Typologies of Regime Change in Aristotle's Politics

The idea of regime change has been of scholarly debate for the past three or four decades, with scholars proffering their individual opinions on the matter. To some modern scholars of other disciplines, this idea is becoming as old as time. However, in the Classics, this discussion is far from over. The literary evidence that are written and handed over to students of ancient Greek and Roman history have in some breadth expounded on the idea of regime change, through their discussions about how we come to understand various governments, using Athens, Sparta, Persia and Rome as obvious models. Most classical scholarship on ancient Greece has been concerned with discussing and examining the general Greek society and its foremost features (politics [government], social and economic features), with some drawing parallels to modern politics and governments. The substantive issue here is not about what modern classical scholarship says on regime change (although that is discussed in another paper), but then, what the narratives and ideologies are on regime change from ancient authors. This paper ultimately seeks to examine how someone like Aristotle, considering the politics of his day, conceptualized the idea of regime change.