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Political system   /pəlˈɪtəkəl sˈɪstəm/   Listen
Political system

noun
1.
The members of a social organization who are in power.  Synonym: form of government.






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"Political system" Quotes from Famous Books



... that altho the political system of Capac did not embrace that extensive scope of human nature which is necessary in forming republican institutions, and which can be drawn only from long and well recorded experience of the passions and tendencies of social man, yet it must be pronounced at least equal to those of the most ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... from a nationality become a conspiracy; and the disaffected adherents of the Mosaic system, dispersed through all the countries of the East, formed an explosive element in the population which involved the constant danger of a catastrophe. The Parthian political system was also, as already remarked, giving symptoms of breaking up. Those bonds which for two centuries and a half had sufficed to hold together a heterogeneous kingdom extending from the Euphrates to the Indus, and from the Oxus to the Southern ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... changing of the legal status of the African, resulting in the withdrawal of one of the props which supported the social system of the South, would of itself overthrow not only that system, but the political system which had grown up along with it, and which was skillfully designed for its maintenance and support. Of the absolute difference between the political systems of the South and the North, and of the fact that the social and political systems stood to each other in the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... Grace, if you will reflect a moment, you will perceive that people necessarily like the best of their own tastes, until they come to a knowledge of better; and that they as necessarily quarrel with the unpleasant facts that surround them; although these facts, as consequences of a political system, may be much less painful than those of other systems of which they have no knowledge. In the one case, they like their own best, simply because it is their own best; and they dislike their own worst, because it is their own worst. We cherish a taste, in the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... of the press is inherent in our present constitution: no change can be made in this, without altering our whole political system: but we want repressive laws, particularly in the present state of the nation. I recommend this ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... could without risk or inconvenience spare. In this way, at an expense very much less than that which he incurred in building and decorating Versailles or Marli, he succeeded in making England, during nearly twenty years, almost as insignificant a member of the political system of Europe as the republic of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... although still largely mixed with fable. Woo-Wang was brave and upright. Under him a momentous change in government took place. By him the kingdom was divided into seventy-two feudal states. Internal divisions and struggles resulted from this new political system. The Tartars availed themselves of the weakened condition of the nation, to make predatory incursions. In this period of disorder and danger, Confucius, the great teacher of China, was born (551 B.C.). His ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... England ever produced to deny that his latest renunciation of political principles required but two short years to attest the vital necessity of that unqualified surrender. If the corn laws had been in existence at the period when the political system of the continent was shaken to its centre and dynasties crumbled into dust, a question would have been left in the hands of the democratic party of England, the force of which neither skill nor influence could then have evaded. Instead of broken friendships, shattered reputations ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... the Tudors had built up. A new political world was rising into being; a world healthier, more really national, but less picturesque, less wrapt in the mystery and splendour that poets love. Great as were the faults of Puritanism, it may fairly claim to be the first political system which recognized the grandeur of the people as a whole. As great a change was passing over the spiritual sympathies of men. A sterner Protestantism was invigorating and ennobling life by its morality, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... and the varying current please. How huge must be the rent in the meshes of the law to let so large a fish go through! But in truth there is no law about it, and to this day no man can confidently affirm that he knows to whom the river belongs. These curious anomalies are part and parcel of our political system, and as I watched the black monster slowly go by with the stream it occurred to me that grimy bargee, with his short pipe and his onions, was really the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... Chapter IX.-Mars has no Political System; yet it is controlled by the very Acme of System. Each Individual of their vast population is guided by "The Light Within" ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... one feature of American republicanism which is supremely characteristic, it is universal suffrage. This interpenetrates our political system as veins run through a block of marble. The patriots and sages who framed our Constitution grouted it with this principle. They believed and declared that it was safe to trust men with self-government. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... seriously menaced, that we resent injuries or make preparations for defence. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the Allied Powers is essentially different, in this respect, from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments. And to the defence of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... policy of David was to bring all accessible territory under the social and political system of western Europe, "the Feudal System." Its principles had been perfectly familiar to Celtic Scotland, but had rested on a body of traditional customs (as in Homeric Greece), rather than on written laws and charters signed ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... and, in time, to excite fears of violent revolution. Without undertaking the easy task of denouncing exploded systems, we may ask what state of mind they implied. Our ancestors were perfectly convinced that their political system was of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were freemen entitled to look down upon foreigners as the slaves of despots. Nor can we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. The boasting about English freedom implied some misunderstanding. But it was ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... chances of attracting attention, of gaining adherents, of achieving at least a partial and temporary success. In the age and in the country which has seen the development of Mormonism as a successful religious, social, and political system, nothing should surprise us. Such is the restlessness of human nature that it will often, from mere weak hankering after