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Three keys to imperial longevity: 1) a legitimating ideology; 2) management and ordering of diversity; 3) cultivation of peripheral elites. Wrapped up with those is the idea that maintaining the distance between the spokes of empire - not allowing peripheries to overlap too much, always keeping the core state at the center of the web of empire - is a constant responsibility of the state.

Why did empires (specifically the ottomans) enjoy such longevity? Because of their flexibility and their capacity to fruitfully incorporate difference in a hub-and-spoke pattern that maintained the integrity of the whole by making negotiated settlements between the central state and peripheral groups (defined as such primarily on the basis of ethnicity).