Quote Originally Posted by HoreTore View Post
We've become more and more centralized, you say? Meet the Spartans of ancient greece and the Italian city-states of the middle ages. While countries like France may have gone from decentralization to centralized authority, others have gone the other way.
Exceptions don't prove the rule when compared against the greater part of the development of human society. In any case, Greece or Italy today are much more centralised than they ever were in the past, considering the large degree of autonomy these city states tended to have.