Coordination without a central command.
Both the Han coalition and diasporic communities operated as networks — not hierarchies. The visualization below shows two such networks side by side: load-bearing nodes whose loss is survivable precisely because none of them is alone.
Liu Bang's coalition was still hub-and-spoke in shape: many long spokes, but cut Liu Bang himself and the system enters crisis. This is why Empress Lü's 15-year regency mattered — she preserved the hub long enough for the institution to migrate from 'organized around one man' to 'organized around a way of governing'.
Diaspora institutions are designed without a center. Sephardic learning did not vanish with the Spanish expulsion of 1492; it regrouped in Amsterdam, Salonika, and Ottoman lands. New Julfan family firms shut out of one port operated through partners in the next. The network is less efficient on any individual transaction; its failure mode is gentler.
What the comparison reveals is not that one form is better. Their strengths are diagonally opposite: centralized systems are stronger at peak and more fragile in collapse; distributed systems are slower at peak and more durable in collapse.