History & Model of Western Governance

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lok
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註冊時間: 2020-12-02, 11:17

History & Model of Western Governance

文章 lok »

Last year, Professor Geoffrey Sumi, from the Mount Holyoke College, has given an open lecture on the republic, who shares the views of Polybius (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9tSSU2 ... e=youtu.be). According to Polybius (Greek historian living in the Roman Republic in the 200s BC), there are three simple structures of governance:
Forms.jpg
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  • Monarchy: rule by one man/king/queen.
    Aristocracy: rule by the best group of people (i.e the wealthiest class/the wisest class)
    Democracy: rule by the people.


The logic goes like the following:
Starting with Monarchy, it is not stable by its nature, as it will naturally default-the King or Queen will die. It could also turn into Tyranny because even the first king had made good policies and passed the kingdom to his son, his son could forget everything.

Then the society starts to discuss and lead to the rise of the aristocracy. Yet, it is not stable by its nature too, because different groups or factions will compete with each other. As a result, there will be oligarchy-ruled by a few who rule in their respective Tyranny.

Subsequently, democracy rises up. Polybius believes that this form is the most unstable on the grounds that people by themselves could form the institutions to constraint every citizen. Sometimes, democracy defaults into ochlocracy in which there is an absence of government.

Later, there will be a leader to revolutionise and the monarchy rises up again.

From the above logic, Polybius proposed that when there is a balanced mixture of the Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracy, will the society then become stable.

admin
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Re: History & Model of Western Governance

文章 admin »

China seems to have the above three elements:
  • one President indicates the Monarchy;
    five fractions indicate the Aristocracy;
    through the cloud and the Internet, people are empowered in the form of Democracy.
Maybe this is a great balance.

Ko Chi Kit
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Re: History & Model of Western Governance

文章 Ko Chi Kit »

The most important note to take away is that there is no perfect form of Governance. Recently, I have watched a YouTube clip given by Eric Li https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0YjL9r ... e=youtu.be who pointed out that cultural differences do matter!
For those people living in the East, they care relationships so they tend to avoid arguments. Or this is more commonly known as politeness.
For those people living in the West, they believe that democracy is the best in contributing a civil society where people are free to speak and discuss.
If we ignore such an important cultural difference, adapting democracy in China is becoming a perpetual cycle of election and regret. The fact behind China's growth is that the government officials constantly listening to people thoughts and polish the policies through all the means, from statistical voting to monitoring from CCTV. This is just another way of Western Democracy-the people representatives listen and reflect in the congress.

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