The essentials of this type of government are still present in the United States in the form of the town meeting in small New England villages. Within this structure of government, representatives are not required.
The succeeding Judaic-Christian period in the development of philosophy provided the concepts of patriarchalism, sense of people, kingship, the role of the people in the appointment of king, and the duty of king to people. Somewhat later, the Stoics contributed the political philosophy holding that a universal and eternal moral ordering is common to all humanity, and affects significant issues of collectivity. The Stoics began in Greece, and their political philosophy migrated to Rome. Although Stoicism began in Greece, its concept that all humanity is ruled by a single god contrasts sharply with the political philosophy of the Greek city-states, which held that political good could only derive from the small-scale political entity. For the Stoics, the individual is the unit of universal society, and, as such, is the subject of the rights conferred on all citizens by law.
The concepts of individualism and individual rights developed by the Stoics have, since their inception, played a powerful role in the development of political philosophy. The concepts of individualism and individual rights are parts of the modern ethos upon which the American political system is based.
In the first-half of the sixteenth-century, Machiavelli contributed to the development of political philosophy with a detached attitude toward traditional and an admiration for villainous contemporaries, which developed his reputation as an advocate of power politics, as it is known in the late-twentieth century. Machiavelli has also been credited with justifications for the concept of republican government as is found in the United States, as opposed to monarchical government.
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