change, hug to its bosom the wildest theories, and ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... Merimee—who are courted for their personal merits and official standing rather than for their literary distinctions—I have scarcely met one of them. To the parties of the ministers of the Grand Referendaire, and other public functionaries, artists and men of letters are admitted as part of a political system; but they are not to be found—like Moore, Rogers, Chantrey, Newton, and others—in the boudoirs of the elite, or the select fetes of ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... his remarks to the issues at Charleston that Douglas warmed to his subject. He refused to recognize the right of a caucus of the Senate or of the House, to prescribe new tests, to draft party platforms. That was a task reserved, under our political system, for national conventions, made up of delegates chosen by the people. Tried by the standard of the only Democratic organization competent to pronounce upon questions of party faith, he was no longer a heretic, no longer an outlaw from the Democratic party, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... among the nations of the universe, a solitary instance in which neither the destructive hand of time, nor the devastating arm of oppression, nor the widest variety of changes in the political system of government could alter or subdue, much less wholly extinguish, the national genius, spirit, and character of its inhabitants." This is true not only of the Danish wars which ended nine hundred years ago, but of many a dreadful century since and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... revolution as "a change in the form of government, or the constitution, or rulers, otherwise than as provided by the laws of succession, election, etc." The Century Dictionary defines such proceedings as "a radical change in social or governmental conditions; the overthrow of an established political system." Many exceedingly interesting parallels may be drawn between the experience of the American colonies prior to their revolution, in 1775, and the experience of Cuba during the 19th Century. In fact, it may perhaps be said that there is no experience in Cuba's history that cannot ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... beside President Wilson's clear rendering of the American idea. We want all our peoples to understand, and we want all mankind to understand that our Empire is not a net about the world in which the progress of mankind is entangled, but a self-conscious political system working side by side with the other democracies of the earth, preparing the way for, and prepared at last to sacrifice and merge itself in, the world confederation of ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... will never consent that another country should arrogate the power of annulling, at her pleasure, the political system of Europe, established by solemn treaties and guaranteed by the consent of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... of Fair Play is the principal concern of this entire study—appropriately, it was from their political system that these frontiersmen derived their unusual name. This was not the only group to use the name, however. Another "fair play system" existed in southwestern Pennsylvania during the same period, and perhaps a similar study can be made of those pioneers ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... for establishment of a plural political system; supplanted on 6 June 1998 by a Transitional Constitution which enlarged the National Assembly ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... this long miscalculation, we will dwell for the present only on the historical reason just now indicated: France did not find, as England did, in the primitive elements of French society the conditions and means of the political system to which she never ceased to aspire. In order to obtain the moderate measure of internal order, without which society could not exist; in order to insure the progress of her civil laws and her material civilization; in order even to enjoy those pleasures of the mind for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... would be constitutionally impotent to exact them, because insurgent States recover unconditioned rights to representation by the mere fact of their submitting to the power they can no longer resist. The acceptance of this principle would make insurrection the chronic disease of our political system. War would follow war, until nearly all the wealth of the country was squandered, and nearly all the inhabitants exterminated. Mr. Johnson's prophetic vision of that Paradise of constitutionalism, shadowed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... merit, though always marked by great ability. It is very sure that he has been the instrument of great good, or of enormous evil, and apparently more of the latter. He came into life the child and champion of a political system which has been for a long time crumbling to pieces; and if the perils which are produced by its fall are great, they are mainly attributable to the manner in which it was upheld by Peel, and to his want of sagacity, in a wrong estimate ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... endure. With general primary education up to a point necessary for the intelligent exercise of the suffrage, one may have hopes for the continuance and development of a democratic republic. On this account primary education should be made free: it is part of our political system; it is the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... that there were two different heirs to the Roman tradition placed the faithful burghers of the Middle Ages in a difficult position. The theory behind the mediaeval political system was both sound and simple. While the worldly master (the emperor) looked after the physical well-being of his subjects, the spiritual master (the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... to the fact that the parcelling of the domain of Louis XIV in the new world fixed irrevocably the public school in the national consciousness and purpose and made it the foundation of a purely democratic social system and the nourisher of a more highly efficient democratic political system. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... fiction that might be interpreted into a Dorian origin; he selected Croton as his residence, because it was under the protection of "his household god;" his doctrines are said to have been delivered in the Dorian dialect; and much of his educational discipline, much of his political system, bear an evident affinity to the old Cretan and Spartan institutions. But, on the other hand, it is probable, that Pythagoras favoured the god of Delphi, partly from the close connexion which many of his symbols bore to the metaphysical speculations the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... George's political system was, it is evident, largely based on Bolingbroke's essay On the Idea of a Patriot King. In this essay Bolingbroke lays down that a king who desires the welfare of his people should "begin to govern as ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... we have planets with every religion known to man throughout the ages. Everything ranging from primitive animism to the most advanced philosophic ethic. We have every political system ever dreamed of, and