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System Of Government

System of government

A form of government (also referred to as a system of government) is a social institution composed of various people, institutions and their relations in regard to the governance (or government) of a state. Different forms of government have different political systems—a term which is generally considered to be a separate but related concept. A wide range of different forms of government has been proposed or used in practice. The study of such forms is called civics or comparative government.

Types of government

:See also List of forms of government Categorizing forms of government gives a general idea of the power structure of the governance of a country. However, the picture is more complicated than this, as every country’s system is unique, and in practice many represent a hybrid of different forms of government. For example, a system generally seen as a representative democracy (for instance Canada and the United States) may in fact also include measures providing for a degree of direct democracy in the form of referenda, for deliberative democracy in the form of the extensive processes required for constitutional change, and investigating committees and commissions (which may not be led by representatives). A further 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 governmental control, 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.

References

External links

- [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20c-govt.htm Types of Governments from Historical Atlas of the 20th Century]
- [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/othergov.htm Other classifications examples from Historical Atlas of the 20th Century]

Person

Person, in the classic sense, refers to a living human being. However, in philosophy, there has been debate over the precise meaning and correct usage of the term, whether the classical definition should be expanded or in some cases reduced, and which constituent elements or criteria must exist to establish personhood.

Are all persons human?

Firstly, there is the simple and traditional view that the common usage is the correct one: that "person" does indeed mean "human". However, this runs into the problem that the term "person" has a somewhat loaded meaning - we commonly believe that all and only persons have certain rights, for example, the right to life. Some would go so far as to say that all and only persons are sacred. However, we can imagine the hypothetical alien from another planet, who, despite not being human, nevertheless has every trait that we see as being essential for this protected status that elevates it above mere objects. Thus, many claim that the simple view implies a sort of arrogant speciesism. There are also religious views that attribute personhood to supernatural beings such as gods, angels, demons, elves, and so on. Similar ethical debates centre around the question of animal rights and artificial intelligence. Some would argue that humans have an amount of hubris that could potentially prevent us from recognizing the personhood of other sentient species. Some argue that certain primates and cetaceans (particularly the most highly intelligent species, such as the Great Apes and dolphins and killer whales) possess enough of the commonly held criteria for personhood to be considered persons. Recently corvids (crow species) have been recognized as highly intelligent tool users and strategists, while parrots display more linguistic intelligence. (see also animal intelligence and animal cognition). In fact, it is possible to teach a gorilla sign language, as evidenced by the case of Koko, who has expressed pride and flattery at having been awarded a place in the Guinness Book of Records for this. Some extend the list still further. In the future sentient programs and computers may even emerge, extending the argument beyond all biological realms. The issue of how we might discern whether artificial information processing systems are conscious will likely become a matter of important debate. Alan Turing first suggested that we give convincing machines or programs the benefit of the doubt, using his Turing test. However, even a simple chatbot can fool people for a time. The best evidence for consciousness or "sentience" would be the subjective reports of people undergoing gradual replacement of brain tissue with artificial processors (see cyborgs). For example, surgeons are already beginning to integrate artificial "neural prosthetics" in patients to repair some forms of brain damage. At some point such a person's cognitive system could require no biological elements. Because the process is gradual, the success or failure of the facilitation of phenomenal elements of conscious experience in a particular device could be reported by a person whom we are pragmatically warranted is considered conscious from the outset. At least in artificial systems designed in the same manner, we would be much more warranted in ascribing personhood than the low standards of the Turing test. Justification would become extremely high for ascribing personhood to any artificial cognitive system that either (1) became artificial through a gradual process of "cyborgization" (permitting subjective reports from a highly trusted source) or (2) was an artificial cognitive system whose design replicated a completely artificial stage of a cyborgization process that has been proven effective, in all relevant respects (e.g. not "personality," but the same type of hardware, organization, and operations). An elaboration on this theme is sometimes called "uploading", though the term carries baggage. "Uploading" here refers to a theoretical transfer of a mind to an artificial environment. Uploading proposals tend to assume that the mind does not persist through time in a substantial way (usually theoretically grounded on "deep reductivist" arguments that there is no soul or "self") so making a "copy" of brain structures is - in terms of survival - just as good as preserving the original structure. Advocates also tend to believe that such a copy would have conscious experience rather than merely acting as a convincing automaton. Reservations aside though, there does not seem to be any intrinsic reason that, some day, the mind of a human subject could not gradually extend into a functional simulation running on an advanced supercomputer. Related to this idea are cyberpunk/postcyberpunk science fiction (especially Ghost in the Shell) and the Transhumanist movement.

