Question

why the importance of aristocracy decreased? what was its impact on the society?​

Answer 1

Answer:

Aristocracy is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class.[1] The term derives from the , meaning 'rule of the best'.[2]

In practice, aristocracy often leads to hereditary government, after which the hereditary monarch appoints officers as they see fit. However, the term was first used by ancient Greeks such as Aristotle and Plato, who used it to describe a system where only the best of the citizens, chosen through a careful process of selection, would become rulers, and hereditary rule would actually have been forbidden, unless the rulers' children performed best and were better endowed with the attributes that make a person fit to rule compared with every other citizen in the polity.[3][4][5] Hereditary rule is more related to Oligarchy, a corrupted form of Aristocracy where there is rule by a few, but not by the best. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Xenophon and the Spartans considered Aristocracy (the ideal form of rule by the few) to be inherently better than the ideal form of rule by the many (Democracy), but they also considered the corrupted form of Aristocracy (Oligarchy) to be worse than the corrupted form of Democracy (Mob Rule).[3][4][5][6][7] This belief was rooted in the assumption that the masses could only produce average policy, while the best of men could produce the best policy, if they were indeed the best of men.[5]

At the time of the word's origins in ancient Greece, the Greeks conceived it as rule by the best qualified citizens—and often contrasted it favourably with monarchy, rule by an individual. In later times, aristocracy was usually seen as rule by a privileged group, the aristocratic class, and has since been contrasted with democracy.[1] The idea of hybrid forms which have aspects of both aristocracy and democracy are in use in the parliamentary form of government and in republics. There are no pure democracies in the world today, nor have there been since the fall of Athens. There are some governments that have elements of Direct Democracy, but all of those governments are mixed governments, like the Spartan, Roman, British, Swiss, German, French and American governments, which all have elements of Democracy, Aristocracy and Monarchy, with a system of checks and balances, where each element checks the excesses of the other, as described by Polybius in his analysis of the Roman Constitution.[8] Therefore, varying degrees of aristocracy are prevalent throughout nearly all modern governments.

Answer 2

The basic causes of the decline of the landed aristocracy are clear enough: the collapse of agriculture and the march of democracy.

There was an impact of democratic mind set in the society.