Vicious Cycles: Autocracy, Inequality, And The Funding Of GovernmentBy Gary M. FeinmanAs democracies around the world face mounting challenges and pressures, discussions about autocracy often focus on personalities and ideologies or tend to link governance practices to differences among specific cultural traditions. Political scientist Margaret Levi famously argued (https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/publications/rule-and-revenue) that the history of governance is deeply intertwined with the history of revenue collection. Neither autocracy nor inequality is an unavoidable outcome of scale or political complexity. Instead, autocracy and inequality seem to reinforce each other through a series of feedback loops. Across human history, societies have repeatedly developed mechanisms that constrained rulers, broadened participation, and moderated disparities in wealth.