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S. E. Finer The History of Government: Volume I Ancient Monarchies and Empires; Volume II The Intermediate Ages; Volume III Empires, Monarchies and the Modern State Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 1701.

S. E. Finer The History of Government: Volume I Ancient Monarchies and Empires; Volume II The Intermediate Ages; Volume III Empires, Monarchies and the Modern State Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 1701. This is political science on the grandest scale: three volumes that provide a history of successive forms of government throughout the world from the earliest times to the present day. Finer starts with the Sumerian city state of the third millennium BC and works systematically through major government forms since with a more or less common format for analysing each. Finer presents material on political systems that most political scientists will be completely unfamiliar with, and gives fresh insights into systems that they might have thought they knew. For example, he forces us to question the tidy account of oriental despotism provided by Wittfogel that is the received wisdom about government in many ancient civilisations. The brief but devastating criticism of Wittfogel (p. 154) is quite characteristic of the general approach Finer takes. His objective is not to discover any overarching pattern of development; he dismisses ‘modernization’ perspectives on political development, and positively eschews any ‘teleology’. Although the modern European state, has ‘become the model for the entire contemporary world’, the history of the state is not the history of the European state alone. One of the main objects of Finer’s three volumes is to ‘show the reader [the] antecedents’ of modern systems of government. It would be mistaken to view the book simply as a valuable series of tableaux for an elaborate pageant celebrating 4,600 years of government. Finer’s three volumes are far more than this. ‘The History is not meant to be a simple chronological account of the different ways in which men have been governed. It is an exercise in comparative government’ (p. 34). One main purpose of the comparison is to highlight innovations in government. The list of inventions and reinventions includes ideas of Empire (Assyria after the 8th century BC). secularism (Persia 6th century BC), limited monarchy (Jewish kingdoms 11th century BC), bureaucracy (Chinese Empire 3rd century BC), citizenship and democracy (the Greek Polis 5th century BC), limited ‘republican’ government (Roman Republic 6th century BC), the supremacy of law (Roman Empire 1st century BC); a hierarchical church organization and representation (medieval Europe 11th century AD); procedurally limited monarchy (medieval England 13th century AD); constitutionalism and individual rights (the US and France after 1776). Some of these innovations had direct and lasting effects on subsequent government forms. Finer discusses not only the well-understood impact of crucial junctures in European and American government but also the pervasive impact of the Han Empire on subsequent Chinese government ‘up to and including the present day’. Other innovations, such as the supremacy of law and citizenship had an