Polybius' mixed constitution: why good organisations decay with nobody to blame
Clubs decay with nobody to blame. Power simply accumulates in one pair of hands until there is no one left who can say no.
There is no villain. The first generation earns its authority, the second inherits it without earning it, takes it for granted and overreaches — and then the wheel starts again, only in a club it turns in three years rather than a century.
- Authority earnedthe founders' word carries because everyone saw them do it
- Authority inheritedthe next board gets the same weight without having built anything
- Taken for grantedhaving never known scarcity, they treat the club's standing as given
- Overreachthe healthy form turns into its disease: kingship into tyranny, democracy into mob rule
Find at least one power that currently sits with one person, and split it. The simplest version: whoever spends the money is not the person who approves the spend.
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These works are related to the one you just read — and not by accident:
shared competencies: Continuity, Judgement, Strategy
shared competencies: Judgement, Strategy
shared competencies: Judgement, Strategy
shared competencies: Judgement, Strategy
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The same work written at length: what it claims and what its evidence is worth.
This text is freely available, so the links go straight to it rather than to a summary of it.
- Perseus — Polybius's Histories in Greek and English
- LacusCurtius — the Histories in Paton's translation, from Book 1
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