Kings were attemping to increase their personal powera, it seemed important to distinguish between monarchy as a system of government in which power, although primarily in the hands of a single person, was regulated by constitutional laws, and despotism as a system in which a single person ruled arbitrarity, without regard for law or principles. But in the modern world with the state composing many millions of people and with government a much more complex affair, the ideal type of government by one person does not closely approximate to reality (though there might be a few exceptions.) In the modern state, governmental power has to be shared amongst a number of persons. Even more clearly, and with due apology to democratic idealists, one has to recognize that nowhere in practice is there rule by many or all citizens. In the real world of modern politics, government is always in the hands of a minority of persons which might be termed a political elite or ruling class. It would, therefore, seem that making distinctions between politics form the purely numerical angle of “how many govern” may not be very meaningful. More fruitful questions might be : which particular social groups or classes are dominant in the political system? What is the degree of political and economic inequality? What degree of control does government attempt to exert over society and hoe tolerant is it of civil liberties? How much, and what kind of, popular political participation is allowed?