One theory of political science is that when population densities increase, increasingly stratified political/social structures evolve. As political empires grew, so would their wealth-concentrating capacities. The so-called evolution of hunter-gatherers to domestic farmers and herders and to “civilization” has been called the evolution from egalitarianism to kleptocracy. In the more “primitive” civilizations, everybody was more or less treated equally, while in the more “advanced” societies, the leaders and elite classes were largely power-hungry thieves.
Although such a dynamic is practically considered a “law” of political science, today’s political science evolved in the West, with all the bias that entails. Although that “law” appears to be generally true for places such as the New World before Columbus stumbled into it, there also appear to be significant exceptions, going both ways: of stratified societies that were largely hunter-gatherer, and huge, heavily populated regions that were not steeply stratified. (Frazier)
On the other hand there is a concept of accountability in the modern state has two major meanings which overlap. First there is the strongly normative meaning. Common in democracies, that involves the idea that those who exercise power, whether as governments, as elected representatives, or as appointed officials, are in a sense stewards and must be able to show that they have exercised their powers and discharged their duties properly. Second, accountability may refer to the arrangements made for securing conformity between the values of a delegating body and the person or persons to whom powers and responsibilities are delegated.
Ultimately, of course, governments in democracies are accountable to the people through the mechanism of elections. Accountability is no confined to democratic forms of government, although it is in democracies that demands for greater accountability are generally heard..........