every socio-economic system. It can all be blamed on the crack-pot manner in which we're colonizing. Any minority, no matter how small—religious, political, racial, or whatever—if it can collect the funds ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... misconception of the matter impresses it too strongly upon me that the States, separately, are too much engaged in their local concerns and have too many of their ablest men withdrawn from the general council for the good of the commonweal. In a word I think our political system may be compared to the mechanism of a clock and that we should derive a lesson from it, for it answers no good purpose to keep the smaller wheels in order if the greater one, which is the support and prime mover of the whole, is neglected. How far the latter is the case it does not become ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... degeneracy of the empire under the guise of a description of the primitive virtues of a Utopian Germany; and modern theorists have found in his Germania an armoury of democratic weapons against aristocracy and despotism. From this golden age the Angles and Saxons are supposed to have derived a political system in which most men were free and equal, owning their land in common, debating and deciding in folkmoots the issues of peace and war, electing their kings (if any), and obeying them only so far as they ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... European period of Russian history. Before Peter's time Russia belonged to Asia rather than to Europe, and was doubtless regarded by Englishmen and Frenchmen pretty much as we nowadays regard Bokhara or Kashgar; since that time she has formed an integral part of the European political system, and her intellectual history has been but a reflection of the intellectual history of Western Europe, modified and coloured by national character ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... strained, like that, as Aristotle expressly pointed out, of a beleaguered encampment in an enemy's territory, that the singular institutions of Lacedaemon, the half-military, half-monastic spirit, which prevailed in this so gravely beautiful place, had been originally due. But observe!—Its moral and political system, in which that slavery was so significant a factor, its discipline, its aesthetic and other scruples, its peculiar moral ethos, having long before our Platonic student comes thither attained its original and proper ends, survived,—there is the point! survived as an end in itself, as a matter ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... design were secretly pursued, it would defeat the very views she had in sharing in the spoliation of Poland; and if openly, it would be deemed an avowal of hostilities against the Court of France, whose political system would certainly impel it to resist any attack upon the divan of Constantinople, that the balance of power in Europe might be maintained against the formidable ambition of Catherine, whose gigantic hopes had been ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... are: Collective property of the instruments of production, and remuneration to each according to the time spent in producing, while taking into account the productivity of his labour. As to the political system, it would be the Parliamentary system, modified by positive instructions given to those elected, and by the Referendum—a vote, taken by noes ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... a stranger fact, which absolutely cannot be explained, save on the supposition that the Celts everywhere held the supreme dignity of extreme if not absolute importance in their political system. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... the Revolution of the 24th of February broke out. I perceived from the first day all the importance of that event, but also its prematureness. Without being one of those who regretted the fall of a dynasty or of a political system, I grieved for a civilization which seemed to me for the moment greatly compromised. I did not, however, indulge in the gloomy anticipations which I saw had taken possession of many who the day before had professed themselves republicans, but who were now surprised, and even alarmed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... And at the end of the war he writes: "See, your friend is victorious for the second time! Who would have said a few years ago that your pupil in philosophy would play a soldier's part in the world; that Providence would use a poet to overthrow the political system of Europe?" This shows how fresh and young Frederick felt when he returned to Berlin in triumph after ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... second place, the War of Independence and of the Revolution lacked some of the characteristics of other national uprisings. It was not a revolt against grievous oppression or against a wholly foreign domination, but against a political system which the people mildly resented and which only statesmen felt to be pernicious and found to be past cure. The cause appealed to far-seeing political aspiration and appealed also to turbulent and ambitious spirits and to whatever was present of a merely revolutionary ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... hand of his Leviathan, and the sword in his right.[357] He testified, as strongly as man could, by his public actions, that he was a Christian of the Church of England, "as by law established," and no enemy to the episcopal order; but he dreaded the encroachments of the Churchmen in his political system; jealous of that supremacy at which some of them aimed. Many enlightened bishops sided with the philosopher.[358] At a time when Milton sullenly withdrew from every public testimonial of divine worship, Hobbes, with more enlightened views, attended ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the American idea. That idea, while not ceasing to be at bottom economic, became more than ever political and social in its meaning and contents. The Land of Freedom became in the course of time also the Land of Equality. The special American political system, the construction of which was predicted in the "Farmer's" assertion of the necessary novelty of American modes of thought and action, was made explicitly, if not uncompromisingly, democratic; and the success of this democratic political system was indissolubly associated in the American mind ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... two centuries, within the last fifty years. America to-day, in all but government, is less like the America of 1776, than the France of to-day is like the France of 1600. While it is the fashion to scout our example as merely that of an untried experiment, ours is fast getting to be the oldest political system in Christendom, as applied to one and the same people. Nations are not easily destroyed,—they exist under a variety of mutations, and names last longer than things; but I now speak in reference to distinguishing and prominent facts, without regard to the various mystifications ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Why did the Papists divide territorially the country? Why did they assume territorial titles? and why do they so pertinaciously cling to these titles? Why, because their chief aim is to erect a territorial and political system, and they wish to secure, by fair means or foul, a pretest or basis on