Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-25947183-20150315101555/@comment-25947183-20150315131923

Argali1 wrote: If you think about it, The Shire is the most politicaly advanced governing body in Middle Earth, they have mayors!

Also I think Gimli set up a dwarven govenment in Middle-earth in the fourth age in the Glittering Caves in Rohan before he sailed to Valinor with Legolas. But the shire was the only country with a Parliment in the third age (though did bree-land have mayors?). The shire was like the UK(actually according to Tolkien it became the UK later on(probably 6th age) since he wanted Middle-earth to be the distant history of Earth), and had both a monarch and a government. The Monarch was the Thrain who started off with all the power but later on lost most power(except for being the head of the military defence maybe) to the mayors. The Bucklanders passed the monarchy/Thrainship to the Tooks. Before the Thrainship the Hobbits thought of the Kings of Arnor to be their monarchs until the last king died and his son became a wanderer with his people and were called the Rangers of the North. But the Mayors had true power later on, so Samwise later had more power than Pippin or Merry when he became Mayor.

The first governments were in and around Roman times. Julius Caesar was like a Prime Minister in Roman Times and then people wanted him to be emperor. The Romans kicked out the Kings of Rome and created a government which disappeared when Julius Caesar's foster-son, Octavian(aka Emperor Augustus Caesar), then became emperor and the government was gone.

So if they had mayors as leaders it meant hobbits were up to Roman Times in political advancements, but hobbits had other technology such as mills which made them more technologically advanced.