Abstract
I propose that the classical analytical category of 'empire', as opposed to ‘state’ and other political forms, can account for a large number of historical and current experiences, including the United States of America, the European Union, Russia and China. An ‘empire’ can be conceived, in contrast to a ‘state’, as a very large size polity with a government formed by multiple institutional levels, overlapping jurisdictions and diverse formulas across the territory. According to the American experience and the most recent European one, the building of military and commercial large ‘empires’ can be a favorable formula for stability and progress in other areas of the world that have been subject to never-ending processes of trial and error in the art of building nation-states
