[1] Samuel Finer, the youngest of six children, was born 22 September 1915 to Romanian-Jewish immigrant parents[2] who had emigrated to the United Kingdom, and who ran a greengrocer's stall at Chapel Street market, Islington.
From 1946 to 1950, he taught politics at Balliol College, Oxford, acquiring an impressive reputation as a teacher and lecturer.
He believed that the academic study of politics required a firm grounding in history, and was sceptical of attempts to convert the subject into a science based on such deterministic frameworks as Marxism and behavioralism.
(Most of the information in this section is derived from the collection-level description of the Samuel Finer Papers on the Archives Hub of the University of Manchester Special Collection.
The conceptual prologue includes a classification of government systems in terms of combinations of four elements: Palace (monarchy), Forum (democracy), Church (organised religion) and Nobility.
Government is not analysed in isolation but explained in the context of economics, technology, agriculture, geography, religion, law, warfare, etc.