Designed both for the general reader and the student embarking on a course of political science, this is a lively introduction to the central issues of politics, which charts how they developed and how they helped to shape society. It includes chapters dealing with the Ancient Greeks and the idea of citizenship; Roman law; medieval Christianity and individualism; freedom since Machiavelli and Hobbes; the challenge of ideologies; democracy, oligarchy and bureaucracy; power and order in modern society; and politics in the West.