Form of government

A form of government is a colloquial term that refers to the set of political institutions by which a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a political community. . Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government". This definition holds valid even if the government is illegitimate or if it is unsuccessful in exerting its power. Regardless of its qualities, a failed government is still a form of government.

Churches, corporations, clubs, and other sub-national entities also have "government" forms, but in this article only the organization of states is discussed.

Theoretical foundations

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States by their systems of government as of November 2006.

  Presidential republics

  Semi-presidential republics

  Parliamentary republics

  Parliamentary republics with an executive presidency elected by and dependent on parliament

  Parliamentary constitutional monarchies in which the monarch does not personally exercise power

  Constitutional monarchies in which the monarch personally exercises power, often alongside a weak parliament

  Absolute monarchies

  Republics whose constitutions grant only one party the right to govern

  Monarchies where constitutional provisions for government have been suspended

  States that do not fit in any of the above listed systems

  No government

The theoretical and technical foundations for the study of institutional forms is the specialty of a subfield of political science called comparative politics. (Lichbach and Zuckerman, 1997). Since comparative politics is specialized, scholars often lack wide-spread knowledge in all forms of government. There is a debate over whether or not comprehensive regime classification is even possible due to its complexity.

The traditional and most often used divisions between governments are some form of dichotomy (such as democracy vs. dictatorship in Moore, 1958) and not a full typology. Although it would be useful to have an authoritative typology (such as by updating the politics of Aristotle), most scholars prefer to study and compare two or three regime types. An exception would be those experts in comparative electoral systems. They use large databases and math to see which form of electoral system will produce the most stable, enduring and representative regime. (i.e. Taagepera and Matthew Shugart, 1989).

Most comparativists study particular institutions (see institutionalism). Some work on the relationships between regime type and those aspects that can qualify the form of government (i.e. nationalism or economic system). A current debate in comparative politics centers on the stability of presidential versus parliamentarian democracies (Shugart and Carey, 1992). Another common debate is whether or not democracy promotes development (Przeworsky et. al., 2000).

Scholars may, like experts on institutional engineering, design new regime types. Arend Lijphart devised a sophisticated institutional solution for democracy, called consociation. This type of democratic government allows societies deeply divided by cultural or ideological factors like ethnicity or religion to feel represented under a single regime, thus preventing conflict or secession.

Examples and characteristics

Categorizing forms of government is complicated. Each political community is unique and works under a different power structure and social configuration. Therefore, one can say that there are almost as many forms of governments as there are societies.

Eighteen nations in the World do not explicitly name their government forms in their official names (the official name of Jamaica, for instance, is simply "Jamaica'), but most have an official name which identifies their form of government, or at least the form of government toward which they are striving:

• Australia, the Bahamas, and Dominica are each officially a Commonwealth.
• New Zealand and Canada are Dominions.
• Luxembourg is a Grand Duchy.
• The UAE is a collection of Muslim states, each an Emirate in their own right
• Malaysia, Russia, and Saint Kitts & Nevis are each a Federation. Switzerland is a Confederation.
• Libya is a Jamahiriya
• There are seventeen kingdoms in the world. Jordan is specifically a Hashemite Kingdom, and Great Britain and Northern Ireland highlights its separate historical regions by calling itself a United Kingdom.
• Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Monaco are each a Principality
• Republic is the most numerous form of government, at least officially, with one hundred thirty two nations claiming to be republics in their official names. Many specify a type of republic. For instance, Egypt and Syria are specifically Arab Republics, Guyana is specifically a Cooperative Republic, and Algeria claims to be a Democratic & Popular Republic.

The invocation of democracy is common in the official names of republics- North Korea is a Democratic People's Republic, four states are simply Democratic Republics, and Sri Lanka is a Democratic Socialist Republic. States which wish to emphasize that their provinces have a fair amount of autonomy from the central government may specifically state this: Germany and Nigeria are each a Federal Republic, Ethiopia is a Federal Democratic Republic, the Comoros is a Federal Islamic Republic, and Brazil is a Federative Republic. The sometimes utilized name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia emphasizes this nation's separateness from the neighboring Greek region of the same name. Government ideology is also a common signifier appended to "republic". Besides the Comoros, four other nations specifically dictate that they are Islamic Republics. Asian nations influenced by Maoism may emphasize their belief system by specifying the People as a whole in their official names: Laos is a People's Democratic Republic, and Bangladesh and China are People's Republics. Vietnam is a Socialist Republic. Finally, Tanzania emphasizes the cohesion of its state as a United Republic.

