The traditional Classical Classification of State Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy
The traditional Classical Classification of State
It has been said above that since the emergence of thinking about the state and law, these scholars have discussed the possibilities rather than the form of the state. In general, they classify the forms of the state into three groups, and those used as criteria can generally be said to be the same.
It's just that they sometimes use different methods or systems and terms. Check back for example the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Thomas van Aquinas which have been discussed above.
They classify the state into three forms, namely monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.
Meanwhile, the criteria traditional classical classification of state used are :
- The structure rather than the government. This means, or what is meant is the number of people holding the government, the government is held or implemented by a single person, several or a group of people, or in principle the government rests with the people.
- The nature of his reign. This means that government is aimed at the public interest, which is good; or is it just for the benefit of those who hold the government, which is bad.
So strictly speaking, those who hold governmental power in principle admit that they do not exercise their power, or do not run their government for the benefit of their people, but only for their own interests.
This condition then causes the excesses of good governance, namely successively: excess rather than monarchy is Tyranni, excess than aristocracy is oligarchy, while excess rather than democracy is anarchy. So it seems as if there are six forms of state, but in fact there are only three, because the bad states are actually only the excess of the good states, and are only temporary.
Because it has been proven time and time again that in a government that does not pay attention to the public interest, it always gets resistance from the people, which results in changing the nature of the government as desired by the people, somehow its nature, in essence the people's rights are guaranteed.
