The Politics of Aristocratic Empires
By: John H. Kautsky
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 416
ISBN-13: 9781351303286
Subjects: Aristocracy (Political science); Aristocracy (Social class); Aristocratie; Aristocracies
Description: "The Politics of Aristocratic Empires is a study of a political order that prevailed throughout much of the world for many centuries without any major social conflict or change and with hardly any government in the modern sense. Although previously ignored by political science, powerful remnants of this old order still persist in modern politics. The historical literature on aristocratic empires typically is descriptive and treats each empire as unique. By contrast, this work adopts an analytical, explanatory, and comparative approach and clearly distinguishes aristocratic empires from both primitive and more modern, commercialized societies. It develops generalizations that are supported and richly illustrated by data from many empires and demonstrates that a pattern of politics prevailed across time, space, and cultures from ancient Egypt five millennia ago to Saudi Arabia five decades ago, from China and Japan to Europe, from the Incas and the Aztecs to the Tutsi. Kautsky argues that aristocrats, because they live off the labor of peasants, must perform the primary governmental functions of taxation and warfare. Their performance is linked to particular values and beliefs, and both functions and ideologies in turn condition the stakes, the forms, and the arenas of intra-aristocratic conflict?the politics of the aristocracy. The author also analyzes the roles of the peasantry and the townspeople in aristocratic politics and shows that peasant revolts on any large scale occur only after commercial modernization. He concludes with chapters on the modernization of aristocratic empires and on the importance in modern politics of institutional and ideological remnants of the old aristocratic order."--Provided by publisher
Table of contents: title: Part, 1 Aristocratic Empires --; title: chapter 1 The Study of Aristocratic Empires  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 2 The Commercialization of Aristocratic Empires  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 3 The Origins of Aristocratic Empires  -- John H. Kautsky; title: part, 2 The Aristocracy a Ruling Class --; title: chapter 4 The Aristocracy Defined  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 5 The Aristocracy in the Economy  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 6 Limited and Decentralized Government  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 7 The Governmental Functions of the Aristocracy  -- John H. Kautsky; title: part, 3 Part III The Politics of the Aristocracy --; title: chapter 8 Values and Ideology of the Aristocracy  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 9 The Stakes of Aristocratic Politics  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 10 The Arenas of Aristocratic Politics  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 11 Stability and Instability  -- John H. Kautsky; title: part, 4 Nonaristocrats in the Politics of the Aristocracy --; title: chapter 12 The Peasantry in the Politics of the Aristocracy  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 13 Obstacles to Peasant Revolts in Aristocratic Empires  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 14 The Townspeople in the Politics of the Aristocracy  -- John H. Kautsky; title: part, 5 Conclusion --; title: chapter 15 Aristocratic Politics and Modernization  -- John H. Kautsky; title: chapter 16 Remnants and Legacies of Aristocratic Politics -- John H. Kautsky.