This is a collection of my posts about how authors can use ideas from politics in their writing. Many of these posts have been deepened and expanded into a book, Beyond Kings and Princesses: Governments for Worldbuilders, which is Book One of a planned series on politics for writers. (Sign up here if you want to know when more books are finished.)

Overview

Conflict in Politics and Fiction

 

Regimes

Before the State: Egalitarian Bands

• Writing Exercises for Stories with Foraging Bands

Wealth, Power, and Social Orders

• Writing Exercises for Social Orders

Keeping Power

• Writing Exercises on “Keeping Power”

Who Rules? Part One—The Palace

• Writing exercises for regime types: the Palace

Who Rules? Part Two—The Nobility [Note parallel with warlords, East India Trading Co, etc.]

• Writing Exercises for Stories with a Ruling Nobility

Who Rules? Part Three—The Forum

• Writing Exercises for Stories with Popular Sovereignty

Who Rules? Part Four—The Clergy

• Writing Exercises for Stories where a Religious Organization Rules Society

 

The Restraints and Imperatives of Rule

Legibility and Power

Geography, Travel, and Power Projection

Warlords and Frontiers

Tax Farming [Note: draw parallel with East India Trading Co.]

Control, Capital, and Political Bargains

Power and Legitimacy

What’s the Point of English Aristocrats, You Ask?

The Social Effects of Weapon Technology (and How to Use in Writing)

How Not to be Overthrown by Your Army

 

Social Conflict

Class Conflict, Part One [To do: expand discussion? How far?]

When Do Societies Face Unrest? [To do: another post discussing value of manpower, population density, Herbst. Figure out where to bring in Herbst/Scott.]

The Talents of Others (on economic competition, envy, and social legitimacy) [Probably too niche for the guide, unless I can fit it in a paragraph or so]

Identity, Boundaries, and Conflict

[To do: discussion of trust and social capital, and the salience of threat, and how it affects the way regimes play out]

 

War and Rebellion

Rebellion, Part One

Rebellion, Part Two

On Revolutions in (Some) Fantasy Fiction

[To do: the point about outside threat leading to either stronger states, or total collapse]

 

Miscellaneous

The Power of Guiding Metaphors

Why Must Fantasy Always be Set in Huge Worlds?

Coordinated versus Liberal Market Economies [Note to self: maybe too niche for the guide?]

Bills of Exchange, Banking, and the Little Things [Note to self: probably too niche]

 

Fiction Case Studies

Creating Story Conflicts with Politics [Mixed colonial and stateless setting]

 

Further Reading

James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed (Amazon here) or else Against the Grain

Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue: A good companion to Scott’s emphasis on “legibility,” Levi focuses specifically on the machinery of taxation and how it dramatically affects the power and legitimacy of a regime.

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: A discussion of the “High Modernist” plans of central governments, seeking standardization and legibility no matter what they break in the process.

Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization. Major ideas of which are summarized in The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, which is much shorter and also free; but Mumford is worth reading in the original as well.

P.W. Singer, Children at War

Leites and Wolf, Rebellion and Authority (a study of insurgencies)

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook

Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations. A brilliant study of how economies actually work, and how states’ economic policies often harm their own ability to generate prosperity. Written in the 1980s but still very much applicable.

Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy & Liberty. Examining how egalitarian societies function and maintain their egalitarianism, and looking at the spectrum of groups from egalitarian to semi-egalitarian to the emergence of hierarchy. Not the last word, but a good overview.

Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations. Begins with a quick overview of his Nobel-Prize-winning theory of collective-action problems, then examines the implications for societies: over time, accumulating interest groups and corruption will lead societies to collapse under the weight of their own elites.

Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. While there is some dispute as to how “new” such wars actually are, Kaldor provides a descriptive look at wars such as in Bosnia where the most important objective was not military victory, but forcing a civilian populace into an ethnic identity that forces them to follow a specific set of political elites.