Humans are gregarious. They live in groups, organizations, communities, and nation-states. As they interact with one another in groupings, humans develop rules, codes, procedures, and mechanisms to regulate behavior, conduct business, and maintain order. Along with directions, regulations, laws, measures, and protocols, there emerge networks, structures, and hierarchies that divide but organize, categorize nonetheless unite, and specialize yet generalize individuals for differential access to resources, opportunities, and privileges in work and life.
This book explores human polity with respect to its nature, context, and evolution. Specifically, it examines how individual wills translate into political beliefs, visions, and ideologies; investigates what social forces converge to shape and reshape political arrangements, configurations, and institutions; and probes whether human polity necessarily progresses from autocracy to democracy to technocracy. Five general hypotheses are entertained throughout the volume. The first is commonsensical: Where there are people there is politics. The second is analogous: Humans govern themselves socially in a way that is comparable to how a body regulates itself physically. The third is rational: Humans set rules, organize activities, and establish institutions on the basis of facts and reasons as well as for the purpose of effectiveness and efficiency. The fourth is random: Human affairs take place haphazardly with respect to specific time, place, person, and thing while overall they exhibit some general pattern, certainty, trend, or predictability. The last is inevitable: Human polity evolves from autocracy to democracy to technocracy.