Balance of power
idea · 3 works · 3 mentions · 7 anchored passages
balance · balance of power · counterbalanced · counterweight · geographical balance of power · great power · grow strong · guarantee of the safety · no one man shall be all-powerful · the new balance of power
in the texts
Against Aristocrates
The policy that Athens is safest when rival powers check one another.
You must, then, take the view that for those of our fellow-citizens who live in the Chersonese the same condition is advantageous, that is, that no one man shall be all-powerful among the Thracians.
And that you may not be quite surprised to hear that decrees made in Athens have so powerful an effect, I will remind you of a piece of history within the knowledge of all of you.
You are aware that it is for the advantage of Athens that neither the Thebans nor the Lacedaemonians should be powerful;
For the People of Megalopolis
The strategic idea that Athens must prevent either Sparta or Thebes from dominating the Greek world.
Our duty, then, is to take care lest the Lacedaemonians grow strong and formidable before the Thebans are weaker, and lest their increase of power should, unperceived by us, out-balance the diminution of the power of Thebes, which our interests demand.
For I cannot regard it as a pledge of our security, that the Lacedaemonians should seize Megalopolis and grow great once more, seeing as I do that even now they have not taken up arms to avenge an injury, but to recover the power that once was theirs;
Now if the Thebans are finally beaten, as they deserve to be, there will be no undue increase in the power of the Lacedaemonians, because there are their neighbors, the Arcadians, to balance it;
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
The proposed division of the states into two rival sectional combinations contending for congressional advantage, which the author argues is the true and dangerous cause of the slavery controversy.
The idea of a balance of power between two combinations of states, and not the existence of slavery, gave rise to this unfortunate, and as I shall endeavour to prove, absurd controversy.
But, if a balance of power is attempted to be established by the line of slavery, it will introduce a natural, instead of an unnatural geographical division, and a line between eastern and western states will very soon be substituted for this whimsical species of geography.
The ends to be effected are, a monopoly of the offices of government, and of the partialities of congress, by the means of this artificial and fanciful geographical balance of power.