Are all humans persons?

There are certain challenges to the classical view regarding disputes over whether certain humans are persons. For example, in the abortion controversy, although the fetus is clearly of the human species, the personhood of the fetus has been challenged and has become a matter of debate. Some argue that an early stage a fetus is not a person, because of its lack of any form of consciousness, while others would argue that they are persons because they are human, or because they will develop into conscious beings. Also, in the case of a victim of severe brain damage who has no mental activity, many would concede that the person has ceased to exist, leaving only an "empty shell".

Possible criteria for personhood

The above points seem to indicate that there may be persons that are not human, and there may be humans that are not persons. For these reasons, many philosophers have tried to give a more precise definition, focusing on some trait or traits that all persons, real and hypothetical, must possess. The most obvious such trait that individuals considered persons usually possess is a conscious mind, typically (but not necessarily) with plans, goals, desires, hopes, fears, and so on. These traits therefore form a natural set of criteria for personhood. Despite this, these criteria are controversial. In particular, some have argued that these criteria fail to recognize babies as persons. Although they meet some of the criteria, such as some degree of consciousness, and the ability to feel pain, the mental abilities of a newborn baby often seem to some to be no more impressive than many animals not commonly considered persons. Another problematic example is the status of a person in deep sleep, with no consciousness at the moment, but who upon waking would return to being an entity with full subjective awareness in the future. However, this latter case becomes less problematic with the assistance of theories of embodied subjectivity (mind-brain identity or unity), which allow for the persistence of an intelligent physical system that both has been self-aware in the past and has the capacity to continue being self-aware in the future. A variation of this example is a "reversibly comatose patient," though criteria for reversibility complicate such an analysis. Because of these problems, some philosophers suggest that the potential to become fully thinking beings is sufficient to convey personhood, regardless of present mental status. Others take this view for essentially religious reasons. A consequence of this view is that an embryo would be considered a person from conception; but others see the idea of a single cell - with absolutely no mind of any sort - being a person as counterintuitive. It is a matter of debate when in development any conscious awareness is possible, as seemingly cognitive behaviour that may or may not be attributable to stimuli can be seen at multiple stages in a pregnancy. Nevertheless, consistent correlative evidence enables us to rule out awareness in the early and middle stages of foetal development with a high degree of confidence. As is reported in the August 24, 2005 Clinical Review article, Foetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence, at 29 weeks of development fetuses have mature somatosensory evoked potentials that indicate that pain signals travel above the spine, through the thalamus and to the somatosensory cortex; and at around 30 weeks of development the brain's EEG signals suggest the first signs of wakefulness. Wakefulness is a necessary condition for any awareness, including pain recognition, but is insufficient for awareness without a functional somatosensory cortex to recognize pain signals as such - which is lacking for people in permanently vegetative states. Because these two necessary conditions for consciousness do not occur before the 29th week of development, fetuses cannot be consciously aware (and therefore subjects of experience) before the 29th week. Another view amongst scholars is that personhood is not all-or-nothing: there can be degrees of personhood, based on how close to a fully working mind the individual in question has. Thus, a typical adult is entirely a person, while a human permanently in a persistent vegetative state would not be considered a person at all. Partial personhood is tacitly recognized by law in most cultures as reflected by parental rights and obligations, and in legal treatment of minors, the mentally handicapped, and the comatose. However, other philosophers argue that the concept of an incomplete or partial person is dangerous, possibly leading to weakened protection for those not considered complete persons. Others would argue that we are all incomplete or "developing" persons regardless of our developmental state.