which they may afterwards enforce that system by political and physical means. Have we forgotten the famous declaration of Wiseman, that his grand ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... none of your business? Let each man look after himself? Would it not be true, think you, that if every Christian in America did as Jesus would do, society itself, the business world, yes, the very political system under which our commercial and governmental activity is carried on, would be so changed that human suffering would be reduced to ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... community consists of various systems, such as the educational system, the economic system, the political system. Each of these systems is, in its turn, composed of institutions. Thus, for example, the educational system consists of the common schools, the high schools, the normal and professional schools and universities, the special schools, and so on. Each city school system is a ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... drama of sustained interest and equable and majestic evolution; it has given scope for the most ingenious researches into its internal history. There one age is the parent of another; the elements and principles of its political system are brought out into a variety of powers with mutual relations; external events act and react with domestic affairs; manners and views change; excess of prosperity becomes the omen of misfortune to come; till in the words of the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... secured from all future alarm by the conclusion of the general peace of Westphalia, definitively signed on the 24th of October, 1648. This treaty was long considered not only as the fundamental law of the empire, but as the basis of the political system of Europe. As numbers of conflicting interests were reconciled, Germanic liberty secured, and a just equilibrium established between the Catholics and Protestants, France and Sweden obtained great advantages; and the various princes of the empire saw their possessions regulated and secured, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... commerce and navigation the Etruscans were indebted for their opulence and consequent magnificence; their destruction was owing to the defects of their political system. There were twelve Tuscan cities united in a federative alliance. Between the Mac'ra and Arnus were, Pi'sae, Pisa; Floren'tia, Florence; and Fae'sulae: between the Arnus and the Tiber, Volate'rrae, Volterra; ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... week at Chateau Desir passed pleasantly enough. Vivian's morning was amply occupied in maturing with the Marquess the grand principles of the new political system: in weighing interests, in balancing connections, and settling "what side was to be taken on the great questions?" O politics, thou splendid juggle! The whole business, although so magnificent in its result, appeared very easy to the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... everything to his aim,—money, troops, generals, and his own safety also, to his aim; not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor of his own means. "Incidents ought not to govern policy," he said, "but policy, incidents." "To be hurried away by every event, is to have no political system at all. His victories were only so many doors, and he never for a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the present circumstance. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He would shorten a straight line to come at his object. Horrible anecdotes ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... privileges had constituted one of the most striking features of the political system of mediaeval Europe, had been shorn of their exorbitant claims founded upon royal charters or prescriptive usage. The kings of France, in particular, had favored the growth of the municipalities, in order to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... manner drowned in that of the rabble: for if the fortune sufficient for qualifying a person at present to give his voice in state affairs, be ten times less than was judged sufficient upon forming the constitution, it is evident that greater numbers of the rabble will thus be introduced into the political system, and they ever moving in the vortex of the great, will follow where greatness shall direct. In such a state, therefore, all that the middle order has left, is to preserve the prerogative and privileges of the one principal governor with the most sacred circumspection. For ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... no love between equals. Between two lovers there should be differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill. The charm of love fled from us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum lives are the outcome of the political system. Italy at any rate is the land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous unreasoning siren, guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature no more to be ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... the power-houses of our political system. Party sentiment finds its first public expression there—often it has its beginnings there in the free conversations which characterize such American political societies. You will find the "leaders" ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... Marshall, and Story,—to say nothing of English and French jurists,—Mr. Sumner brings authority to define and illustrate the true place of the judicial office in the political system of a free government. And here, fidelity to those principles of liberty he had explained and defended, fidelity to the "good old cause" itself, at home and in the grand forum of the nations, demanded and received the frank avowal, that "a recent scene in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... as mine of any use to the world now or hereafter: I mean that authority which is derived from an opinion that a member speaks the language of truth and sincerity, and that he is not ready to take up or lay down a great political system for the convenience of the hour, that he is in Parliament to support his opinion of the public good, and does not form his opinion in order to get into Parliament, or to continue in it. It is in a great measure for your sake that I wish to preserve this character. