The Regime
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The Regime
In the broadest sense, a regime is the structured mode of life by which a society makes its guiding principles effective in everyday conduct. It is the bridge between a social systems a) ideas and ends and (b) the concrete habits, institutions, and time-rhythms of its members. A regime therefore translates doctrine into practice, stabilizes moral expectations, and reproduces the desired social order across time.
Concept Map
Key Term
- Five Barriers to Human Flourishing
- Planetary Healing
- Seven Components of Human Development
- Socialization
- Human Development Framework
- Stages of Human Development
- The Regime
Types of Regime
The Regime > Positivist Regime, Regime of Accumulation
Syncretic Terms
Related LP Terms
Non-LP Related Terms
Notes
A regime is formally neutral. Different societies and classes can instantiate very different regimes (e.g. a Regime of Accumulation, a monastic regime, a military-bureaucratic regime, a Positivist Regime (Comte), an LP regime), but they all solve the same problem: how to get direct society; how to get patterned conduct out of abstract principles.
- Elements of a regime (general)
- Normative content – the ideas, goals, or ends to be realized (growth, salvation, human flourishing, accumulation, national security, service to Humanity, etc.).
- Institutional carriers – organizations and roles that enforce or model the pattern (churches, factories, priesthoods, schools, party structures, households).
- Temporalization – calendars, cycles, observances, deadlines, and other time-structures that make the pattern repeatable.
- Reproductive mechanisms – education, training, media, ritual, law, and economic incentives that keep the regime going across generations.
A **regime of accumulation** is one concrete implementation of this general concept, organized around capital expansion as the dominant end and using market, state, and ideological apparatuses as its carriers.
Comte’s Regime (second-level example)
Auguste Comte proposes a specific implementation that could be titled a Positivist Regime or Regime of Humanity. It uses:
- a comprehensive framework covering moral, intellectual, and societal life;
- a constructed Religion of Humanity to supply adhesion and continuity;
- and a dual institutional structure (spiritual power + temporal/industrial power)
to ensure that everyday conduct converges on service to Humanity.
In Comte’s case, the regime is not a value-neutral pattern but a consciously designed one, built to instantiate his positive religion. Analytically, however, it still fits the general definition above.
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Footnotes