The Best Regime

The 'best regime' is the central question of Greek political philosophy: which constitution is best, both as an ideal and as something achievable with real, flawed human beings. Plato chased the ideal city in the Republic (4th c. BCE); his student Aristotle, in the Politics, split the question in two — the absolutely best regime versus the best a typical city can actually attain, which he thought was a broad, middle-class polity. This inquiry shaped every later debate about good government, from Cicero to the framers of modern constitutions.