Well, you should be sure to look at the failure of the Greek City-States (even before being conquered, several of them essentially tried to form empires) and the failure of traditional monarchies throughout the 19th century as pretty strong empirical evidence against them.
I wouldn’t say that the world we live in is the progressive vision; more of a neoliberal one (which is roughly classical liberal + large hegemonic institutions [note the contradictions]). However, it’s certainly not like the 18th century.
We look to both negative and positive examples of what we want for information on how to obtain it. In this case we want positive examples of civilizations providing stability and meeting human needs well. Stability is a key parameter which is why we spend so much time looking at long lived civilizations. The Republic of Venice is notable for being extremely long lived, and relatively neglected by people studying history/using historical examples to support political theories. I agree that traditional monarchies don’t have a very good base rate of success BTW.
Well, you should be sure to look at the failure of the Greek City-States (even before being conquered, several of them essentially tried to form empires) and the failure of traditional monarchies throughout the 19th century as pretty strong empirical evidence against them.
I wouldn’t say that the world we live in is the progressive vision; more of a neoliberal one (which is roughly classical liberal + large hegemonic institutions [note the contradictions]). However, it’s certainly not like the 18th century.
Republic of Venice is of interest.
Could you clarify what you mean?
We look to both negative and positive examples of what we want for information on how to obtain it. In this case we want positive examples of civilizations providing stability and meeting human needs well. Stability is a key parameter which is why we spend so much time looking at long lived civilizations. The Republic of Venice is notable for being extremely long lived, and relatively neglected by people studying history/using historical examples to support political theories. I agree that traditional monarchies don’t have a very good base rate of success BTW.