Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Aristocracy (from Ancient Greek ἀριστοκρατίᾱ (aristokratíā) 'rule of the best'; from ἄριστος (áristos) 'best' and κράτος (krátos) 'power, strength') is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats.
A politically unstable and kleptocratic government that economically depends upon the exports of a limited resource (fruits, minerals), and usually features a society composed of stratified social classes, such as a great, impoverished ergatocracy and a ruling plutocracy, composed of the aristocracy of business, politics, and the military. [32]
Aristocracy [b] is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, elite ruling class, [32] such as a hereditary nobility or privileged caste. This class exercises minority rule , often as a landed timocracy , wealthy plutocracy , or oligarchy .
Plato categorized governments into five types of regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The starting point is an imagined, alternate aristocracy (ruled by a philosopher-king); a just government ruled by a philosopher king , dominated by the wisdom-loving element.
Aristocracy degenerates into timocracy when, due to miscalculation on the part of its governed class, the next generation of guardians and auxiliaries includes persons of an inferior nature (the persons with souls made of iron or bronze, as opposed to the ideal guardians and auxiliaries, who have souls made of gold and silver).
According to Polybius, who has the most fully developed version of the kyklos, it rotates through the three basic forms of government: democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, and the three degenerate forms of each of these governments: ochlocracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. Originally society is in ochlocracy but the strongest figure emerges and ...
Freiherr, a German word meaning literally "Free Master" or "Free Lord" (i.e. not subdued to feudal chores or drudgery), is the German equivalent of the English term "Baron", with the important difference that unlike the British Baron, he is not a "Peer of the Realm" (member of the high aristocracy). [33] The female equivalent is Freifrau.
The House of Lords is the upper legislature of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is filled with members that are selected from the aristocracy (both hereditary titleholders and those ennobled only for their individual lives). Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy.