CASES / EVIDENCE IN CONTEXT
A place is not a system. A period is not forever.
Cases preserve the institutional setting in which claims were observed. Episodes keep materially different arrangements from collapsing into a country label.
-411–-411
Athens’ Four Hundred and Five Thousand, 411 BCE
A bounded constitutional episode during the Peloponnesian War.
Location: Athens
1955–1955
Asian-African Conference at Bandung, 1955
A bounded conference where twenty-nine governments articulated shared anticolonial and international-order principles.
Location: Bandung
2000–2016
Melayu-clan ulayat governance in Nagari Bonjol
A bounded study of communal-forest access, management, and oil-palm plot distribution in Nagari Bonjol.
Location: Nagari Bonjol, Dharmasraya, West Sumatra
1942–1951
British social-policy formation, 1942–1951
Beveridge's proposal and the enactment of national insurance, national assistance, and National Health Service statutes for England and Wales and for Scotland from 1942 through 1951.
Location: Great Britain
1978–1993
China’s economic reforms, 1978–1993
A bounded case of greater enterprise autonomy, continued planning, and non-state-sector growth.
Location: People’s Republic of China
1973–1981
Chipko actions in Garhwal, 1973–1981
Selected forest-protection actions and disputes over their interpretation in the Garhwal Himalaya.
Location: Garhwal, Uttarakhand
1974–1980
Combahee River Collective, Boston, 1974–1980
A bounded study of one Black feminist socialist collective's self-description, political education, and coalition organizing.
Location: Boston
1941–1973
Costa Rican social-insurance and health expansion, 1941–1973
CCSS formation, the universalization mandate, and the 1973 Hospital Transfer and General Health laws in Costa Rica.
Location: Costa Rica
1450–1750
Agrarian change in England, c. 1450–1750
A bounded case for comparing Brenner’s agrarian-class explanation with the historical dispute it prompted.
Location: England
1957–1957
Ghanaian legal independence, 6 March 1957
The bounded statutory transition in constitutional responsibility on 6 March 1957.
Location: Ghana
1890–1936
Gold Coast cocoa expansion, c. 1890–1936
A bounded case from Austin’s study of African producer-led cocoa expansion and resource reallocation.
Location: Gold Coast cocoa-growing regions
1893–1898
Hawaiian overthrow and annexation, 1893–1898
A bounded episode of overthrow, organized Hawaiian resistance, treaty defeat, and U.S. annexation.
Location: Hawaiian Islands
2000–2018
Iceland paid parental leave evidence, 2000–2018
A bounded study of the 2000 leave design, phased implementation, take-up, care practices, and crisis-era payment changes.
Location: Iceland
1946–1950
India's constitutional-rights settlement, 1946–1950
The Constituent Assembly period in which independent India framed equality and other fundamental rights in a democratic-republican constitution.
Location: India
1998–2013
Indonesia oligarchy debate, 1998–2013
A bounded scholarly debate about wealth, organization, institutions, and power after the New Order.
Location: Indonesia
1989–ongoing
Iran under the amended 1989 Constitution
Iran's formal allocation of elected, religious-review, leadership, and branch authority under the Constitution amended in 1989, current only through the stated review date.
Location: Iran
1925–1943
Italian Fascist dictatorship, 1925–1943
A bounded case of dictatorship consolidation and rule under Mussolini and the National Fascist Party.
Location: Italy
1946–1947
Japan's constitutional-rights settlement, 1946–1947
The adoption and commencement of Japan's postwar constitutional equality and marriage provisions under an Allied occupation drafting context.
Location: Japan
1947–2004
Japan under the 1947 Constitution
A bounded record of Japan's monarchic office under the Constitution effective 3 May 1947; present-day completeness requires review.
Location: Japan
1990–1999
Jinst post-collective pastoral governance
This case follows Jinst sum from collective dissolution in 1990 through a 1999 follow-up, while distinguishing Jinst-specific 1995 observations from findings pooled across Jinst and Bayan-Ovoo. It does not turn either evidence level into a single “nomadic government” type.
Location: Jinst sum
2005–ongoing
Kahnawà:ke community law-making
Kahnawà:ke’s law-making process combines community hearings and consensus with an elected council and legislative commission. It is a specific, evolving arrangement shaped by Kanien’kehá:ka political commitments and Canadian colonial law—not an example of one universal “tribal” system.
Location: Kahnawà:ke
2016–2016
Koto Tinggi nagari governance documented in 2016
A bounded 2016 study of formal institutions and development-planning practice in Koto Tinggi.
Location: Nagari Koto Tinggi, Agam, West Sumatra
1933–1933
Nazi consolidation in Germany, 1933
A bounded case of the Nazi Party's destruction of plural government and legal coupling to the state during 1933.
Location: Germany
1943–1955
Peronist formation and first governments, 1943–1955
The formation around Juan and Eva Perón and Argentina's first Perón governments through the 1955 overthrow; not later Peronism.
Location: Argentina
1980–1998
Right to Buy in England and Wales, 1980–1998
An evidence-review interval for a Conservative housing program that began by giving qualifying council tenants purchase rights and was repeatedly amended through the 1990s.
