Economist Writing Every Day

It’s unusual for me to sit down on a weekend morning and read *literally checks notes* Polybius. This was assigned to me for a seminar. Here’s his proposal for the inevitable endless cycle of human leadership structures:

1. Some humans are still alive. They band together because they are too weak to survive alone.
2. A strong man who bravely defends the group in his youth becomes a monarch. “Kingship” is the next progression. Polybius assumes that people could consent to be under the leadership of a powerful and noble man.
3. The king has children. The people venerate the descendants of the good king, but these princes and princesses will be spoiled and selfish. The princes “gave way to their appetites owing to this superabundance…” Thus, kingship becomes tyranny.
4. Nobles overthrow the tyrants, and so become aristocrats. “But here again when children inherited this position of authority from their fathers, having no experience of misfortune and none at all of civil equality and liberty of speech… they abandon themselves to greed… and… rape…” The aristocracy becomes a corrupt oligarchy.
5. Democracy emerges when people have “killed or banished the oligarchs” and the people remember being mistreated by kings. How does Polybius think democracy ends? Once again, it’s the new generation and the corruption they indulge in. Where do they end up? “… democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence.”
6. There are two ways to get back to stage 1 monarchy. Life in the decline of a democracy is chaotic enough that people willingly back a strong man to protect them. Alternatively, he presents a “floods, famines, failure of crops… all arts and crafts perish…” scenario. A natural disaster, regardless of what stage in the political cycle humans were at before, will position the survivors to start again at monarchy.

Polybius was Greek and witnessed the ascent of the Roman Empire around 150 BC. Polybius was himself a historian creating a collective memory of former political regimes. He seems to view life experience as very important. People with living memory of abuse by a certain type of leader will pay into a new system that keeps authority in check. Those who are not old enough to have experienced the direct abuse of the former leaders do not pay into the system.