" Aristocracy, always and everywhere, opposes the rise of a Power which disposes in its own right of sufficient means of action to make itself independent of society, those means being, essentially, a permanent administration, a standing army, and taxation. The type of regime which answers to the aristocratic spirit is one in which the magistrates are entrusted by rotation to the most eminent citizens, an armed force is formed at need by the gathering together of the various social forces, and financial resources are collected, as occasion calls, out of the contributions of the leading members of the community. The more concentrated and urban an aristocracy is, and the more tightly knit its common interests, the more effective will such a system; be the more spread out and landed it is, and the more divided in interest, the less effective it will be. "

― Bertrand De Jouvenel , On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth