Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and is considered to be the father of Political Science. Aristotle was the first to make Political Science a real science by sending out his students to go out and gather data from the different Greek city-states. (Roskin et al., 2014) After gathering the data, he then put it into his book called Politics. (Roskin et al., 2014) Aristotle’s views on democratic government are as relevant today as they were during 4th century Greece.
Aristotle classified six types of government. Monarchy, a government ruled by one person, Aristocracy, the people ruled by a few, such as the “hereditary noble class,” and Polity, the people ruled by many, were all legitimate forms of government. (Roskin et al, 2014) Aristotle’s other three types of government are Tyranny, where people rule in their best interest and is the corrupt form of the Monarchy, Oligarchy, the people ruled by a small group and is the corrupt form of Aristocracy, and Democracy, which is the corrupt form of Polity. (Roskin et al, 2014) Aristotle thought that Democracy was a corrupt form of government because he thought that the leaders only helped the people in the best way that would help themselves. I agree with Aristotle in that in today’s Democratic government, many politicians are using Rational Choice Theory. Rational choice theory is where “political behavior can be predicted by knowing the interests of the actors because they will naturally do what is in their best interests.” (Roskin