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... heresy, the political heresy, had been discovered, which Cardinal Baronius, the foremost of the Roman divines, denounced as the most damnable of all heresies. By that was meant the notion of a science of politics limiting the ecclesiastical domain; an ethical and political system deriving its principles elsewhere than from the Church, and setting up a new and rival authority yet to be defined, ascertainable in no book, and not accepted by the nations. Those amongst us who deny the existence ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... of fortune more important yet was their relatively free religious and political system. Toleration in religion was large. Self-government was nearly complete internally, and indeed externally, till the navigation acts. Canada, on the other hand, was oppressed by a feudal constitution in the state, settlers being denied the fee simple of their lands, and by Jesuits in Church. "New ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... example of this in her political system; perhaps she will now oblige in her educational. I confess that I look very eagerly and watchfully towards America in many ways. After the war she will be more emphatically than ever, in material things, the most important and powerful nation of the earth. We British have a legitimate and somewhat ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... the old theological problems which had for so long dominated human thinking, the substitution of natural political organization for the older ecclesiastical foundations of the State, the destruction of what remained of the old feudal political system, the freeing of the serf and the evolution of the citizen, and the rise of a modern society interested in problems of national welfare—government in the interest of the governed, commerce, industry, science, economics, education, and social welfare. The evolution of such modern-type governments ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... bonds of society, he ought not to suffer it to be made the pretext of destroying its peace, order, liberty, and its security. Above all, he ought strictly to look to it, when men begin to form new combinations, to be distinguished by new names, and especially when they mingle a political system with their religious opinions, true or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... foresee in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing an average duty of 8s. into a fixed duty of 8s., the fact being that the fixed duty means no duty at all; and no duty at all will be the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our country!" (Ibid., iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... not only imperial in all those material results which constitute and form the greatest commonwealth in this constellation of commonwealths, but in our political system she has become the arbiter of our national destiny. As goes New York so goes the Union, and her voice indicates that the next President will be a man with New England blood in his veins or a representative of ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... in which few can be called so. Though the light did not unseal his vision, it filled his heart. Among the statesmen of the world there is no one who has more rigidly demanded that the laws of God shall be applied to the affairs of Man. His political system is a beautiful growth from the principles of love, humility, and charity, which the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... you asked, gentlemen, what was the true system of society. A competitor [3] dared to maintain, and believed that he had proved, that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of conditions; that without equality this institution is an anomaly and an impossibility: that equality alone can revive this ancient and mysterious keeping of the seventh day. This argument did not ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... the time." A more competent judge[12] than the present writer estimates the morals of the American political "wire-puller" as about on a level with those of our company directors. And before my English readers make their final decision on the American political system let them study Chapter XLVI. of that very fascinating novel, "The Honorable Peter Stirling," by Paul Leicester Ford. It may give them some new light on the subject of "a government of the average," and show ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... Renaissance and the Reformation. Be this as it may, mankind throughout the Middle Ages appears to have been in a chronic condition of packing up and unpacking, and packing up again; one after another a nation, a race, a philosophy, a political system came to the front and was pushed back again into limbo: Germans and Kelts and Latins, French civilization of the day of Abelard, Provencal civilization of the days of the Raymonds, brilliant and evanescent Hohenstauffen ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... kept her stationary by a law as true in ethics as it is in statics. This state of uncertain expectation is pleasing to unmarried women as long as they feel themselves young, and in a position to choose a husband. France knows that the political system of Napoleon resulted in making many widows. Under that regime heiresses were entirely out of proportion in numbers to the bachelors who wanted to marry. When the Consulate restored internal order, external difficulties made the marriage ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... already observed that the principle of the sovereignty of the people governs the whole political system of the Anglo-Americans. Every page of this book will afford new instances of the same doctrine. In the nations by which the sovereignty of the people is recognized every individual possesses an equal share of power, and participates alike in the government of the State. Every ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... the Constitution bring with it the perpetuity of the States; their mutual relations makes us what we are, and in our political system this connection is indissoluble. The whole cannot exist without the parts nor the parts without the whole. So long as the Constitution of the United States endures, the States will endure; the destruction of the one is the destruction of the other; ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... the publisher Union Government in Canada has become a fact. Not since Confederation has such a thing happened in this country. The vampire methods with which our political system has been cursed have been thrown under foot and thinking Canadians everywhere have drawn a breath of relief. The energies which have been wasted in jockeying for party position are now concentrating upon effective unity of action. Let us hope so indeed. There must ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... because of erosion and economic development; furthermore, the regime gives insufficient priority to agricultural research. The next few years will witness increasing tensions between a highly centralized political system and an increasingly decentralized economic system. Rapid economic growth likely will continue but at ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... religion to cement those bonds; and, moreover, they hold, to quote the words of an able article published two years ago in the Round Table: "The chief reason for the sentiment of Imperial unity is the conscious or unconscious belief of the people of the Empire in their own political system.... There is in the British Empire a unity which it is often difficult to discern amid the conflict of racial nationalities, provincial politics, and geographical differences. It is a unity which is based upon the conviction ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... hand and foot in the chains of economic necessity. Even if we cannot expect the mass of mankind to become disinterested, at any rate we observe in them a power of organization which fifty years ago would never have been suspected. The same forces which have revolutionized the political system of Europe, may effect a similar change in the social and industrial relations of mankind. And if we suppose the influence of some good as well as neutral motives working in the community, there will be no absurdity in expecting that the mass ...
