Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1ChanakyaChanakyaThe Arthashastra, traditionally credited to Chanakya (also called Kautilya), adviser to India's first Mauryan emperor, is a manual for running a state: taxation, spies, a professional bureaucracy and a "circle of states" in which your neighbour is your natural enemy and your neighbour's neighbour…0i
  2. 2Han FeiHan FeiHan Fei, the great theorist of China's Legalist school, argued that a ruler should not rely on virtue or on trusted ministers but on three tools: clear laws (fa), administrative technique (shu) and positional authority (shi), backed by the "two handles" of reward and punishment. His ideas guided…0i
  3. 3Ibn KhaldunIbn KhaldunIbn Khaldun's Muqaddimah (1377) explains why dynasties rise and fall in a few generations. The key is asabiyya, group solidarity: hardy outsiders bound by kinship and shared purpose conquer settled cities, then grow comfortable, rely on paid troops and luxury, lose cohesion and are overthrown in…0i
  4. 4Niccolò MachiavelliNiccolò MachiavelliBorn 3 May 1469Machiavelli separated the question of how rulers keep power from how they ought to behave. The Prince (1513) advises that it is safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both, and that fortune can be mastered only partly by virtù, decisive skill. Read the Discourses on Livy as well: there he…0i
  5. 5Étienne de La BoétieÉtienne de La BoétieBorn 1 Nov 1530Written as a young law student and published after his early death, La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude asks why millions obey one tyrant who has only the power they give him. His answer is habit, custom and a pyramid of beneficiaries, each favourite controlling those beneath; and his…0i
  6. 6Thomas HobbesThomas HobbesBorn 5 Apr 1588Writing through the English Civil War, Hobbes asked what life would be like with no common power to keep people in awe, and answered that it would be a war of all against all, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Leviathan (1651) concludes that rational people would authorise a sovereign…0i
  7. 7Gaetano MoscaGaetano MoscaBorn 1 Apr 1858Mosca's The Ruling Class (1896) claimed that every society, whatever its constitution, is governed by an organised minority, because a small group that can coordinate will always beat an unorganised majority. Democracy changes how that minority is recruited and challenged, not whether it exists.…0i
  8. 8Max WeberMax WeberBorn 21 Apr 1864Weber gave us the working vocabulary. Power is getting your way despite resistance; authority is power people accept as legitimate, and it comes in three kinds: traditional, charismatic and legal-rational, the last embodied in rule-bound bureaucracy, which he admired for its efficiency and feared…0i
  9. 9Robert MichelsRobert MichelsBorn 9 Jan 1876Michels studied the German Social Democrats, the most democratic mass party of his day, and found them run by a self-perpetuating leadership. Political Parties (1911) states the "iron law of oligarchy": any large organisation needs full-time leaders and staff, who acquire expertise, control…0i
  10. 10Carl SchmittCarl SchmittBorn 11 Jul 1888Schmitt is read by left and right because his definitions are so sharp: "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception" (Political Theology, 1922), and politics itself is the distinction between friend and enemy (The Concept of the Political, 1932). Both books are short and bear on every debate…0i