a barangay is a precolonial / indigenous political unit in SE Asia that literally means "boat"; the ancient political structure was that a barangay (a group of people larger than a family but smaller than a tribe) would federate under a "fleet commander" and sail under their command (e.g. in times of war or raids). the barangay could withdraw their support at a low cost by literally sailing away and/or federating with a different chieftain.

a baranganic democracy is structured such that a group of people can stay together in their chosen community, but that community can pledge itself to a single decision-maker, with the ability to withdraw support at low cost. it's a representative democracy, but the legitimacy and power of the representative is essentially proven by the consent and backing of the governed.

in a fediverse way, this could be like having a Lemmy instance pawn.social that federates with lemmy.ca and lemmy.nl, but with all three in mutual agreement that lemmy.ca is in charge of reduplication communities; lemmy.ca's mod team then decides that in this cluster !memes goes to memes@lemmy.ca, !furry always goes to furry@pawb.social, !woodworking is wood@lemmy.nl and so on. that would allow both for server balancing and federation/defederation but reduce duplicates