This paper considers the applicability and history of concept despotism as a critical model political power. In spite its 'Orientalist' pedigree, perusal work Montesquieu (and, secondarily, Tocqueville) reveals that has also functioned ‘pure type’ is feasibly applicable not just to all societies but perhaps especially West. As such, arguably been more satirical – or ‘inverted’ than straightforw...

Traditionally, political scientists define political institutions deductively. This approach may prevent from discovery of existing institutions beyond the definitions. Here, a principal component analysis was used for an inductive extraction of dimensions in Polity IV data on the political institutions of all nations in the world the last two centuries. Three dimensions of institutions were re...

A central issue in knowledge integration is how to achieve and maintain an optimal trade-off between differentiation and commonalization of knowledge. Too much emphasis on either side aggravates the efficiency of integration. The purpose of this paper is to make an inquiry into the trade-off problem from a particular theoretical perspective called the Activity Domain Theory. Two constructs from...

The Neolithic was marked by a transition from small and relatively egalitarian groups to much larger groups with increased stratification. But, the dynamics of this remain poorly understood. It is hard to see how despotism can arise without coercion, yet coercion could not easily have occurred in an egalitarian setting. Using a quantitative model of evolution in a patch-structured population, w...