Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
This has to be viewed generationally, though. It wasn't simply the nations that were in power, but it was the people and society of that generation that gained and wielded the power. However, people individually are not very powerful, so the institutions are established that convey the justification for the power held by various monarchs, emperors, aristocrats and increasingly, representative Heads of State. The law was established to keep power in place and in the right hands as well as impart and protect the rights of the "citizens" (i.e. people whose worth is recognized by the State) over outsiders. It has always felt a bit like a Mafia hierarchy and protection racket only on a massive omni-social scale.
Over time, though, the inheritors of the power come to equate the laws and rules with the power itself. In the modern era, where the government ideally represents and acts as stewards of the democratic, collective power of the citizen's consent, the formality of rules and laws grows to byzantine proportions and most often, it is used by internal factions of the government to stymie the use (or what some consider abuse) of executive power by their opponents. People that never really had to obtain or use real power are more concerned that it may used against them and the formal systems of a "rules-based" society are emphasized to prevent any quick or decisive action or overt use of overwhelming power on anyone's part.
It may not necessarily be so much that formerly powerful nations or empires become more concerned with legality, propriety and formal procedure, but instead, maybe that by becoming more diplomatic and bureaucratic, a nation also loses power as they are bound more by their own rules than supported by them.
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