Western political philosophy has its origins in Ancient Greece, when city-states were experimenting with various forms of political organization including monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy and democracy. Among the most important classical works of political philosophy are Plato's "The Republic" and Aristotle's "Politics". Later, St. Augustine's "The City of God" was a Christianized version of these which emphasized the role of the state in applying mercy as a moral example. After St. Thomas Aquinas's reintroduction and Christianization of Aristotle's political works, Christian Scholastic political philosophy dominated European thought for centuries.
In Ancient China, Confucius, Mencius (372 - 189 B.C.) and Mozi (470 - 391 B.C.) sought to restore political unity and stability through the cultivation of virtue, while the Legalist school sought the same end by the imposition of discipline. Similarly, in Ancient India, Chanakya (350 - 283 B.C.) developed a viewpoint in his "Arthashastra" which recalls both the Chinese Legalists and the later Political Realist theories of Niccolò Machiavelli.
Early Muslim political philosophy was indistinguishable from Islamic religious thought. The 14th Century Arabic scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406) is considered one of the greatest political theorists, and his definition of government as "an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself" is still considered a succinct analysis. With the recent emergence of Islamic radicalism as a political movement, political thought has revived in the Muslim world, and the political ideas of Muhammad Abduh (1849 - 1905), Al-Afghani (1838 0 1897), Sayyid Qutb (1906 - 1966), Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903 - 1979), Ali Shariati (1933 - 1977) and Ruhollah Khomeini (1902 - 1989) have gained increasing popularity in the 20th Century.
Secular political philosophy began to emerge in Europe after centuries of theological political thought during the Renaissance. Machiavelli's influential works, "The Prince" and "The Discourses", described a pragmatic and consequentialist view of politics, where good and evil are mere means to an end. The Englishman Thomas Hobbes, well known for his theory of the social contract (the implied agreements by which people form nations and maintain a social order), went on to expand this prototype of Contractarianism in the first half of the 17th Century, culminating in his "Leviathan" of 1651, which verged on Totalitarianism.