Political systems are transient whereas civilizations endure across millennia.

Evidence

Fourth, civilizations are mortal but also very long-lived; they evolve, adapt, and are the most enduring of human associations, “realities of the extreme longue duree” Their “unique and particular essence” is “their long historical continuity. Civilization is in fact the longest story of all.” Empires rise and fall, governments come and go, civilizations remain and “survive political, social, economic, even ideological upheavals.” … “International history,” Bozeman concludes, “rightly documents the thesis that political systems are transient expedients on the surface of civilization, and that the destiny of each linguistically and morally unified community depends ultimately upon the survival of certain primary structuring ideas around which successive generations have coalesced and which thus symbolize the society’s continuity.” Virtually all the major civilizations in the world in the twentieth century either have existed for a millennium or, as with Latin America, are the immediate offspring of another long-lived civilization. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 116

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Obsolete political formations persist beyond their historical moment. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1773; Political settlements shift from impossible to inevitable through historical reversal — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2153