How does a State spend its money?

The budget of a welfare state

OLIGARCHY

Oligarchy means the rule of the few, and those few are generally the people who are richer and more powerful than the others, what you might call the __________________. These are not always men: just as monarchies have both_________________, women sometimes appear in councils of aristocrats, and even when they are not members, they are often there telling their husbands or their sons what to do. So oligarchies are generally bad for the poor, but they are pretty good for rich people from______________.

 Usually the way it works is that there is a group of people who are in charge, somehow. Sometimes they may be elected, and sometimes they are born into_____________, and at other times you might have to have a certain_______________ or land in order to be in the council. Then this group of people meets every so often - every week or every month - to decide important questions, and to appoint somebody to deal with things. Like they might decide that it should be________________ to steal, and then they would appoint one of the nobles to be a judge, and decide if people were guilty of stealing, and decide what to do with them if they were.

Oligarchies were not as common as monarchies in the_________. Right after the Dark Ages, most of the city-states in_____________ were oligarchies, between about 1000 and about 500 BC. The Etruscans were also oligarchic. The Roman Republic, which started around 500 BC, was in some ways an oligarchy too.

 In the Middle Ages, the cities of northern Italy were ruled by groups of rich people. Some were more like democracies, but others were more oligarchic.

 Fill the gaps with these words from the text: Illegal, ancient world, their position, powerful families, Greece,  aristocrats or the nobles, amount of money, kings and queens

MONARCHY

The first states were mostly monarchies. They were ruled by_______or queens. The earliest monarchies that we know about are the ones in Sumer and Egypt. These both began around 3000 BC. But it was not only the early states which had kings and queens. After all there are still many__________which have kings and queens even today.

Some other examples of places which were ruled by kings are Greece in the Late Bronze Age, as described in_____________, the Etruscan cities in northern Italy, including Rome between about 700 and 500 BC, China in the Warring States period, the Early Medieval kingdoms of Western Europe and Africa like the Visigoths, the Vandals, the Franks, Ethiopia and Mali, and the later medieval kingdoms (both Christian and Islamic) of France, England, and Spain.

The crown is hereditary and, usually, King´s first son inherit the_______. This became,  a big trouble for kings and queens who had no________. Right now, in Spain, we have the same problem, so the goverment and the king also are trying to change the constitution in order to a monarchy rule by a queen ( now princess Leonor).

They also, had to get married with other royal members in order to political interest or the maintenance of pure royal blood. Nowadays, this law is out of order because royal family members, even de King or the Queen, can get married with people from the people. This is called________________.
While there have been many more men in power than women, there have always been___________rulers too. There were women who ruled Egypt, like Hatshepsut and Cleopatra, and women who ruled the Byzantine Empire, like Irene. There were women who ruled southern France, like Eleanor, and women who ruled Castile in Spain, like_________, and women who ruled the kingdom of Kush in Africa, and the Empresses Lu and Wu Chao in China.

Fill the gaps with these words from the text: crown, kings, morganatic marriage,  countries, women, crown, Homers' Iliad, Isabelle.

TYRANNY

 In Greece and West Asia, mainly in what is now Turkey, there was a period of time around 650-400 BC when many city-states were ruled by__________. "Tyrant" is probably a Lydian word, from West Asia. Tyrannies usually grew out of oligarchies like this: in an oligarchy, each of the rich men is always trying to get more power than the others. But the other rich men keep them from doing it.

But if one of the rich men carry out a_________ or thinks of asking for help from the poor people, he can get ahead that way, and may___________tyrant. So a tyrant is like a________, but a king who does not have the law or religion behind him, and only rules because the poor people or himself________ him. Tyrants are something like Mafia bosses like the Godfather.

Naturally the other rich men hated tyrants, and tried to stop them and go back to an __________again. In order to stay in power, the tyrant has to promise the poor people that he will do good things for them, so they will support him. Usually the tyrant promises one or two of these things:

1) cancellation of debts

2) abolition of debt-bondage

3) redistribution of land.

 You can see that tyrants are usually really good for the poor people, and only bad for the other rich men. One of the most famous tyrants was Pisistratus in Athens. Another was the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysos, whom Plato went to teach.

Fill the gaps with these words from the text: tyrants, support, king, coup d´etat, oligarchy,
make himself

 DEMOCRACY

Democracy means the rule of the__________ (in Greek). That is where each individual person has a vote about what to do. Whatever the most people vote for wins. There is no king or tyrant, and anybody can propose a new law.