Location: England and Wales
1918–1936
Ruwalla organization across post-Ottoman borders
From 1918 to about 1936, Ruwalla camel-pastoral groups and Al Shaʿlan shaykhs sought continued access to pasture, water, and trade across a corridor being divided among new states. Their organization combined mobile resource use, layered ʿAnaza affiliation, representative leadership, and bargaining with governments rather than one timeless Arabian “tribal system” applied across places and periods.
Location: Southwestern Syrian Desert and Wadi Sirhan
1992–2022
Saudi Arabia under the 1992 Basic Law
A bounded record of the 1992 Basic Law consolidation and the September 2022 prime-minister exception; later amendments require review.
Location: Saudi Arabia
1972–1977
SEWA institutions in Ahmedabad, 1972–1977
A bounded study of trade-union recognition and member-owned cooperative finance for self-employed women workers.
Location: Ahmedabad
1868–1877
South Carolina political membership under Reconstruction, 1868–1877
South Carolina's 1868 constitution removed race, color, and former enslavement as bars to the vote for male citizens aged twenty-one or older, with residence and other exclusions. The convention rejected a motion to include women. Black South Carolinians then held governing office under those rules. Named testimony, federal enforcement records, and the contested 1876–1877 transfer show how coercion and control constrained that practice without proving that constitutional rights or Black political activity ended on one date.
Location: South Carolina, South Carolina upcountry, Hamburg, South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, United States
1988–2008
South Korean welfare expansion, 1988–2008
Social-policy expansion after democratization and the 1997 financial crisis, with employment and distributional limits, in South Korea from 1988 through 2008.
Location: South Korea
1936–1939
Anarchist initiatives in Republican Spain, 1936–1939
A bounded examination of anarchist-led workplace, militia, and women's organizing amid civil war and politically plural Republican institutions.
Location: Spain
1959–1967
Swatantra's opposition organization, 1959–1967
The formation and early national activity of an Indian opposition party whose leadership described a free economy and which Balasubramanian analyzes as economic conservatism.
Location: India
1956–1983
Swedish solidaristic wage bargaining
Between 1956 and 1983, Swedish peak labor and employer organizations negotiated central wage frameworks whose implementation and outcomes provide a bounded test of one part of the Rehn–Meidner model.
Location: Sweden
1983–1992
Swedish wage-earner funds
From 1984 through 1991, five Swedish public pension-fund boards invested collectively financed capital under rules intended to widen ownership and wage-earner influence—but their holdings and authority remained deliberately limited.
Location: Sweden
1438–1533
Tawantinsuyu imperial organization
Tawantinsuyu was a rapidly expanding Andean empire centered on Cusco, not a timeless communal society or an early version of a modern ideology. Between the expansion associated with Pachakuti and the Spanish seizure of Cusco in 1533, its rulers combined ranked authority, local government, compulsory labor, negotiation, warfare, roads, and stored provisions across highly varied regions.
Location: Tawantinsuyu
2017–ongoing
Te Awa Tupua framework, 2017–present
The statutory recognition and governance framework for Te Awa Tupua and its relationship with Whanganui iwi and hapū.
Location: Whanganui River catchment
2001–2006
Thai Rak Thai government under Thaksin, 2001–2006
Thai Rak Thai's elected governments from the 2001 policy statement to the 2006 coup; not every later use of Thaksin-aligned politics or prachaniyom.
Location: Thailand
2010–2013
Tonga's 2010 constitutional settlement
A bounded record of Tonga's 2010 constitutional reform and election; later operation requires review.
Location: Tonga
1943–1945
United States Controlled Materials Plan
Central planning is a family of institutional means, not an ideology, an ownership form, or a complete description of an economy. The United States Controlled Materials Plan offers one bounded example: federal bodies allocated three critical metals through public agencies and distinct production organizations from April 1943 until the plan expired on September 30, 1945.
Location: United States
1981–2002
U.S. federal policy-preference study, 1981–2002
The 1981–2002 federal proposal sample later analyzed by Gilens and Page.
Location: United States
1890–1896
United States People's Party, 1890–1896
The national People's Party's claims, platforms, and electoral strategy from organization through the 1896 campaign; not American agrarian politics generally.
Location: United States
2023–ongoing
Vatican City under the 2023 Fundamental Law
Vatican City's allocation of sovereign and delegated authority under the Fundamental Law effective 7 June 2023, current only through the stated review date.
Location: Vatican City
1982–1991
Warren County and environmental-justice organizing, 1982–1991
The Warren County PCB protest, subsequent siting research, and the 1991 national summit principles.
Location: Warren County, North Carolina, United States
2001–2008
Patriotic Front opposition under Michael Sata, 2001–2008
The Patriotic Front as an opposition party, centered on the 2006 Zambian election and immediate aftermath; not its government after 2011.
Location: Zambia
1994–ongoing
Zapatista autonomy in Chiapas, 1994–present
From 2003 through 2023, Zapatista support-base communities in parts of Chiapas used regional Good Government Councils seated in caracoles alongside autonomous municipal government, while the EZLN remained a distinct political-military organization. The arrangement belongs first in the history of Indigenous autonomy, and the 2023 successor design remains too lightly observed to establish how it works in practice.
Location: Zapatista regions of Chiapas
FOCUSED GUIDES
Read a bounded case as a guided question
These guides connect cases and evidence without treating a place or period as a complete political system.