CHAPTER VIII 

                On the Forms of Government



1. The supreme authority usually produces different forms or government, 

according as it is found in the possession of a single man, of a council 

consisting of a few, or of one including all.



2. And the forms of government are either regular or irregular. The former 

are found where the supreme authority is so concentrated in a single entity, 

that, from a single will, it is conveyed to every part and concern of the 

state, without division and separation. Where this is not found, the form of 

government will be irregular.



3. Of the regular state there are three forms: first, when the supreme 

authority is in the hands of one man, and is called monarchy; second, when 

the supreme authority is in the hands of a council composed of selected 

citizens only, and is called aristocracy; third, when the supreme authority 

is in the hands of a council composed of all the heads of households, and is 

called democracy. In the first the possessor of power is called a monarch, 

in the second the nobles, in the third the people.



4. In all these forms the power is indeed the same. But monarchy has this 

conspicuous advantage over the other forms, that there deliberation and 

decision, that is, the actual exercise of government, do not demand the 

naming of times and places, but can take place anywhere and at any time, so 

that the monarch has always the power immediately to perform acts of 

government. But for a decision of nobles and people, who are not one natural 

person, they must come together at a fixed place and time, and there 

deliberate and decide in regard to public affairs. For otherwise the will of 

senate and people, which results from the unanimous opinions of a majority, 

cannot be learned.



5. But, as with other rights, so also with the supreme authority, it happens 

in one place to be well administered, in another ill and unwisely. Hence 

some states are called healthy, others unhealthy and corrupt. Yet it is 

unnecessary to invent special forms, or species, of state, in view of such 

maladies. As for the maladies, however, which afflict states, some are 

connected with persons, others with the state itself. Hence some are called 

personal defects, others constitutional.



6. Personal defects in a monarchy are these: if he who occupies the throne 

is devoid of the arts of reigning, and unconcerned, or insufficiently 

concerned, for the state, and prostitutes it to be rent asunder by the 

ambition or avarice of unworthy ministers; or if he is dreaded for his 

cruelty and proneness to anger; if, even without necessity, he delights in 

exposing the state to danger; if by extravagance or unwise largesses he 

dissipates the resources gathered to meet the expenses of the state; if he 

unreasonably accumulates money extorted from the citizens; if he is 

insulting and unjust, or has any other faults by which one gains the name of 

a bad prince.



7. Personal defects in an aristocracy are these: if by intrigue and base 

arts a way into the senate is open to wicked or incompetent men, while their 

betters are excluded; if the nobles are divided by factions; if they try to 

abuse the commons as if slaves, and to increase their private patrimony by 

appropriating the possessions of the state.



8. Personal defects in a democracy are these: if incompetent and turbulent 

men are in the habit of defending their opinions turbulently and rudely; if 

great talents, not dangerous to the state, are suppressed; if, because of 

fickleness, laws are made and unmade at random, and things approved are soon 

without reason disapproved; if low-bred and incompetent men are set over the 

administration of affairs.



9. Personal defects applying to any kind of state are: if those upon whom 

the administration is incumbent perform their duty negligently or basely; 

and if citizens, who have no distinction left them but that of obedience, 

champ the bit.



10. But it is a constitutional defect when the laws or institutions of a 

state are not adapted to the genius of the people or of the country; or 

where these dispose the citizens to internal discord, or to incur the 

righteous indignation of their neighbors; or if they make the citizens 

incapable of performing the functions necessary to the preservation of the 

state; for example, if, owing to the laws, they can only lapse into an 

unwarlike sloth, or be unfitted to endure peace; or if the fundamental laws 

are so ordered that, because of them, public affairs cannot be transacted 

except slowly or with difficulty.



11. To such unhealthy states many apply special names also, calling a 

defective monarchy tyranny, a defective government of the few, oligarchy, a 

defective popular government, ochlocracy. Yet it frequently happens that 

many men in using these terms do not express so much a malady of the state, 

as their own feeling or displeasure with the present regime, or the rulers. 

For, if a man dislikes a king or a monarchy, he commonly calls even a lawful 

and good prince tyrant or despot, especially when he enforces the laws 

strictly. So too the man who grieves at his exclusion from the senate, while 

thinking himself in no way inferior to the other senators, contemptuously 

and enviously calls them oligarchs, that is, a few persons who, though in no 

way superior to the rest, still exercise authority over their equals or 

betters, not without arrogance. Finally, haughty men, and those who dislike 

popular equality, seeing that in a democracy all have equal right to vote on 

a public question, whereas in every state the common people is the most 

numerous, call that an ochlocracy, that is, a state where the common herd is 

in power, and no privilege is left to uncommon men, such as they reckon 

themselves.



12. An irregular state is one in which that union, in which the essence of 

the community consists, is not so perfectly found, and that not by reason of 

a malady or defect inherent in the administration, but under such conditions 

that that form of government has by public law or custom been established as 

legitimate. But, since the varieties of aberration from a standard can be 

infinite, it is also impossible to establish certain definite species of 

irregular forms of government. The character, however, of such a form can be 

plainly understood from one or two examples. For instance, if in a republic 

the senate and people should both have an equal authority to carry on public 

business, neither being responsible to the other. Or, if in a kingdom the 

power of the nobles should so increase that henceforth they are subordinate 

to the king only as inferior colleagues.



13. We speak of systems of states where several perfect states are so 

connected by some special bond, that their several powers can be regarded as 

substantially the powers of one state. And systems arise chiefly in two 

ways; by a common king, or by a treaty.



14. A system arises through a common king, when several separate kingdoms 

have one and the same king as the result of an agreement, or by virtue of a 

marriage, an inheritance, or a victory, with the reservation, however, that 

they do not form one kingdom, but are separately administered by their 

common king according to the fundamental laws of each kingdom.



15. Another species of system appears when several neighboring states are 

connected by perpetual treaty in such a way that certain functions of the 

supreme authority, having especially to do with defense against outsiders, 

are to be exercised only with the consent of all, while the liberty and 

independence of the several states in other matters remains intact.