ABSTRACT
At the top of any system, the main political policy can be summarized by Machiavelli's or Pareto's old observation that leaders must both maintain order and permit change. In practice, these emphases alternate between conservative and reformist periods of politics, but neither of them completely disappears from any era. Political elites contain both lions and foxes, to keep enough harmonious integration of the networks that they lead, while also garnering new resources.3 In an attempt to coordinate various functional "arenas" of politics, the state interacts with local leaders over space and time.4 The presentation will show how reforms have affected three kinds of strictly political decisions: choosing leaders, deciding policies, and selecting the constitutional regime type.
