Aristocracy is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning'rule of the best'. In practice, aristocracy leads to hereditary government, after which the hereditary monarch appoints officers as they see fit. However, the term was first used by ancient Greeks such as Aristotle and Plato, who used it to describe a system where only the best of the citizens, chosen through a careful process of selection, would become rulers, hereditary rule would have been forbidden, unless the rulers' children performed best and were better endowed with the attributes that make a person fit to rule compared with every other citizen in the polity. Hereditary rule is more related to Oligarchy, a corrupted form of Aristocracy where there is rule by a few, but not by the best. Plato, Aristotle and the Spartans considered Aristocracy to be inherently better than the ideal form of rule by the many, but they considered the corrupted form of Aristocracy to be worse than the corrupted form of Democracy.

This belief was rooted in the assumption that the masses could only produce average policy, while the best of men could produce the best policy, if they were indeed the best of men. At the time of the word's origins in ancient Greece, the Greeks conceived it as rule by the best qualified citizens—and contrasted it favourably with monarchy, rule by an individual. In times, aristocracy was seen as rule by a privileged group, the aristocratic class, has since been contrasted with democracy; the idea of hybrid forms which have aspects of both aristocracy and democracy are in use in the parliamentary form of government and in republics. There have there been since the fall of Athens. There are some governments that have elements of Direct Democracy, but all of those governments are mixed governments, like the Spartan, British, German and American governments, which all have elements of Democracy and Monarchy, with a system of checks and balances, where each element checks the excesses of the other, as described by Polybius in his analysis of the Roman Constitution.

Therefore, varying degrees of aristocracy are prevalent throughout nearly all modern governments. The concept evolved in Ancient Greece, whereby a council of leading citizens was empowered and contrasted with representative democracy, in which a council of citizens was appointed as the "senate" of a city state or other political unit; the Greeks did not like the concept of monarchy, as their democratic system fell, aristocracy was upheld. In the 1651 book Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes an aristocracy as a commonwealth in which the representative of the citizens is an assembly by part only, it is a system. Modern depictions of aristocracy tend to regard it not as the ancient Greek concept of rule by the best, but more as an oligarchy or plutocracy—rule by the few or the wealthy; the concept of aristocracy per Plato, has an ideal state ruled by the philosopher king. Plato describes these "philosopher kings" as "those who love the sight of truth" and supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his medicine.

According to him and health are not things that everyone is qualified to practice by nature. A large part of the Republic addresses how the educational system should be set up to produce these philosopher kings. Aristocracies dominated political and economic power for most of the medieval and modern periods everywhere in Europe, using their wealth, control of the best land, control of their tenants to form a powerful political force. In the 19th century the rising middle class produced rich businessmen, many of whom use their money to buy into the aristocracy. However, after the 1830s, in country after country, the aristocracies tended to lose their historic dominance over wealth and political power; the French Revolution in the 1790s forced many aristocrats into exile, relieving them of their lands and power. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the exiles returned but they never recovered all their lands and never wielded as much political power. Beginning with Britain and Germany, industrialization in the 19th century brought urbanization, with the wealth concentrated in the cities, which took political power.

Before 1789, aristocracies were closely associated with the church the Catholic Church, but in the 19th century wave after wave of attacks on the Catholics weekend that element of the aristocratic coalition. As late as 1900, aristocrats maintained political dominance in Britain, Germany and Russia, but it was more precarious. World War I had the effect of reducing the power of the aristocrats in all major countries. In Russia they were expelled by the Communists. After 1900, Liberal and socialist governments levied heavy taxes on landowners, spelling their loss of economic power. Bengtsson, Erik, et al. "Aristocratic wealth and inequality in a changing society: Sweden, 1750–1900." Scandinavian Journal of History 44.1: 27–52. Online Cannon, John. History, Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-19-866176-4 Liu, Jia. "Study on the Decline of the British Aristocracy from the Perspective of Modernization." 2018 4th International Conference on Economics and Humanities Science. Online Schutte, Kimberly.

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Michael Oguejiofo Ajegbo was a Nigerian lawyer and politician, Attorney-General of Nigeria's Eastern Region during Nigeria's First Republic. Ajegbo was born and grew up in Obosi, Anambra State, the son of Ajegbo, a farmer and Mgbonkwo Okunwa. At Obosi, the Church Missionary Society had an outpost that managed a primary school where Ajegbo attended, after graduation, CMS awarded him a scholarship to attended Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha, he completed his Junior Cambridge certification at Dennis, secured employment as a clerk with the Customs Department in Lagos in 1929. Ajegbo worked with the Customs department from 1929 to 1943, prior to resigning from the department in 1943, he was transferred from Lagos to Port Harcourt. In Port Harcourt, he joined the local affiliate of the Ibo Federal Union and began to study for the London Matriculation which he passed in 1943. Between 1943 and 1947, Ajegbo was a law student at London University, shortly after passing the bar in 1947, he returned to Nigeria and settled in Onitsha.

As a lawyer, Ajegbo was involved in the nationalist movement, in 1948, he defended Onitsha branch members of the Zikist Movement against charges brought by the colonial government, a year he was an attorney representing the coal miners union of Enugu in a judicial commission of inquiry into a shooting incident of miners in Enugu. Ajegbo became a Vice-President of the newly formed Ibo State Union in 1948 and was an active member of the settlers association in Onitsha; when Africans had the opportunity to elect local government officials in 1951, Ajegbo won a seat on the Niger County Council, he was chairman of the new council from 1951 until 1954 was elected to the newly reformed local authority, the more inclusive Onitsha Urban District Council with membership open to natives and settlers, under the presidency of the Obi of Onitsha. The council later-on initiated the construction of the Onitsha Market funded by a loan from the regional development board. In 1956, Ajegbo and his fellow lawyer colleagues from NCNC defended Azikiwe during a tribunal of inquiry into the activities of African Continental Bank and its relationship with regional premier and the Eastern region government.

In 1957, he was appointed Attorney-General and member of the Eastern region executive council

West Midlands Chambers of Commerce LLP is a collaborative partnership of the 6 Chambers of Commerce in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom. It brings together the regions Chambers of Commerce, which between them have over 9,000 companies as registered members; the head office of the WMCC is located at the same address as the Birmingham chamber. It operates through delivery teams based at the offices of its member chambers, giving it a total of six offices; as well as Birmingham these are located in Worcester, Stoke-on-Trent, Walsall and Telford. The head of the WMCC is the chair Louise Bennett. In total there are 332 chamber employees, within the 6 regional Chambers including specialist advisers and project managers as well as administrative and support staff; the West Midlands Chambers of Commerce LLP has six member chambers, each of, an accredited member of the British Chambers of Commerce. The members are: Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce Group Black Country Chamber of Commerce Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce Herefordshire and Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce Shropshire Chamber of CommerceBetween them these chambers have a total membership of over 9,000 businesses.

The WMCC describes its core mission as "the delivery of specialist business services across the West Midlands". A priority is developing international investment in the West Midlands area; the WMCC acts as a single point of contact for government agencies or other private sector entities who wish to place contracts for the delivery of business support services across the West Midlands region: it can act as both contractor and contract manager. The WMCC is working with businesses, lobbying the government and local authorities, to increase the emphasis on exports for manufacturers based in the West Midlands. In May 2013 WMCC introduced a new service aimed at making it easier for businesses to export; this involves providing a simple way to generate all the documentation required to ship goods overseas, including letters of credit, by using a centralised management system. This allows a business to enter the information once rather than having to do it for each individual document. Online training courses are being developed to teach business owners the special requirements of international trade