By region
Western Europe
Entries rooted in Western Europe.
2 entries
Mental model
Cleavage Theory
Party systems are frozen fossils of old social conflicts: the divisions that split a society when mass democracy arrived became the party families that outlived the conflicts themselves.
10 min
Mental modelWar Made the State
Modern states were built not by contract or design but as the by-product of rulers scrambling to fund war: to fight, they had to tax, and to tax they had to build bureaucracy.
9 min