Good question! The oldest government still in operation appears to be San Marino, a tiny country near Italy, at around 415 years. Considering that even at a small size it's only been around that long despite civilization being around 6000 years old, I think it's safe to say we haven't managed a system that has real staying power yet.

[–] absentbird@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

There's hunter-gatherer tribes that have been more or less stable for over a thousand years. It's said that the Nez Perce have lived on the Columbia River for 11,500 years.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

Yeah, but for the purpose of looking at stable governments in cities, hunter-gather societies aren't a helpful comparison.

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Good points but my question is more about governments that work at the scale of a nation state.

[–] absentbird@lemm.ee 8 points 4 months ago

I think it's possible that nation states are inherently unstable. An improvement on monarchy, but still vulnerable to oligarchy.

I'm not sure what the future holds, or what comes next, but I suspect that federation will play an important role.