The Crisis of the Third Century, also known as the Military Anarchy or the Imperial Crisis (235–284), was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed. The crisis ended due to the military victories of Aurelian and with the accession of Diocletian and his implementation of reforms in 284.
The Clash of Civilizations is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Hegemony is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. Hegemony can be regional or global.
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor.
Lucius Aelius Sejanus, commonly known as Sejanus, was a Roman soldier, friend, and confidant of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Of the Equites class by birth, Sejanus rose to power as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, of which he was commander from AD 14 until his execution for treason in AD 31.
The Praetorian Guard was an elite unit of the Imperial Roman army that served as personal bodyguards and intelligence agents for the Roman emperors.
An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions. Institutions vary in their level of formality and informality.
Westernization, also Europeanisation or occidentalization, is a process whereby societies come under or adopt what is vaguely considered to be Western culture, in areas such as industry, technology, science, education, politics, economics, lifestyle, law, norms, mores, customs, traditions, values, mentality, perceptions, diet, clothing, language, writing system, religion, and philosophy. During colonialism it often involved the spread of Christianity.
The praetorian prefect was a high office in the Roman Empire. Originating as the commander of the Praetorian Guard, the office gradually acquired extensive legal and administrative functions, with its holders becoming the Emperor's chief aides. Under Constantine I, the office was much reduced in power and transformed into a purely civilian administrative post, while under his successors, territorially-defined praetorian prefectures emerged as the highest-level administrative division of the Empire. The prefects again functioned as the chief ministers of the state, with many laws addressed to them by name. In this role, praetorian prefects continued to be appointed by the Eastern Roman Empire until the reign of Heraclius in the 7th century AD, when wide-ranging reforms reduced their power and converted them to mere overseers of provincial administration. The last traces of the prefecture disappeared in the Byzantine Empire by the 840s.
Modernization theory holds that as societies become more economically modernized, wealthier and more educated, their political institutions become increasingly liberal democratic. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s, most influentially articulated by Seymour Lipset, drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons. Modernization theory was a dominant paradigm in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s, and saw a resurgence after 1991, when Francis Fukuyama wrote about the end of the Cold War as confirmation on modernization theory.
Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture.
The Dominate, also known as the late Roman Empire, is the despotic form of imperial government of the late Roman Empire. It followed the earlier period known as the Principate. Until the empire was reunited in 313, this phase is more often called the Tetrarchy.
Morris Janowitz was an American sociologist and professor who made major contributions to sociological theory, the study of prejudice, urban issues, and patriotism. He was one of the founders of military sociology and made major contributions, along with Samuel P. Huntington, to the establishment of contemporary civil-military relations. He was a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago and held a five-year chairmanship of the Sociology Department at University of Chicago. He was the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Janowitz was the vice-president of the American Sociological Association, receiving their Career of Distinguished Scholarship award, and a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association. Janowitz also founded the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, as well as the journal Armed Forces & Society. He was an early founder of the field of military sociology. His students, such as David R. Segal, Mady Segal, and James Burk are prominent and influential military sociologists.
With his famous book Political Order in Changing Societies, published in 1968, the American political scientist and Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington is considered to be one of the ”Founding Fathers” of neo-institutionalism, the historical institutionalism. The book is dealing with the role of political institutions in changing political systems. Huntington stated that ”the most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government”. As stated by Francis Fukuyama, Huntington argued that political decay was "at least as likely as political development", and that neither "economic nor social development" could proceed without political order, the actual experience of newly independent countries being "one of increasing social and political disorder".
A stratocracy, also called stratiocracy, is a form of government headed by military chiefs. The branches of government are administered by military forces, the government is legal under the laws of the jurisdiction at issue, and is usually carried out by military workers.
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and states in the regions of Australasia, Western Europe, and Northern America; with some debate as to whether Eastern Europe and Latin America also constitute the West. The Western world likewise is called the Occident in contrast to the Eastern world known as the Orient. The West is considered an evolving concept; made up of cultural, political, and economic synergy among diverse groups of people, and not a rigid region with fixed borders and members. Definitions of "Western world" vary according to context and perspectives.
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.
Lucius Arruntius was a Roman senator praised by the ancient Roman historian Tacitus. He lived throughout most of the reigns of the two first Roman emperors, Augustus and Tiberius. In 6 AD he was appointed consul, and then governor of Hispania Tarraconensis around 25 AD, which he governed in absentia for over 10 years. Throughout the latter part of his life he was plagued by hostility from the Praetorian Guard prefects, Sejanus and Macro, which culminated in his suicide in 37 AD after being arraigned on a trumped-up charge of irreverence to the then-emperor Tiberius.
Social revolutions are sudden changes in the structure and nature of society. These revolutions are usually recognized as having transformed society, economy, culture, philosophy, and technology along with but more than just the political systems.
Political decay is a political theory, originally described by Samuel P. Huntington, which describes how chaos and disorder can arise from social modernization increasing more rapidly than political and institutional modernization. Huntington provides different definitions for political development and describes the forms of political decay according to the various definitions. Huntington focuses primarily on political development as modernization and institutionalization. However, he points to the different definitions of political development as being arbitrary ways to understanding the rise of political systems and the relationship between the political systems of different nations.
