The first point which needs to be clearly understood is that there is nothing like ‘the best constitution’ for all countries and for all times. Forms of government must be shaped according to past traditions and present circumstances. ‘That constitution is best which at any given moment, in any particular country, most effectively contributes to the end for which all governments exist.’[5] Aristotle was, perhaps, the first thinker to emphasise this standpoint. The state existed to enable the individual to realise the highest life of which he is capable, and ‘those may be expected to lead the best life who are governed in the best manner of which their circumstances admit.’[6] We must, therefore, judge the state not by some standard of values peculiar to and distinctive of the state, but by ‘the standard of the quality of the lives lived by its citizens’.[7] While the ends of various types of states may be fundamentally identical, their forms are bound to be dissimilar in accordance with local environments.