One problem that immediately comes up in a democracy is who is going to be able__________. Should people vote who are just visiting from some other city-state? How about little kids, should they vote? Or should there be some limits?

The earliest democracy in the world began in____________ in 510 BC. When democracy proved to be successful in Athens, many other city-states chose it for their__________too. But most of them allowed even fewer people to vote than Athens did: most of the other city-states only allowed free adult male citizens to vote IF they owned land or owned their own houses (that is, the richer people).

Another problem for democracies was that it was very inconvenient for men to always be going to______________ to vote. Most men had work to do, planting their grain, making shoes, fighting wars or whatever. They couldn't be always voting. So most democracies sooner or later ___________ choosing a few men who would do most of the voting, and the rest only came when there was a really important vote. It was hard to decide how to choose these few men, and different cultures did it different ways. Athens did it by a____________. If you got the winning ticket then you were on the Council of 500. Men served for a year.

Democracy____________around the Mediterranean, but it was pretty much wiped out by the Roman Empire about 100 BC. Still, places like Athens continued to use democratic methods to make their own_________ on local matters for a long time after that.

A thousand years later, in the Middle Ages, some cities in Italy - Siena, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Venice - went back to having a democratic government. These were all organized in slightly different ways, but none of them allowed the poor or________to vote, and some had a lottery system like Athens.

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Fill the gaps with these words from the text: to vote,the meeting-place, people,government,ended up,lottery,spread,decisions,women,Athens.

POLITICAL SYSTEMS EXPLAIN THROUGH COWS!!!!! YES, YOU HAVE HEARD PROPERLY, COWS!

ANCIEN GREEK DEMOKRATIA AND THE DEMOS

“In a democracy,” the Greek historian Herodotus wrote: there is, first, that most splendid of virtues, equality before the law. It was true that Cleisthenes’ demokratia abolished the political distinctions between the Athenian aristocrats who had long monopolized the political decision and working-class people who made up the army and the navy. However, the “equality” Herodotus described was limited to a small segment of the Athenian population. For example, in Athens in the middle of the 4th century there were about 100,000 citizens (Athenian citizenship was limited to men and women whose parents had also been Athenian citizens), about 10,000 metoikoi, or “resident foreigners” and 150,000 slaves. Out of all those people, only male citizens who were older than 18 were a part of the demos, meaning only about 40,000 people could participate in the democratic process.

Athenian democracy was made up of three important institutions.

1. The first was the EKKLESIA, or ASSEMBLY, the sovereign governing body of Athens. Any member of the demos or city (any one of those 40,000 adult male citizens) was welcome to attend the meetings of the ekklesia, which were held 40 times per year in an auditorium west of the Acropolis called the Pnyx. Only about 5,000 men attended each session of the Assembly; the rest were serving in the army or navy or working to support their families.

At the meetings, the ekklesia made decisions about war and foreign policy, wrote and revised laws and approved or condemned the conduct of public officials. One of the most famous punishments were the ostracism in which a citizen could be expelled from the Athenian city-state for 10 years. The group made decisions by simple majority vote.

2. The BOULE or Council of Five Hundred was the second important institution. The boule was a group of 500 men, 50 from each of ten Athenian tribes, who served on the Council for one year.

Unlike the ekklesia, the boule met every day and did most of the hands [transferir] work of governance. It supervised government workers and was in charge of things like navy ships (triremes) and army horses. It dealt with ambassadors and representatives from other city-states. Its main function was to decide what matters would come before the ekklesia.

Positions on the boule were chosen by lot and not by election. This was because, in theory, a random lottery was more democratic than an election: pure chance, after all, could not be influenced by things like money or popularity. The lottery system also prevented the establishment of a permanent class of civil servants who might be tempted to use the government to advance or enrich themselves. 

3. THE DIKASTERIA: the third important institution was the popular courts, or dikasteria. Every day, more than 500 jurors were chosen by lot from a pool of male citizens older than 30. Of all the democratic institutions, Aristotle argued that the dikasteria “contributed most to the strength of democracy” because the jury had almost unlimited power. There were no police in Athens, so it was the demos themselves who brought court cases, argued for the prosecution and the defense, and delivered verdicts and sentences by majority rule.

There were also no rules about what kinds of cases could be prosecuted or what could and could not be said at trial, and so Athenian citizens frequently used the dikasteria to punish or embarrass their enemies.