- According to Aristotle:
Dictatorship can either the best or the worst political system depending on the quality of this dictator. If this dictator had a good quality, it would lead to the best. If this dictator had a bad quality or not good enough, it would fail to the worst. Democracy is the safest bet because it will neither be the worst nor at least worse than it is expected because the majority have always the right and the opportunity to reflect their opinion over their politics. Because there are not so many remarkable figures talented enough to be called "good" all the time. Furthermore, the geographic and demographic nature of this political region matters to select its political characteristics: The geographically and demographically big nations tend to require a more centralised system such as dictatorship for its administrative efficiency; By contrast, the smaller nations tend to be happy with a more democratic system. Only the successful example maybe the ancient Macedonian empire lead by Alexander the great who had actually been personally tutored by Aristotle himself.
- According to Machiavelli:
Any political system regardless of dictatorship or democracy tends to claim for one charismatic figure leading the rest. Anyone who can achieve to obtain such a position through the various conflicts in a politics shall be the ruler as long as this person can be accountable for the result of their actions. People are often prone to obeying a charismatic figure showing their ways to stabilise their society because people cling to the already established ideas rather than making their own efforts to innovate themselves. Furthermore, during a chaotic period, majority people do not have their own time and energy to self-govern themselves so that they are weak against powerful bandits pillaging their communities. Then, people may call for a stronger and more charismatic force protecting their community and attracting their attention. Nevertheless, a ruler must keep their charisma and understand the custom preserved in a long period which people are familiar with to effectively rule them. In addition, a ruler must be careful against any opponent who is plotting to defeat to replace the position with theirs. In order to maintain the political power, not only the force but also the charm for attracting the subordinates are necessary. Thus, the power game will never end so it is not easy for a ruler to stay being a ruler.
- According to Montesquieu:
The most powerful, functional, and preferable political system is democratic-republicanism which opposes to dictatorship. However, less dictatorial implies more competence of each individual citizens politics requires. Under a tyranny, the rest majority just simply obey what a tyrant commands so neither law nor civic compliance is relevant. Under a monarchy or an oligarchy, favouring for the interests of nobles/oligarchs, the powerful minority, is the priority so law and compliance are kept minimum to protecting it. Under democratic-republicanism, the majority of people enjoy their freedom unless it neither invades the others' nor disturbs their social order and stability. So, majority citizens there must understand and comply with their social contracts such as laws and ethical standards. Civic individuals must always study and think themselves to understand and furthermore develop their own political system. Otherwise, they may easily abandon their democratic right away to welcome a more dictatorial politics.
- According to Hobbes:
Everyone should be equally treated under a law. On the other hand, a stable politics tends to requires one absolute sovereign holding an absolute power of its decision making processes in order to stabilise it for avoiding a chaotic situation nobody agrees with anything during the decision making process. The equal distribution of political power leads to the chaos where everyone clings to their own interest at first by ignoring the rests. Therefore, regardless of the talent of this absolute sovereign, it needs someone forcibly inducing one solid conclusion to stabilise the politics as long as this sovereign functions by following the law. The law shall exist as a guideline/best-practice as well as wisdom of stabilising and keeping it to be developed. The bureaucratic process based on the law stabilises and prevents it from chaos while an absolute sovereign there simply works for its function merely as a stabiliser in case of preventing politics from chaos.
- According to Bentham:
This formula is quoted from "Fragment on government" by Jeremy Bentham which shows how the sum of utilities (pleasures minus pains) is derived from by means of each different political function, monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by few), and democracy (rule by majority). This aristocracy means not only the rule by nobles or oligarchs but also bureaucrats of the modern governments and corporate tycoons ruling the modern socioeconomics.
There used to be a time when the existence of monarchy was in a high
demand. At this time, the community network of the majority individuals
was so primitive that it was restricted by obstacle of natural
landscapes and communication barriers mainly of language. Then,
conflicts between various feudal tribes were common, and people sought a
powerful charismatic figure binding people together. Under a threat of
frequent conflict, there needed to be someone who has an ultimate power
of final decision making processes when the outcome of their discussion
was unstable without some enforcement unit stabilising it.
Then, as shown in the algebra, initially introduced by Jeremy Bentham's
Fragment on Government, individuals used to demand the strength of
monarchy stabilising their living environment while sacrificing utility
(pleasures minus pain) drained by monarchy monopolising their resources
in their living environment.
On the other hand, thanks to the development of international trades and
information technology, the strength which monarchy provides with
individuals is insignificant for maximising the sun of the utility any
more. The global trade based on the free market equilibrium has enabled
individuals to mutually agree with each other through the spontaneously
derived market equilibrium force without any physical single authority
enforcing the decision making process. The information technology
development has enabled citizens to rationally accept and understand
pluralistic norms and values of various unique individuals living in
various different regions and cultures, and to even start to share new
norms and values in a shared cybernetwork.
The aristocrats nowadays mean corporate elites and government
bureaucrats. The form of this modern aristocracy is now interpreted as
meritocracy. There tends to be a gap between those who are able to
obtain talents and skills highly demanded for sustaining modern
technologies and trade affairs and those who are in the shortage of
them. As long as this gap exist, individuals hardly forfeit the utility
derived from modern aristocrats' wisdom even though majority
individuals have to accept the economic and social inequality caused by
this distribution which these modern aristocrats own a higher share of
control-ability.
Even Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the devote supports of
democracy, argued that the tyranny by mass is dangerous as much as the
tyranny by one/few. They affirmed that there need to be law and
legislation and a rational (legal) authority monitoring the system based
on them not to induce such a havoc while maintaining to deserve for the
happiness of individual citizens living there. Thus, law becomes a
significant factor to balance the restriction by law and legislation
monitored by the rational authority and the mass’s desire.
In the developed stable civilisation which succeeds in maintaining the
balance regards highly of the rule by law. The well-defined law
functions as the explicit guideline for both rational authority and mass
to refer in order to accomplish their happy productive balance. By
contrast, the civilisation which puts priority only on doing favour for a
particular group of citizens, including both aristocracy (Favouring
minority elite) and socialism (Favouring majority mass), depreciate the
aggregate prosperity of this civilisation.
On the other hand, regardless of the aforementioned functionality of relatively dictatorial political systems, human-beings usually feel happier in a less dictatorial politics i.e. a more democratic counterpart. My econometric project "Happiness related to Monarchy, One Party, and Democracy" has proven that the Happy Planet Index (HPI) measuring the sum of people's happiness/utility in each country is maximised when their political system is more democratic than dictatorial.
This quantitative analytic experiment indicates that the honesty of the democracy and the majority's opportunity and right of reflecting their political opinions are simply but crucially important for their happiness overall regardless of any merit advertised by more dictatorial counterparts. Thus, as long as it is feasible to accomplish under a given condition, the utilities provided by democracy as the honesty of administrating politics as well as representing and utilising the cooperative power of majority seems to overwhelms the rest counterparts.
- According to Thomas Paine:
It is a common sense that it has simply been the case that the fortunate powerful ones have dominated over the majority others with their force in a long period of our human history. These rulers having been merely lucky enough to be fortunate and physically powerful have subjugated the majority humans with not only their military forces and superstitious charisma but also their indoctrination and propaganda processes. We, the human beings, must be awaken from these false consciousness having fooled us to establish the true democracy based on rules for the people by the people of the people!
