Dr. Jacob Holland-Lulewicz

And alternatively, we find autocracies in all those places, including places like Europe.

Right.

And I think we could take this farther.

And in the paper, we cite this quote from from Applebaum where they note that, you know, autocracy isn't a genetic trait.

It's culture and language and religion.

They don't produce autocracy or democracy, right?

No person or nation is condemned to autocracy just by their nature of geography or religion.

And the flip side of that is that no nation is guaranteed democracy, right?

We have to work really hard at it.

But I think the archaeological record shows that people have always worked really hard at this and have been really successful at it.

I think the design is purposeful and it's meant to facilitate an idea of a system.

I approach these kinds of things as, you know, why was this structure built?

Like, what was happening at this time?

Like, why is it now?

Where I work in the southeastern United States, you know, the earliest council houses are, we've dated them in central Georgia.

And they seem to pop up at a time and begin to be used at a time when there's migration happening.

So you have immigrants coming into this region from far away.

And the argument that I've been trying to make and making is, is that council houses and deliberative collective governance was a, was a response.

Like that was the solution to now living with, with new families and, and people with different ideas, you know, instead of defaulting towards the easy, you know, the quote unquote easy route of autocracy, you know, they decided like, we're going to, you know, build new institutions and,

as a response to immigration and population growth and living with diverse peoples in our community.