A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a
state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of
legislature,
executive
Executive ( exe., exec., execu.) may refer to:
Role or title
* Executive, a senior management role in an organization
** Chief executive officer (CEO), one of the highest-ranking corporate officers (executives) or administrators
** Executive di ...
, and
judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of
constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy.
While all types of organizations have
governance, the term ''government'' is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200
independent national governments and
subsidiary organizations.
The major types of
political systems in the modern era are
democracies,
monarchies, and
authoritarian and
totalitarian regimes. Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy,
aristocracy,
timocracy,
oligarchy
Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate ...
, democracy,
theocracy, and
tyranny. These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and
mixed governments are common. The main aspect of any philosophy of government is how political power is obtained, with the two main forms being
electoral contest and
hereditary succession.
Definitions and etymology
A government is the
system to
govern
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
a
state or community. The ''
Columbia Encyclopedia'' defines government as "a system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society". While all types of organizations have
governance, the word ''government'' is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200
independent national governments on Earth, as well as their subsidiary organizations, such as
state and provincial governments as well as
local governments.
The word ''government'' derives from the Greek verb [] meaning ''to steer'' with a Gubernaculum (classical), gubernaculum (rudder), the metaphorical sense being attested in the literature of classical antiquity, including
Plato's Ship of State. In
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...
, "government" sometimes refers to what's also known as a "
ministry" or an "
administration", i.e., the policies and government officials of a particular executive or governing
coalition. Finally, ''government'' is also sometimes used in English as a
synonym for rule or governance.
History
Earliest governments
The moment and place that the phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared. By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas:
Sumer,
ancient Egypt, the
Indus Valley civilization, and the
Yellow River civilization
Stone sickle, Peiligang culture (7000–5000 BC)">Peiligang_culture.html" ;"title="sickle, Peiligang culture">sickle, Peiligang culture (7000–5000 BC)
Yellow River civilization or Huanghe civilization (), Hwan‐huou civilization is an anc ...
.
The development of agriculture and
water control projects were a catalyst for the development of governments.
[The New Encyclopædia Britannica (15th edition)] On occasion a chief of a tribe was elected by various rituals or tests of strength to govern his tribe, sometimes with a group of elder tribesmen as a council. The human ability to precisely communicate abstract, learned information allowed humans to become ever more effective at agriculture, and that allowed for ever increasing population densities.
David Christian explains how this resulted in states with laws and governments.
Modern governments
Starting at the end of the 17th century, the prevalence of republican forms of government grew. The
English Civil War and
Glorious Revolution in England, the
American Revolution, and the
French Revolution contributed to the growth of representative forms of government. The
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
was the first large country to have a
Communist government. Since the fall of the
Berlin Wall,
liberal democracy has become an even more prevalent form of government.
In the nineteenth and twentieth century, there was a significant increase in the size and scale of government at the national level. This included the regulation of corporations and the development of the
welfare state.
Political science
Classification
In political science, it has long been a goal to create a typology or taxonomy of
polities, as typologies of political systems are not obvious. It is especially important in the
political science fields of
comparative politics and
international relations. Like all categories discerned within forms of government, the boundaries of government classifications are either fluid or ill-defined.
Superficially, all governments have an official or ideal form. The United States is a constitutional republic, while the former Soviet Union was a
socialist republic. However self-identification is not objective, and as Kopstein and Lichbach argue, defining regimes can be tricky. For example,
Voltaire argued that "the
Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire".
Identifying a form of government is also difficult because many
political systems originate as socio-economic movements and are then carried into governments by parties naming themselves after those movements; all with competing political-ideologies. Experience with those movements in power, and the strong ties they may have to particular forms of government, can cause them to be considered as forms of government in themselves.
Other complications include general non-consensus or deliberate "
distortion or bias" of reasonable technical definitions to political ideologies and associated forms of governing, due to the nature of politics in the modern era. For example: The meaning of "conservatism" in the United States has little in common with the way the word's definition is used elsewhere. As Ribuffo notes, "what Americans now call conservatism much of the world calls liberalism or
neoliberalism"; a "conservative" in Finland would be labeled a "
socialist" in the United States. Since the 1950s conservatism in the United States has been chiefly associated with the
Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
* Republican Party (Liberia)
*Republican Party ...
. However, during the era of
segregation many
Southern Democrats were conservatives, and they played a key role in the
conservative coalition that controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963.
Social-political ambiguity
Opinions vary by individuals concerning the types and properties of governments that exist. "Shades of gray" are commonplace in any government and its corresponding classification. Even the most liberal democracies limit rival political activity to one extent or another while the most tyrannical dictatorships must organize a broad base of support thereby creating difficulties for "
pigeonholing" governments into narrow categories. Examples include the claims of the
United States as being a plutocracy rather than a democracy since some American voters believe elections are being manipulated by wealthy
Super PACs.
Forms
Plato in his book ''
The Republic'' divided governments into five basic types (four being existing forms and one being Plato's ideal form, which exists "only in speech"):
*
Aristocracy (rule by law and order, like ideal traditional “benevolent” kingdoms that aren’t tyrannical)
*
Timocracy (rule by honor and duty, like a “benevolent” military; Sparta as an example)
*
Oligarchy
Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate ...
(rule by wealth and market-based-ethics, like a free-trading capitalist state)
*
Democracy (rule by pure liberty and equality, like a free citizen)
*
Tyranny (rule by fear, like a despot)
These five regimes progressively degenerate starting with aristocracy at the top and tyranny at the bottom.
In his ''
Politics'', Aristotle elaborates on Plato's five regimes discussing them in relation to the government of one, of the few, and of the many.
