Grames, thanks for bringing up this interesting topic, and in light of your two block-quotes.
We have recently had an opening glance into Aristotle’s Politics from Eiuol. I’ll try to look into some pertinent books before long on your topic. One thing I’d say in advance, however, is that a general definition of politics should, because of modern anthropology, be broad enough to include not only the wide variety of governments, but the predecessors of any government in the central organization of deliberate force: in chiefdoms and, before that, in autonomous tribes. I’d suggest a most general formula by now must encompass all those three and each in all their varieties, at least all the ones we know to have come about in human history and pre-history so far.