Regimes cycle through monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and mob rule, each decaying into the next.
Polybius wrote it around 150 BC while explaining Rome's mixed constitution to Greek readers, arguing that mixing the three good forms slows the cycle.
In practice
- A founder-led company becomes a professional bureaucracy, is captured by a faction, opens up under pressure, and is bought by a founder-led company.
- A residents' association passes from one energetic chair to a committee to a clique to a revolt to one energetic chair.
- Standing
- The ancestor of Pareto's circulation of elites.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works