Was the Oligarchy good for Sparta?

What it says on the tin. Was this a truly effective government system for this small defensive polis? What would have been a better one? If they had a different governmental type, how would history might have been changed.
 
It worked fine for them for a fairly long time. "Them" being solely the oligarchs, of course.

The peculiar system of Sparta spared the city much of the more or less continuous civil unrest that plagued most other Greek poleis, but it came at the price of having continuous internal repression of the disenfranchised at home.
It also reduced greatly the Spartan ability to produce any lasting culture of worth. While the city was not entirely a dependency of the barracks, stable oligarchy required a general militarization of the elite that left little room for arts, architecture or poetry (we have some exceptions, esp. in Archaic poetry).
To the average helot, the Spartan oligarchy was a nasty, oppressive system that did not benefit them in any way; hardly surpring since it was designed precisely with the sole purpose of keeping the helots down as effectively as possible (therefore remarkably spoiling the individual oligarch of any of the fruits usually associated with the appropriation of the surplus from the labor of an underclass in terms of luxury etc).
 
A different system of government would make Sparta, well, not-Sparta.
It would change the whole dynamic of Greek history, as a likely result would be one of the following:
a) Sparta runs through the cycles of regime changes, tyrannies and civil wars experienced almost anywhere else in the Greek world.
b) Sparta remains a relatively stable, backward and not particularly noteworthy polity in its part of Greece; its lacks it legendary military prowess and any ability to dominate the Peloponnese as a whole.

In either case, the great geopolitical and ideological confrontation with Athens does not happen. Athenian hegemony would still be attempted, and challenged by other cities (this remains fairly likely even if Athens does not develop its particular democratic institution, which indeed it may not in this scenario, given the historical involvement of the Spartans in the ousting of the Pisistratid tyrants). But, even assuming minimal changes on the Athenian side, the most likely challengers would then be less strictly oligarchic, mercantile cities whose interest would clash with Athenian ones without making the conflict an ideological existential struggle. This would make the Greek civilization as we know it completely different: nothing like Plato's philosophy would ever arise, for instance.
This, disregarding the butterflies involving the big, big, big empire on the Asian side of the Hellespontus.
 
I wouldn't really call it an oligarchy, but rather just Sparta. The whole "two kings" and specific military kind of set them apart.

I'd say a different system probably leaves the Peloponnesus as a backwater; the main enemies of Athenian imperialism will either rely on Thebes or Corinth, or perhaps call in the Persians.
 
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