down from the centre. The corpus speaks in frameworks because the architecture sets the process and the guardrails, while residents and assemblies supply the actual decisions — so "policy" would imply a permanence the design deliberately refuses.

I

Inhabitant Status

defined by the Nationality and Inhabitant Status provisions

The standing that grants a person a recognised place in the civic system and the rights that come with it. The corpus uses "inhabitant status" rather than "citizenship" to ground belonging in settled presence and participation rather than in inheritance or conferral.

International Civic Compact

The instrument governing how the Civic Commonwealth relates to other states and international bodies — treaties, obligations, and cooperation — under the same resident-accountable principles that apply domestically.

J

Justice (Civic Justice Architecture)

The corpus's design for the justice system, oriented toward repair and reintegration rather than punishment alone. It carries its own deliberately chosen vocabulary (see Restorative Justice) intended to describe harm and accountability without the assumptions built into older criminal-justice language.

M

Majoritarianism

Rule by simple majority with no structural protection for minorities or for long-term consequences. The corpus treats it as a failure mode to be designed against, not a virtue (see Against Majoritarianism).

Mandate

The specific, bounded authority granted to an assembly to decide a defined question within a set time. A mandate is narrow on purpose: it prevents an assembly from drifting beyond the question residents asked it to settle.

N

National Rulebook

The codified set of operating rules that translates the constitution's principles into day-to-day procedure — the working manual that says how the architecture actually runs, rule by rule.

Q

Quorum

The minimum level of participation required for an assembly's decision, or a Direct Approval vote, to count as valid. Quorum rules guard against a small, unrepresentative fraction speaking for the whole.

R

Reference code

The identifier printed on each document's cover (for example DDSA-SORT-001), used to cite and cross-reference instruments precisely across the corpus.

Resident

used in place of "citizen"

A person who lives under the system and holds decision-making power within it. The corpus uses "resident" to root rights and standing in lived presence and participation rather than in inherited or conferred citizenship — which is why residents, not citizens, are the actors throughout the architecture.

Restorative Justice

An approach to justice oriented toward repairing harm, securing genuine accountability, and reintegrating people, rather than toward punishment as an end in itself. It is the organising principle of the Civic Justice Architecture.

S

Sortition

Selection by lottery. A randomly drawn, demographically balanced group mirrors the population far more accurately than an elected body and carries no campaign debts or career incentives to distort its judgement.

Sortition Assembly

A body of residents chosen by sortition to deliberate on a specific question and produce evidence-grounded recommendations. Members serve once, for a defined task, which makes the assembly highly resistant to lobbying, capture, and the formation of a permanent political class.

Stratification (stratified sampling)

The method used to draw an assembly so that it matches the wider population across chosen characteristics — age, region, and so on. Stratification turns a raw lottery into a genuine cross-section, so the room looks like the country.

See it in action — run the sortition machine →

T

Transition

The managed, multi-year move from the current Westminster system to the Civic Commonwealth. New institutions are built, stress-tested, and trusted in parallel before the old arrangements are retired, so the change is a handover rather than a rupture.

W

Westminster model

The existing representative parliamentary system DD&SA proposes to replace. The corpus's case is that its central failures are structural rather than accidental — that the model produces capture, short-termism, and distance from residents by design, not by misfortune.