A civilization consists of a cluster of associated allies, clients, dependencies, and colonies bound together by economic, political and cultural ties.  Since armed force has been the chief instrument for bringing these elements together, the agency responsible for exercising armed force enjoys priority in a listing of the structural institutions of civilization.

Land owners, often acting as military chieftains, dominated the hinterland of a civilization.  The city was dominated by businessmen.  The unification of city and hinterland and the complex of cities and hinterlands composing a civilization established a governmental apparatus in which all ruling elements were represented.  In the earlier stages of a civilization there may have been assemblies or parliaments composed of representatives of various interests.  As the civilization was unified by war, representation was replaced by some form of monarchy in which one supreme commander, emperor or pharoah was the final judge and arbiter.  The monarch set up a network of public authority, regional as well as universal, provincial as well as central, and garrisoned it with professional soldiers and sailors paid by the monarch and responsible to him.

Corresponding with this political structure was an economic structure consisting of a central treasury, a uniform system of weights, measures and values, a system of spending priorities, decided by the central authority, a source of income:  taxes, tribute, booty, sufficient to cover expenditures.

A civilization which ran a chronic deficit—­over-spending its income—­moved year by year, through debt, inflation, currency degradation, and repudiation toward its own disintegration and ultimate bankruptcy.  The historical record is very clear on this point, especially in Roman civilization and in western civilization after 1870.

Most civilizations have had a body of religious institutions staffed by a priestcraft, which has shared power with the economic overlords.  During certain periods in the long history of Egyptian civilization the priestcraft held the balance of power.  So great was its ascendancy that the spoils of war and the gains of peace were shared by the temple treasury and the royal treasury.  In some cases the temple treasuries had priority.

All civilizations for at least five thousand years have had a professional military of sufficient consequence to play a leading role in policy making and to claim a lion’s share of the spoils of military victory.  In some cases civil and military authority were merged in one supreme commander—­emperor, pharoah.  At other times, notably in Rome, after the fall of the Republic, the Pretorian Guard nominated and appointed its emperors.

Well up toward the summit of each known civilization, four groups have shared authority and competed for supremacy:  land-lords, wealth-lords, war-lords and priests.  Where these four major shapers of public policy and directors of public administration were of like mind, they shared wealth and power.  When they differed, one or another enjoyed priority and exercised some measure of control over the other three.