Curated category
Political theories
- AuthoritarianismIn 1964, political scientist Juan Linz published a work titled An Authoritarian Regime: Spain that established four core qualities for this system.
- TotalitarianismIn the early 1920s, Italian Fascists coined the word totalitarian to describe their own regime. Giovanni Amendola first used the term in 1923 to define a…
- ConservatismIn the 1790s, Edmund Burke stood before a British Parliament and warned that the French Revolution would destroy civilization.
- Absolute monarchyIn 1629, King Charles I dissolved the Parliament of England and ruled without it for eleven years. This act marked a clear shift from shared governance to…
- ImperialismImperialism is the maintaining and extending of power over foreign nations, and its name traces back to a single Latin word, imperium, meaning to command, to…
- ConscriptionThe Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi, who reigned from 1791 to 1750 BC, established a system called Ilkum. This ancient form of conscription required…
- Racial segregationIn 2002, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court officially classified racial segregation as a crime against humanity.
- ScandinavismA 19th-century poster image shows Norwegian, Danish and Swedish soldiers joining hands. The flags on the image bear a union mark that signals a shared…
- SlavophiliaMoscow in the 1830s became the birthplace of Slavophilia, an intellectual movement that rejected Western European modernization.
- MilitarismMilitarism is the belief or desire of a government that a state should maintain strong military capabilities. It also involves using those forces…
- RevanchismIn 1870, French students sat in classrooms where textbooks like Albert Bettannier's La Tache Noire taught them about the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine.
- Enlightened absolutismEnlightened absolutism emerged as a political philosophy during the 18th and early 19th centuries. European absolute monarchs adopted Enlightenment ideas to…
- Domino theoryIn 1945, the Soviet Union brought most of the countries of eastern Europe and Central Europe into its influence as part of the post-World War II new…