Conceptualizing Politics

Further readings
For the whole chapter, Bobbio’s article State, Power and Government (44–132) from Bobbio 
1989 (cf. Preface) is an invaluable reading. Also important are for the relationship to law 
the chapter The Great Dichotomy: Public/Private (1–21) and for the role of society the 
chapter on Civil Society (22–43).
For the transformation of the state in the perspective of historical sociology see:
Poggi, Gianfranco (1991) The State, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

---

The state is an abstract entity, though a powerful one. Its only palpable existence 
is the person at its head, president or king/queen that it may be. Except in presi-
dential regimes where s/he reigns or presides over the country, and does not gov-
ern it though. What the people come into contact daily with is the government: 
the member of the parliament voting for or against a law you like or dislike, the 
police officer you file a complaint with after your wallet was stolen, the judge who 
sentences you to prison because you evaded a remarkable amount of taxes. This is 
government in the broad sense of the institution (or set of institutions) managing 
our common affairs, not as the executive branch or the cabinet.
Given the relevance of government to the people’s real experience of politics, it 
is no wonder that all across its history, political theory has been to a large extent an 
inquiry into the various forms of government and an argument on which of them 
is preferable. This debate de optima republica/about the best commonwealth, as it has 
been called since Cicero, is a point of contact between reconstructive and norma-
tive political philosophy; further elements of this debate resulting from the latter 
will come up in the corresponding last part of this book.
The conceptualization of government forms starts with Plato’s and Aristotle’s 
triad: monarchy or government by one, aristocracy or rule by the best, democracy 
or rule by the people. Aristotle also enumerates the degenerative forms of these 
regimes: monarchy can become tyranny, the aristocracy oligarchy or rule by the 
few, while he calls democracy the degeneration of the proper third regime, which 
he dubs 
πολιτέια/politeia or constitution of the polis, the city state.
1
 Other degen-
erative forms are ochlocracy or rule by the mob and timocracy or rule by those 
loving honour and glory (Plato’s version) or those possessing property (Aristotle’s). 
With variations this triad remained the leading conceptualization of government in 
political studies until Machiavelli (1532) replaced it with the dichotomy of repub-
lics or principalities quoted in Chapter 4, §1. Whether it is one person or a body 
5