Comprehensive Theory of Self-Determination
Support
Domains as a policy map
The eight domains prevent the republic from being reduced to security, economy, or administration alone. Each domain asks one policy question: does this area make people and society more self-determined, or does it create new dependence, manageability, or uncertainty?
Ontological domain
The first question of statehood is meaning: why the state exists, what future society imagines, and around which values it organizes common life. Policy here should create open conditions for forming public meaning without imposing it from above.
Mental domain
A republic is not stable if society lives in fear, despair, helplessness, or permanent inner tension. Policy in the mental domain develops resilience, trust, psychological security, and initiative, while reducing governance through fear and mass helplessness.
Cognitive domain
Democracy requires not only freedom of opinion, but the capacity to judge, distinguish, and think strategically. This domain values education, media literacy, scientific thinking, and a public language in which decisions can be understood.
Biological domain
A person cannot be a full citizen under health vulnerability, polluted environment, chronic stress, or vital insecurity. This domain treats health, bodily security, and environmental quality as foundational questions of republican policy.
Relational domain
Society is held not only by laws, but by trust, mutual recognition, family, community, intergenerational ties, and relations among groups. Policy should support a culture of coexistence without turning community into coercive conformity.
Institutional domain
Institutions support self-determination when they do not turn the person into an object of procedure, but provide predictability, legal protection, participation, and accountability. This domain protects people from arbitrariness and anonymous systems.
Economic domain
Economic policy should expand real agency: dignified work, property access, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and productive capability. An economy supports self-determination when it creates space for real choice rather than mere survival.
Technological domain
Digital systems, data, algorithms, and AI must serve human judgment rather than replace it. This domain asks whether citizens can understand, consent, contest, and control technological decisions that affect them.
Integrated public policy
The domains work together. Education affects security, technology affects law and trust, the economy affects civic independence, and communities affect institutions. A self-determination-based republic must govern them as an integrated system.