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alternatehistory.com
So I've been listening to a podcast about Roman History on a road trip across the US and one thing that struck me is that Diocletian's reforms seem on paper to create a very solid system of government. The issue of course was that the most important thing for him to change was to make a more stable system of succession so that the Empire didn't have to endure near constant civil war.
On the surface it seems to me that if the Tetrarchy system could endure for a few more generations of peaceful transfers of power that the Romans finally might have hit upon a political system that possessed both a functional local level administration and stable macro level administration.
The problem of course is that as soon as Diocletian took his hands off the wheel the legions went straight back to appointing their own Augustus and the system was broken before it could set in. It seemed the precedent of succession by the sword was too strong in OTL and Diocletian's attempt to craft a sort of demigod person for the title of Emperor had failed.
So the question is, what would it have taken to make the new system work? Would it be enough to have precedent set by one of two peaceful generations of succession or would something else in the Tetrarchy system need to change for the system to work long term?