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Winner of the W J M Mackenzie Prize

Reviews

`No review can fully capture the breadth and accessibility of S. E. Finer's posthumous magnum opus ... its clarity and readability must be emphasized ... Finer constantly reminds us of exceptions that explain the richness and diversity of polities.'
John R. Cramsie, History
`The range and sweep of these volumes are extraordinary, as is the verve and clarity of the writing. Finer's intellectual authority is maintained through the long but never wearisome journey from Sumerian city states to modern times.'
Times Educational Supplement
`This is political science on the grandest scale: three volumes that provide a history of successive forms of government throughout the world from the earliest times to the present day ... Finer presents material on political systems that most political scientists will be completely unfamiliar with, and gives fresh insights into systems that they might have thought they knew ... What makes it a great book, and one that deserves to be read by all students of
government, is Finer's remarkable ability to classify and compare across the entire universe of known systems of government. It is not simply the scholarship and erudition that is breathtaking, but also
the confident, clear and imaginative use of comparative tools to describe the significance of the systems of government.'
Edward Page, Public Policy
`Its encyclopedic summary of governments is a primer for students interested in a brief, literate introduction to governance in historical regimes. Its bibliographies provide a guide to studies of governance in each regime. For these reasons, large university research libraries may want to include it in their collections.'
Richard A. Brisbin, Jr., Perspectives on Political Science, Summer 1999, Vol.28 No.3
`The depth and reach of Finer's scholarship thus has produced a work so rich as to defy comprehensive ordering through any single comparative theoretical framework ... No member of the coming generation of comparativist political scientists and historians will be able to ignore Finer's great accomplishment. It is this which will come to be the greatest tribute to Finer's remarkable work, and no doubt one which he himself would have most strongly
appreciated.'
John Power, University of Melbourne, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol 34, no 1