From this follows the classification of forms of government according to which people have the authority to rule: either one person (an
autocracy, such as monarchy), a select group of people (an aristocracy), or the people as a whole (a democracy, such as a republic).
Thomas Hobbes stated on their classification:
Basic political systems
According to
Yale professor
Juan José Linz there a three main types of
political systems today:
democracies,
totalitarian regimes
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
and, sitting between these two,
authoritarian regimes
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic ...
with
hybrid regimes.
Another modern classification system includes
monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three.
Scholars generally refer to a
dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism.
Autocracy
An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme
power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a
coup d'état or mass
insurrection).
Absolute monarchy is a historically prevalent form of autocracy, wherein a
monarch governs as a singular
sovereign with no limitation on
royal prerogative. Most absolute monarchies are
hereditary, however some, notably the
Holy See, are
elected by an
electoral college (such as the
college of cardinals, or
prince-electors). Other forms of autocracy include
tyranny,
despotism, and
dictatorship.
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , from "excellent", and "
power". is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small,
elite ruling class,
such as a hereditary
nobility or
privileged
caste. This class exercises
minority rule
In political science, minoritarianism (or minorityism) is a neologism for a political structure or process in which a minority segment of a population has a certain degree of primacy in that entity's decision making. Minoritarianism may be contr ...
, often as a
landed timocracy, wealthy
plutocracy, or
oligarchy
Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate ...
.
Many monarchies were aristocracies, although in modern constitutional monarchies the monarch may have little effective power. The term ''aristocracy'' could also refer to the non-
peasant, non-servant, and non-
city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
classes in the
feudal system.
Democracy
Democracy is a system of government where
citizens exercise power by
voting and
deliberation. In a
direct democracy, the citizenry as a whole directly forms a
participatory
Citizen Participation or Public Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions—and ideally exert influence—regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participat ...
governing body and vote directly on each issue. In
indirect democracy, the citizenry governs indirectly through the selection of
representatives or
delegates from among themselves, typically by
election or, less commonly, by
sortition. These select citizens then meet to form a governing body, such as a legislature or
jury.
Some governments combine both direct and indirect democratic governance, wherein the citizenry selects representatives to administer day-to-day governance, while also reserving the right govern directly through
popular initiatives,
referendum
A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a Direct democracy, direct vote by the Constituency, electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a Representative democr ...
s (plebiscites), and the
right of recall. In a
constitutional democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into ...
the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but the constitution limits
majority rule, usually through the provision by all of certain
universal rights, e.g.
freedom of speech, or
freedom of association.
['' Oxford English Dictionary'': "democracy".]
Republics
A republic is a form of government in which the country is considered a "public matter" ( la, res publica), not the private concern or property of the rulers, and where offices of states are subsequently directly or indirectly elected or appointed rather than inherited. The people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people.
A common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch.
Montesquieu included both
democracies, where all the people have a share in rule, and
aristocracies or
oligarchies, where only some of the people rule, as republican forms of government.
Other terms used to describe different republics include
democratic republic
A democratic republic is a form of government operating on principles adopted from a republic and a democracy. As a cross between two exceedingly similar systems, democratic republics may function on principles shared by both republics and democr ...
,
parliamentary republic,
semi-presidential republic
A semi-presidential republic, is a republic in which a president exists alongside a prime minister and a cabinet, with the latter two being responsible to the legislature of the state. It differs from a parliamentary republic in that it ha ...
,
presidential republic,
federal republic,
people's republic, and
Islamic republic.
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a ''group'' of members are bound together by
covenant with a governing
representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of government in which
sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units, variously called states, provinces or otherwise. Federalism is a system based upon democratic principles and institutions in which the power to govern is shared between national and provincial/state governments, creating what is often called a
federation. Proponents are often called
federalists.
Branches
Governments are typically organised into distinct institutions constituting branches of government each with particular
powers, functions, duties, and responsibilities. The distribution of powers between these institutions differs between governments, as do the functions and number of branches. An independent, parallel distribution of powers between branches of government is the
separation of powers. A shared, intersecting, or overlapping distribution of powers is the
fusion of powers.
Governments are often organised into three branches with separate powers: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary; this is sometimes called the model. However, in
parliamentary and
semi-presidential systems, branches of government often intersect, having shared membership and overlapping functions. Many governments have fewer or additional branches, such as an independent
electoral commission or
auditory branch.
Party system
Presently, most governments are administered by members of an explicitly constituted
political party which coordinates the activities of associated government
officials and
candidates for office. In a
multiparty system of government, multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government offices, typically by competing in
elections, although the
effective number of parties may be limited.
A
majority government is a government by one or more
governing parties together holding an absolute majority of seats in the parliament, in contrast to a
minority government in which they have only a plurality of seats and often depend on a
confidence and supply arrangement with other parties. A
coalition government is one in which multiple parties cooperate to form a government as part of a
coalition agreement. In a single-party government a single party forms a government without the support of a coalition, as is typically the case with majority governments, but even a minority government may consist of just one party unable to find a willing coalition partner at the moment.
A party which continuously maintains a single-party government within a (nominally) multiparty system constitutes a
dominant-party system. In a (nondemocratic)
one party system a single
ruling party has the (more or less) exclusive right to form the government, and the formation of other parties may be obstructed or illegal. In some cases, a government may have a
non-partisan system, as is the case with
absolute monarchy or
non-partisan democracy.
Maps
Democracy is the most popular form of government with more than half of the nations in the world being democracies-97 of 167 nations as of 2021.
[ However the world is becoming more authoritarian with a quarter of the world's population under democratically backsliding governments.][The Global State of Democracy 2021]
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Government, Forms of
Political terminology
Main topic articles