Global History of Political Autonomy (GHPA): Candidate Register and Public Research Documentation

This deposit provides the public research documentation for the Global History of Political Autonomy (GHPA), a comparative-historical research programme investigating the historical constitution, exercise, reproduction, loss, and recovery of collective constituent political autonomy. The package includes an initial register of 184 candidate historical entries, a research protocol specifying four dimensions of historical identification (K1–K4), documentation of provenance and evidentiary limitations, a field guide, and supporting materials for interpreting and auditing the register. The 184 entries constitute a developing field of historical investigation, not a verified global census, a representative sample, or 184 confirmed instances of constituent political autonomy. The register retains inherited institutional classifications and uneven geographical and documentary coverage. Its classifications and source references are provisional and subject to case-level historical verification. The documentation distinguishes the identification of constituent relations from the independent empirical testing of causal hypotheses. It does not presume that any particular proposed explanation has been confirmed. The deposit is intended to enable transparent scrutiny, historical correction, comparative development, and future revisions of the GHPA research programme.