Re: Political System Types
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lutiferre
Is democracy the final solution, the last political system?
Are there any better regime types?
Rule by elite, rule by intellectuals, rule by the rich, rule by nobility, rule by merit?
What are the comparative qualities of individual systems? Which is preferable?
|
I would think that we can simplify this by reducing it to the question - "Which is the ideal political system?"
We can assume this isn't an easy question, because if it were then men would have discovered the answer already and applied it to our societies - bringing the question to a satisfactory conclusion. Yet, on the contrary, we find little concensus on the answer. And few people would honestly say that the society we live in today is their idea of an ideal utopia.
Thus the question is therefore a difficult one and as such we can expect no easy answer. I think we should approach this as a detective would, by a process of elimination followed by deduction. That is to say, it may be easier by first of all determining which systems are not the ideal or best way of governing societies.
As you have mentioned Democracy already, then let us examine it first.
Before we proceed any further though, we need to know which definition of Democracy is our subject. Is it the modern "Democracy" which is championed by the West today and which is arguably no Democracy at all, or are we discussing a true Democracy of the kind known in places such as ancient Athens?
__________________
The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil
- Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922)
The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth.
For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish.
- Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596).
The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation.
- Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature
Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation.
- Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
|