Aristotle\'s, the \"Three Worlds\" According

Aristotle's, the "three worlds"

According to Aristotle's classification, the typology is based on two fundamental questions: who rules and who benefits from the rule. Following the three worlds typology, we have a capitalist first world, a communist second world and a developing third world.

In my opinion, both of these classification schemes are incomplete and no longer fully reflect the realities of today's global environment. Indeed, these are limited approaches that were useful to characterizing particular historical states during which the creators of these typologies lived. These were thus particular historical moments that could thus be included in this typology.

Aristotle's scheme was well adapted to the world of Ancient Greece, where the notion of nation did not fully exist and where the political entities were represented by the city-states. Additionally, it was simple to characterize these as either oligarchies or democracies (who rules) and its citizens as the beneficiaries. The typological scheme is however slightly too simplistic for our current environment.

On the other hand, the three worlds approach is definitely not actual anymore. In the present, there are only a couple of Communist states left in the world (China, North Korea, Cuba) and the Cold War, when this typology was appropriate for a classification, is a historical fact rather than a living truth.

Following this argumentation, the classification scheme that Andrew Heywood discusses is definitely the most completely fit for the present times. Indeed, according to him, there are several approaches to regime classification: the constitutional-institutional approach, the structural-functional approach and the economic-ideological approach. This framework with different approaches creates the premise for every regime to be characterized according to it.

As such, following this structural determination, Western democracies can be characterized through the constitutional-institutional approach as regimes where the population participates in the governance process through the free, democratic elections, while at the same time limiting the extent of power that the government can have. These regimes promote capitalist and free market economies and promote tolerance in terms of religious beliefs etc.

On the other hand, the new democracies, especially the ones in Eastern Europe, seem to follow through on the pass of Western democracies, according to the three approaches. They are following the road from autocracy to democracy and building the Western-type of democratic infrastructure.

Regimes in East Asia are predominantly characterized via the economic-ideological approach, with the political regime subordinated to economic interest. Finally, military regimes or Islamic regimes have their own particularities in terms of the constitutional-institutional and the economic-ideological approaches.