Comparing Political Systems
City-states, kingdoms, and theocracies — patterns of early governance.
Every group of humans larger than a few hundred people eventually has to answer a question: who gets to tell everyone else what to do, and why should anyone listen?
Among hunter-gatherer bands, this barely arises. Leadership is informal, rooted in personal skill and persuasion. No one has the power to compel obedience. But the moment a society grows beyond the point where everyone knows everyone, the moment surplus food allows specialization, the moment irrigation requires coordination and walls need building and armies need organizing, the question of authority becomes inescapable.
The earliest civilizations answered it differently. The Sumerians built city-states. The Egyptians built a unified kingdom. The Shang Chinese fused political and religious authority into a single system. Each approach reflected different geographies, different histories, different assumptions about power. Yet beneath these differences, certain patterns emerge, and they recur across every civilization that has ever existed, including our own.
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