Table of Contents

VOLUME I
Conceptual Prologue
Book I
Context I
1: The Sumerian City State
2: The Kingdom of Egypt to the Fall of the Middle Kingdom (1678 BC)
Context II
3: The Egyptian Polity at Zenith: The New Kingdom
4: The Assyrian Empire 745-612 BC
5: The Jewish Kingdoms 1025-587 BC
Book II
1: The Persian Empire
2: The First Republics: The Greeks
3: The End of the Polis
4: The Roman Republic
5: The Formation of the Chinese State
6: The Han Empire
7: The Roman Empire: The Principate 27 BC - AD 284
8: The Later Roman Empire: From Diocletian to Theodoric
VOLUME II
Book III
Overview
1: The Byzantine Empire
2: The Empire of the Caliphate
3: The Tang Empire
4: Government under the Ming
5: The Feudal Background
6: The Regna
7: The Republican Alternative: Florence and Venice
8: Representative Assemblies
VOLUME III
Book IV
Overview
1: Tokugawa Japan
2: China: The Golden Century of the Ching 1680-1780
3: The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age c.1566
4: The Indian Experience and the Mughal Empire 1526-1712
5: The Modern State
6: The Two Traditions: Absolute versus Parliamentary Monarchy
7: The Transplantation of the European State Models 1500-1715
8: The Apogee of Absolute Monarchy: Europe c.1770-1780
Book V
1: Overview: Pathways to the Modern State
2: The American Revolution
3: The Legacy of the French Revolution
4: The Consitutionalization of the Absolute Monarchies of Europe 1815-1871
5: Industrialization
Bibliography

Promotional Information

Winner of the W J M Mackenzie Prize

About the Author

FBA, Fellow of All Souls and Emeritus Gladstone Professor of Government and Public Administration in the University of Oxford (d.1993)

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
`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