• Eleven nations simply refer to themselves as States, but a handful specify what kind of state. Micronesia is made up of Federated States, Papua New Guinea and Samoa emphasize that they are Independent States, and America and Mexico are United States.
• Brunei and Oman are Sultanates
• Burma simply states that it is a Union

Beyond official typologies it is important to think about regime types by looking at the general attributes of the forms of government [2]:

1. Traditional (clan or kinship) or modern (bureaucracies)
2. Personalistic (North Korea) or impersonal (Germany)
3. Authoritarian (Zimbabwe) or democratic (Belgium)
4. Elections (US) or heredity (Brunei).
5. Direct (Mexico) or indirect elections (Electoral College in the US)
6. Secular (European Union) or non-secular (Iran)
7. Division of powers, such as executive, judicial, and legislative branches (UK) or absence of division of powers (Peru under Fujimori).
8. Parliamentarian (Greece), Presidential (USA) or Monarchical (UK).
9. Number of people in the Executive power (Switzerland has 7, France 2, US 1).
10. Composition of the legislative power (autocratic, unicameral, bicameral...)
11. Number of coalitions or party-appointed legislators in Assemblies
12. Federal (Argentina) or Unitary (France, China)
13. Rules of the electoral system:
    1. plurality (most votes wins)- known as "First past the post" (U.K)
    2. majoritarian (50% +1 vote wins), including run-off elections (Argentina)
    3. supermajoritarian (usually from 55% to 75%- there is a 60% cloture rule in the U.S. Senate, and there was a 55% independence vote for Montenegro)
    4. unanimity - (100% votes wins) (such as for the board of directors of a company)
14. Type of economic system
15. Prevalent ideologies and cultures
16. Strong institutional capacity (US) or weak capacity (Iraq)
17. Legitimate (South Africa) or illegitimate (former communist Romania)
18. De facto (effective control) or De jure (nominal control) of government
19. Sovereign (US), semi-sovereign (Puerto Rico), or not sovereign (Chechnya)

Other empirical and conceptual problems

On the surface, identifying a form of government appears to be easy. Most would say that the United States is a democracy while the former Soviet Union was a dictatorship. However, as Kopstein and Lichbach (2005:4) argue, defining regimes is tricky. Defining a form of government is especially problematic when trying to identify those elements that are essential to that form. There appears to be a disparity between being able to identify a form of government and identifying the necessary characteristics of that form. For example, in trying to identify the essential characteristics of a democracy, one might say "elections." However, both citizens of the former Soviet Union and citizens of the United States voted for candidates to public office in their respective states. The problem with such a comparison is that most people are not likely to accept it because it does not comport with their sense of reality. Since most people are not going to accept an evaluation that makes the former Soviet Union as democratic as the United States, the usefulness of the concept is undermined.

One approach is to further elaborate on the nature of the characteristics found within each regime. In the example of the United States and the Soviet Union, both did conduct elections, and yet one important difference between these two regimes is that the USSR had a single-party system, with all other parties being outlawed. In contrast, the United States effectively has a bipartisan system with political parties being regulated, but not forbidden. A system generally seen as a representative democracy (for instance Canada, India and the United States) may also include measures providing for: a degree of direct democracy in the form of referenda and for deliberative democracy in the form of the extensive processes required for constitutional amendment.

Another complication is that a number of political systems originate as socio-economic movements and are then carried into governments by specific parties naming themselves after those movements. 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. Some examples are as follows:

• Perhaps the most widely cited example of such a phenomenon is the communist movement. This is an example of where the resulting political systems may diverge from the original socio-economic ideologies from which they developed. This may mean that adherents of the ideologies are actually opposed to the political systems commonly associated with them. For example, activists describing themselves as Trotskyists or communists are often opposed to the communist states of the 20th century.

• Islamism is also often included on a list of movements that have deep implications for the form of government. Indeed, many nations in the Islamic world use the term Islamic in the name of the state. However, these governments in practice exploit a range of different mechanisms of power (for example debt and appeals to nationalism). This means that there is no single form of government that could be described as “Islamic” government. Islam as a political movement is therefore better seen as a loose grouping of related political practices rather than a single, coherent political movement.

• The basic principles of many other popular movements have deep implications for the form of government those movements support and would introduce if they came to power. For example, bioregional democracy is a pillar of green politics.

See also

• Political regime
  • Parliamentary system
  • Semi-presidential system
  • Presidential system
• Government
• Civics
• Comparative governments
• Countries by system of government
• List of forms of government

References

• Boix, Carles (2003). Democracy and Redistribution. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Bunce, Valerie. 2003. “Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the Postcommunist Experience.” World Politics 55(2):167-192.
• Colomer, Josep M. (2003). Political Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Heritage, Andrew, Editor-in-Chief. 2000. World Desk Reference
• Lijphart, Arend (1977). Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Linz, Juan. 2000. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
• Linz, Juan, and Stepan, Alfred. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southernn Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
• Lichbach, Mark and Alan Zukerman, eds. 1997. Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Luebbert, Gregory M. 1987. “Social Foundations of Political Order in Interwar Europe,” World Politics 39, 4.
• Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge: Beacon Press, ch. 7-9.
• Comparative politics : interests, identities, and institutions in a changing global order/edited by Jeffrey Kopstein, Mark Lichbach, 2nd ed, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1970. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism. Berkeley: University of California.
• O’Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Philippe C., and Whitehead, Laurence, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: comparative Perspectives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Przeworski, Adam. 1992. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America, New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Przeworski, Adam, Alvarez, Michael, Cheibub, Jose, and Limongi, Fernando. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well Being in the World, 1950-1990. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Shugart, Mathhew and John M. Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics, New York, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992.
• Taagepera, Rein and Matthew Shugart. 1989. Seats and votes: The effects and determinants of electoral systems, Yale Univ. Press.

External links

• Types of Governments from Historical Atlas of the 20th Century
• Other classifications examples from Historical Atlas of the 20th Century
• [3]Template:Link FA