— The Republic • Plato

... the house for insulting his wife. The journals, newspapers, and memoirs of the time throw (especially for those who can read between the lines) a startling light on that hereditary principle which plays so important a part in our political system. All the ancillary vices flourished with a rank luxuriance. Hard drinking was the indispensable accomplishment of a fine gentleman, and great estates were constantly changing owners ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... years have passed since it appeared, it has been superseded by no later work. The book has a double character, which has given to it an equal authority on both sides of the Atlantic. For while it is a profound and sagacious analysis of the spirit and methods of the American social and political system, it is intended at the same time—more, however, by implied than open comparison—to exhibit the relations of the principles established here to the development of modern society and government in France and elsewhere in Europe. It is a manual alike ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... men had been at the helm, for however short a period. The course was deflected; the reckoning lost. Austere, dignified Whigs would appear again in politics, but never again would their austerity and dignity represent our political system. Sonorous, sober, highly judicious journalists might still succeed in producing, at great loss, a journal expressing themselves and their views, but no considerable section of the nation would ever again hang upon their ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... security to commerce in time of war. It was hoped this great blessing to humanity would be accomplished by his imperial majesty himself; and that the United States, by all means consistent with their peace, and their separation from the political system of Europe, would contribute to the support of the liberal principles to which his majesty had expressed so strong and just an attachment. The emperor replied, that between Russia and the United States there could ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... essays, Adams was most unfortunate. He appears not to have presented his ideas concerning his political system with sufficient clearness to be understood. He was, indeed, greatly misunderstood, and was charged with advocating a monarchy and a hereditary senate and presidency; with the greatest inconsistency, because, in 1787, he had written and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... government here, acting upon fixed principles, and pursuing systematic measures. For this reason a change of Chief Governor, ought to be nothing more than a simple transfer of government, and by no means to make any change in that political system respecting this country which England must adopt, let who will be the minister and whichever party may acquire the ascendancy, if she means to preserve Ireland as a part ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... small compensation for the immeasurable losses of this war if the lofty old-English ideals of duty and service are restored to their rightful place in our political system, and if in respect of the essentials of national existence, viz., defence of the realm and obedience to law, we completely eliminate and frankly repudiate—as we have already done in the sphere of taxation—the enervating one-sided individualism of ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... politics and scandal, the jokes of the salons and the councils of the Cabinet are inextricably mixed up together, and reveal a political system in which the authority exercised under free institutions by men had been transferred to the art, the tact, and the accomplishments of the female sex. We therein see how much women have done by those subtle agencies. If France was a despotism tempered by epigrams, it was the ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... they have every incentive to commit crimes which will bring them the means of supplying their wants. It is a common habit of some European governments to ship their criminals to this port, where they have a new field opened to them. The political system of the city teaches the lower class to disregard all rights, either of property or person, and, indeed, clothes some of the most infamous criminals with an amount of influence which is more than dangerous in their hands, and shields them from ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Political freedom we had won; but the problem of helpless poverty, grown vast with the added offscourings of the Old World, mocked us, unsolved. Liberty at sixty cents a day set presently its stamp upon the government of our cities, and it became the scandal and the peril of our political system. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... and in what directions and at what speed they go. In connection with the phonograph and concealed by draperies, it is useful to detectives, who, through a registering attachment, can obtain a record of everything said and done. "Our political system remains with but little change. Each State has still two United States Senators, though the population represented by each representative has been greatly increased, so that the Senate has grown numerically ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... abundant wit, ingenuity and courage, is simply EMANCIPATION—not on the narrow ground of abolition, but on the necessity of promptly destroying an evil which threatens to vitiate the white race. In the beginning the author points out the inevitableness of the present war, and that our political system has been hitherto a sacrifice to Slavery for the time, but also a running up of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... be stated that it has been attempted here to give but a brief resume of the Khasi political system as it exists at the present time. The above account of the procedure at elections is based on existing usage. The procedure should not, however, be regarded as stereotyped, for it will no doubt be open to such revision as may on occasion be suggested by the legitimate evolution ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... 1830 The Winter of the Deep Snow. The Sudden Change. Pioneer Life. Religion and Society. French and Indians. Formation of the Political System. The Courts. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... great minister, in the full light of European publicity, was gaining fame as a financial reformer and the reviver of trade and industry, the sagacious and painstaking intendant in his remote corner of the globe was laying the foundations of an economic and political system, and opening to the young country the road of commercial, industrial, and maritime progress. Talon was a colonial Colbert. What the latter did in a wide sphere and with ample means, the former was trying to do ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais

