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Notes -
Who’s “they”? I would like to read up on this idea, if you have any sources for it
I don't have a clean singular cite for that as sort of a solitary claim, sorry. Perhaps it's even something that I'm somewhat wrong about, but it's my impression from reading a variety of things over time about factional struggles for political power via means of raw power, consolidation of authoritarian power from opposition, things like the "rules for dictators", and all sorts of little pieces of work about why different sorts of governments came to be historically (things like whether a society is agrarian and what types of crops are dominant) and what the different end goals are of different uses of raw military power are and such (e.g., do you want to directly take control of governance, do you want to set up a puppet government, do you want to just displace people, etc.). These are unfortunately probably often treated separately in specialized academic works.
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