HOW GOVERNMENTS WORK: THE TRIPOD OF POWER || Worldbuilding Governments for Fantasy & Sci-Fi Stories

Worldbuilding governments sounds intimidating, but it's not! We're going to take it video by video, and today, we're talking about the "tripod of power": 3 things every government needs to gain and keep power:
Legitimacy
Administrative machinery
and Military

This is how a government works.

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[dorothycarlson]

Thank you for this video! It came at just the right time for me in my writing journey! I'll be watching for your military video!

[JoeyPaulOnline]

Always do love the way you explain things!

[LeeCarlson]

A great book, and I'm looking forward to its sequel. I'm also a fan of Francis Fukuyama's "Origins of Political Order."

[christianschwietzke]

Thank you for this video. I don´t think I´ve ever seen the topic explained like this before.

One thing that you only briefly touched on that I think deserves more emphasis is that Administration also supports the ruler by providing things for the people (by ideally spending their taxes wisely), such as roads, healthcare, education, whatever.

That way, from the point of view of the people, the tripod of power looks like this:
Legitimacy: "We support the ruler because they´re the one who should be in charge - their charisma, tradition and/or the election results say so."
Administration: "We support the ruler because they do all these nice things for us (far better than we could do them on our own)."
Military: "We support the ruler because they would do all these nasty things to us if we didn´t."

[Drudenfusz]

To be honest, I think military is just another branch of administration, and legitimacy is pretty much meaningless when the administration doesn't recognise the leadership. Thus power resides completely in other people. CGP Grey made some good videos about the keys to power, which I can recommend watching.

Also, I don't think your distain for taxes were really needed to be in the video, I for my part think taxes in my country are well used, since they allow healthcare for everybody and also the access to higher education for everybody. No need for propaganda there, it is just common courtesy and being a descent human being.