... Jose heard no more. His ears burned and his brain throbbed. He had become conscious of but one all-absorbing thought, the fact of his vassalage to a world-embracing political system, working in the name of the Christ. Not a new thought, by any means—indeed an old one, often held—but now driven home to him most emphatically. He forgot his clerical duties and sank into profound revery on his inconsistent position in the office of the highest functionary of Holy ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... system and otherwise an education in politics, and besides this some practical experience in public service in institutions and in organizations. This is a vital spot in education in a democracy; we have tried too much to reform or make progress in government from within the political system itself, and too little by going back to the ultimate sources of social life and educating the people as a whole with reference to playing ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... the judiciary from executive and legislative interference, the proposal in the President's plan for a League of Nations to abandon that great principle in the settlement of international disputes of a justiciable nature causes speculation as to Mr. Wilson's real opinion of the American political system which emphasizes the separation and independence of the three coordinate branches ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... suffered such immense losses, that we must have peace to recover what we have lost. Hence we must be reconciled with France, and this reconciliation strengthens us against Russia. The very fact that Napoleon desires to conclude an alliance with Austria indicates a change in his political system, by which we should try to profit, and if (what is unavoidable) a rupture with Russia ensues, Austria ought to derive as much benefit therefrom as possible, and enlarge her territories. We ought to render ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... any political deficiencies which the Irish may display at home, are commonly attributed to the political system which has been imposed upon Ireland from without. If you want to see Irish genius in its highest political manifestation, it must be studied, we are told, in the United States, the widest and freest arena which has ever ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... appears to them to preserve some of the slaveries and iniquities of former ages; and it also appears open to the suspicion of generating diverse interests—and often hostile ones—between the governors and the governed. They claim for all that political system which, without doubt, holds humanity in the most esteem; and however one may despise the practical working of their theory, the grandeur of its ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... own countrymen in the forests of St. Domingo. Those adventurers—many of whom had already been roaming the St. Domingo forest for nearly half a century, increasing in numbers by accessions from time to time—had, in 1630, established a social and political system of their own, peculiar to their own community. Their original calling was the hunting of wild boars and cattle, which abounded in the island. To this was added, to a small extent, the business of planting, and to this again the more adventurous profession of sea-roving and piracy. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Galeazzo Visconti or Cesare Borgia could have united Italy into a despotic state, it is an admissible opinion that the history of the peninsula in the following four or five hundred years would have been happy and prosperous, and that, at the present time, it would have had the same political system which it has now. However, chiefs, kings, priests, warriors, statesmen, and other functionaries have put their own interests in the place of group interests, and have used the authority they possessed to force the societal organization to work and fight for their interests. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... agricultural enterprise, in the development of the national resources, the progress had been steady and rapid. The politicians of Europe had been amazed to find that their unanimous prediction of the frailty of our political system had totally failed. The idea of a political centre combined with separate State organizations was as firmly fixed as ever. The General Government wielded an undiminished power in aid of the general good; the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... strength of character and to persevering courage. In fact, the slightest review of Indian history, ever since the first introduction of Mahometanism, justifies Lord Auckland's general purpose of interweaving Affghanistan with the political system of India. This was no purpose of itinerant Quixotism— seeking enemies where none offered of themselves. Affghans were always enemies; they formed the castra stativa of hostility to India. For eight hundred years, ever since the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... the golden moment, and spring hunter-like on a moribund Austria, were the hunting-dogs once out and in cry. To Friedrich it seems unlikely the Pragmatic Sanction will be a Law of Nature to mankind, in these circumstances. His opinion is, "the old political system has expired with the Kaiser." Here is Europe, burning in one corner of it by Jenkins's Ear, and such a smoulder of combustible material awakening nearer hand: will not Europe, probably, blaze into general War; Pragmatic Sanction going to waste sheepskin, and