The Regimes

ההקדמה האחת הנה ראוי שנדע אם המלך הוא דבר הכרחי ומחוייב בעם חיוב עצמי או אפשר בלתו, וכבר חשבו הפלוסופים שהוא כן, ושרות המלך לעם בקבוץ המדיני כיחס הלב בגוף הבעל חי שיש לו לב, וכיחס הסבה הראשונה אל העול

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ההקדמה השנית היא שאף שנודה היות המלך דבר מועיל והכרחי בעם לתקן הקבוץ המדיני ושמירתו, מה שהוא, הנה בעם ישראל איננו כן כי אינו צריך ולא הכרחי להם. וביאור זה הוא שצורך המלכים בעם הנה יוכלל בג' ענינים, הא

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The best of these constitutions is Kingship, and the worst Timocracy. The perversion of Kingship is Tyranny. Both are monarchies, but there is a very wide difference between them: a tyrant studies his

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When a change of constitution takes place, Kingship passes into Tyranny, because Tyranny is the bad form of monarchy, so that a bad king becomes a tyrant. Aristocracy passes into Oligarchy owing to ba

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but they can best excel in military valor, for this is found with numbers; and therefore with this form of constitution the class that fights for the state in war is the most powerful, and it is those

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Now it is at all events easy to discern that kingship includes several kinds, and that the mode of government is not the same in all. For the kingship in the Spartan constitution, which is held to be

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These monarchies therefore now and in the past are of the nature of tyrannies because they are autocratic, but of the nature of kingships because they are elective and rule over willing subjects. A fo

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The majority, is it not obvious? But it will be said that they will split up into factions, whereas with a single ruler this cannot happen. But against this must perhaps be set the fact that they are

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but the proper course is to bring forward an organization of such a sort that men will easily be persuaded and be able in the existing circumstances to take part in it, since to reform a constitution

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or be based on the outstanding superiority of the man who is king; so that tyranny being the worst form must be the one farthest removed from constitutional government, and oligarchy must be the secon

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another is when the magistracies are filled from high assessments and the magistrates themselves elect to fill vacancies (so that if they do so from all the citizens of this assessment, this appears r

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It remained for us to speak of tyranny, not because there is much that can be said about it, but in order that it may receive its part in our inquiry, since we rank this also as one among the kinds of

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and these govern in accordance with law as in the former case, this is oligarchical; and also when the deliberative officials are elected by co-optation, and when the office is hereditary and has supr

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And the things that happen about royal governments and tyrannies are almost similar to those that have been narrated about constitutional governments. For royal government corresponds with aristocracy

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one when those who participate in it quarrel, and another when the kings try to administer the government too tyrannically, claiming to exercise sovereignty in more things and contrary to the law. Roy

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for these modes when coupled together make the constitutions overlap, so as to produce oligarchical aristocracies and republics inclining towards democracy. I refer to the combinations which ought to

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