Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the ur-text for this concept. Gibbon famously listed five primary causes for Rome’s collapse: the rapid increase of divorce, the undermining of the dignity of the magistracy, the rise of cruelty, the establishment of a Praetorian Guard that sold the throne, and the excessive taxation of the poor.

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The first and perhaps most critical component of the Index is the health of a system’s institutions. In political science, this is often discussed through the lens of "democratic backsliding" or state capture.