universal ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... out the Moors, and founded the modern Spanish kingdom. Maximilian married Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, and joined the Netherlands to Austria. United France found herself face to face with other united States, and the political system of modern Europe was roughly sketched out. The boundaries of the various kingdoms were fluctuating. There still remained minor principalities and powers, chiefly in Italy and Germany, which offered an easy prey to their ambitious neighbours; for both nations had (p. 031) sacrificed internal ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... neutrals from it. Admiral Colomb's theory of "conquest of water territory," therefore, involves a false analogy, and is not safe as the basis of a strategical system. What then is the value of the sea in the political system of the world? Its value is as a means of communication between States and parts of States. Therefore the "command of the sea" means the control of communications in which ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... irretrievably doom us to coarseness and to impatience of that restraining precedent which alone makes true culture possible and true art attainable. Unless we are mistaken, there is something in such an example as that of Mr. Howells which is a better argument for the American social and political system than any empirical theories that ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... the jury has authority to ignore, and from whose hands all power of imposing a penalty has practically been withdrawn. And these changes have been thrust upon the monarchy by the will, not of the people, but of that class or section which in the evolution of our political system happened at the time to be the ruling one. At one period it was the Church, at another the army, at another the landlord or the capitalist; it was never that latent force lying in the future, that peace-loving, industrial democracy which to-day we are still ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... great misfortune of the French people that all great changes in their political system, no matter how promoted or in what spirit, must be wrought out within the vicious circle of this centralized administrative machinery. The initiative in liberating France from this centralized administrative machinery can only come ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... have been swerved from their devotion to the bond of union and the principles it has made sacred. It will be ever thus. Such attempts at dangerous agitation may periodically return, but with each the object will be better understood. That predominating affection for our political system which prevails throughout our territorial limits, that calm and enlightened judgment which ultimately governs our people as one vast body, will always be at hand to resist and control every effort, foreign or domestic, which aims or would lead to ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... (it has happened), withstand the politicians (by whom he was made, to whom he often belongs, and upon whom his general position to-day depends). He may stand out, or—as nearly always now—he will identify himself with the political system ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... observation. However, institutions, including socio-political ones, can become outdated. When they do, no matter how intelligent, capable and honest the governmental heads, that socio-political system can be a hell. If, at such time there are capable, intelligent persons available, they will take such measures as are necessary ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... Type: republic; presidential system in which military leaders hold key offices; on 31 December 1990, the government announced a National Political Charter to serve as a basis for transition to a presidential/parliamentary political system; the 1978 constitution was replaced in June 1991 via popular referendum by a new constitution creating a multiparty system with a president and prime minister Capital: Kigali Administrative divisions: 10 prefectures (prefectures, singular - ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... loaded down, almost to the breaking point, with politicians who do not understand politics, and who advocate measures which are not for the public good, because the public good is not the end for which they strive. But the fault is in the men themselves, rather than in our political system. They must first be made manly, before they can be made truly useful. They must first learn to govern themselves, before they can successfully carry forward the work of governing the nation. They must be taught that bluster is not argument, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... occasionalis of the war, but not its true causa efficiens. What was? Where do the true permanent causes of war, as distinguished from its proximate excitements, find their lodgment and abiding ground? They lie in the system of national competitions; in the common political system to which all individual nations are unavoidably parties; in the system of public forces distributed amongst a number of adjacent nations, with no internal principle for adjusting the equilibrium of these forces, and no supreme Areopagus, or court of appeal, for ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the position of this Government in the American political system, and for the causes which have failed to give it hitherto the influence to which it is properly entitled by reason of its democratic system and of the moderation and sense of justice which have distinguished its foreign policy through successive Administrations from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson



Words linked to "Political system" :   democracy, social structure, political party, diarchy, gynarchy, commonwealth, dyarchy, theocracy, political unit, structure, political entity, social system, plutocracy, social organisation, party, gerontocracy, republic, autocracy, constitutionalism, oligarchy, autarchy, hegemony, gynecocracy, ochlocracy, mobocracy, social group, technocracy, social organization



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