Altruism is the principle and practice of concern for the well-being and/or happiness of other humans or animals above oneself. While objects of altruistic concern vary, it is an important moral value in many cultures and religions. It may be considered a synonym of selflessness, the opposite of selfishness.
Egoism is a philosophy concerned with the role of the self, or ego, as the motivation and goal of one's own action. Different theories of egoism encompass a range of disparate ideas and can generally be categorized into descriptive or normative forms. That is, they may be interested in either describing that people do act in self-interest or prescribing that they should. Other definitions of egoism may instead emphasise action according to one's will rather than one's self-interest, and furthermore posit that this is a truer sense of egoism.
Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, international relations scholar and writer.
Oligarchy is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.
In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time.
Kin selection is a process whereby natural selection favours a trait due to its positive effects on the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin selection can lead to the evolution of altruistic behaviour. It is related to inclusive fitness, which combines the number of offspring produced with the number an individual can ensure the production of by supporting others. A broader definition of kin selection includes selection acting on interactions between individuals who share a gene of interest even if the gene is not shared due to common ancestry.
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution is a 2002 book by Francis Fukuyama. In it, he discusses the potential threat to liberal democracy that use of new and emerging biotechnologies for transhumanist ends poses.
Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene.
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964:
Traditional authority is a form of leadership in which the authority of an organization or a regime is largely tied to tradition or custom. The main reason for the given state of affairs is that "things have always been that way".
Max Weber distinguished three ideal types of legitimate political leadership, domination and authority. He wrote about these three types of domination in both his essay "The Three Types of Legitimate Rule", which was published in his masterwork Economy and Society, and in his classic speech "Politics as a Vocation".
- charismatic authority,
- traditional authority and
- rational-legal authority.
In political science, sultanism is a form of authoritarian government characterized by the extreme personal presence of the ruler in all elements of governance. The ruler may or may not be present in economic or social life, and thus there may be pluralism in these areas, but this is never true of political power.
Politics is a work of political philosophy by Aristotle, a 4th-century BC Greek philosopher.
In biology, altruism refers to behaviour by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing their own. Altruism in this sense is different from the philosophical concept of altruism, in which an action would only be called "altruistic" if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another. In the behavioural sense, there is no such requirement. As such, it is not evaluated in moral terms—it is the consequences of an action for reproductive fitness that determine whether the action is considered altruistic, not the intentions, if any, with which the action is performed.
Neopatrimonialism is a system of social hierarchy where patrons use state resources to secure the loyalty of clients in the general population. It is an informal patron–client relationship that can reach from very high up in state structures down to individuals in small villages.
Helping behavior refers to voluntary actions intended to help others, with reward regarded or disregarded. It is a type of prosocial behavior.
Tsarist autocracy, also called Tsarism, was an autocracy, a form of absolute monarchy localised with the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire. In it, the Tsar possessed in principle authority and wealth, with more power than constitutional monarchs counterbalanced by legislative authority, as well as a more religious authority than Western monarchs. The institution originated during the time of Ivan III (1462−1505) and was abolished after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman times to the French Revolution is a 2011 book by political economist Francis Fukuyama. The main thesis of the book covers three main components that gives rise to a stable political order in a state: the state needs to be modern and strong, to obey the rule of law governing the state and be accountable. This theory is argued by applying comparative political history to develop a theory of the stability of a political system. The book covers several regions, and uses case studies of political developments from these regions, the scope is wide and consists of ancient history to the early modern period. Fukuyama refers to Amartya Sen's view that democracy remains the default political condition. Though not universally accepted as a form of government, even autocratic leaders have maintained semblance of democracy for legitimisation of their rule and use of media for their projection as democratic leaders. However, the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan challenges the assumption as there is no default reset to democracy once the sitting governments or leaders are removed.
Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy is a 2014 book by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama. The book follows Fukuyama's 2011 book, The Origins of Political Order, written to shed light on political institutions and their development in different regions.
Reciprocal altruism in humans refers to an individual behavior that gives benefit conditionally upon receiving a returned benefit, which draws on the economic concept – ″gains in trade″. Human reciprocal altruism would include the following behaviors : helping patients, the wounded, and the others when they are in crisis; sharing food, implement, knowledge.
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