Personhood theory

According to Boethius: :Person is an individual substance of rational nature. As individual it is material, since matter supplies the principle of individuation. The soul is not person, only the composite is. Man alone is among the material beings person, he alone having a rational nature. He is the highest of the material beings, endowed with particular dignity and rights. In recent years a kind of consensus among secular scholars has emerged, which might be referred to as "personhood theory". The criteria a person must have in personhood theory are one or more of the following: # Consciousness, # The ability to steer one's attention and action purposively, # Self-awareness, self-bonded to objectivities (existing independently of the subject's perception of it), # Self as longitudinal thematic identity, one's biographic identity. Neo-Kantian philosophers over the last two decades have emphasized that conscious awareness requires both: # The sensorial capacity to access an environment (and one's own body) in a way that offers the basic qualitative content for subjective experience. # The intellectual capacity to conceptually interpret sensorial content as representing some thing to oneself. Both of these capacities are required for a subject of experience, action, thought, or self-reflection to exist, at least in the physically embodied, world-accessing manner of humans (and presumably other intelligent animals). As Kant wrote: Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. (Critique of Pure Reason, A 51 = B 75). For those who consider an embodied capacity for subjectivity as necessary for personhood, these abstract constraints are quite relevant to the personhood theory debate. Advocates of alternative positions, such as a biological species or potentiality criterion, would instead need to provide arguments against embodied subjectivity as a basis for personhood. For example, one might argue that property claims are made by immaterial minds on immature material bodies, though any claim as to the nature of such minds would be necessarily speculative and would typically involve an argument for Cartesian substance dualism (see "mind-body problem").

Implications of the personhood debate

Personhood theory has become a pivotal issue in the interdisciplinary field of bioethics. While historically most humans did not enjoy full legal protection as "persons" (women, children, non-landowners, minorities, slaves, etc.), from the late 18th through the late 20th century being born as a member of the human species gradually became secular grounds for an appeal for basic rights of liberty, freedom from persecution, and humanitarian care. Since modern movements emerged to oppose animal cruelty (and advocate vegetarian or vegan lifestyles) and theorists like Turing have recognized the possibility of artificial minds with human-level competence, the identification of personhood protections exclusively with human species membership has been challenged. On the other hand, some proponents of "human exceptionism" (also referred to as "speciesism") have countered that we must institute a strict demarcation of personhood based on species membership in order to avoid the horrors of genocide (based on propaganda dehumanizing one or more ethnicities) or the injustices of forced sterilization (as occurred in the U.S. to people with low I.Q. scores and prisoners). While the former advocates tend to be comfortable constraining personhood status within the human species based on basic capacities (e.g. excluding human stem cells, fetuses, and bodies that cannot recover awareness), the latter often wish to include all these forms of human bodies even if they have never had awareness (which some would call "pre-persons") or had awareness, but could never have awareness again due to massive and irrecoverable brain damage (some would call these "post-persons"). The Vatican has recently been advancing a human exceptionist understanding of personhood theory, while other communities such as Christian Evangelicals in the U.S. have sometimes rejected personhood theory as biased against human exeptionism. Of course, many religious communities (of many traditions) find the more politically "progressive" versions of personhood theory perfectly compatible with their faith, as do the majority of modern Humanists. The theoretical landscape of personhood theory has been altered recently by controversy in the bioethics community concerning an emerging community of scholars, researchers and activists identifying with an explicitly Transhumanist position, which supports morphological freedom even if some people change so much as to no longer be considered members of the human species (whatever standard is used for this determination). Francis Fukuyama first brought the transhumanist philosophy to the attention of the bioethics community in 2002 with his critical book, Our Posthuman Future, in which he presents a bioconservative view.

Individual rights and responsibility

Closely related to the debate on the definition of personhood is the relationship between persons, individual rights, and ethical responsibility. Many philosophers would agree that all and only persons are expected to be ethically responsible, and that all persons deserve a varying degree of individual rights (see human rights). There is less consensus on whether only persons deserve individual rights and whether persons deserve greater individual rights than non-persons. The rights of non-person animals are an example of contention on this issue (see animal rights).

Corporations as persons

See also legal entity (artificial person) and natural person Largely separate from the discussion of "real" persons are considerations regarding artificial persons such as corporations and states. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company the United States Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is considered a person for many legal purposes. Many question the wisdom of this; the philosopher John Ralston Saul said, "If you are a person before the law and Exxon or Ford is also a person, it is clear that the concept of democratic legitimacy lying with the individual has been mortally wounded." It must be emphasized that corporate personhood is a legal fiction -- in other terms, a convenient assumption adopted for practical reasons that is not necessarily accepted as true (see also the documentary film The Corporation).

References

- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- [http://www.iep.utm.edu/ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
- Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence, Clinical Review August 24, 2005 Category:Humans Category:Personal life Category:Philosophical terminology

Relations

- In mathematics, a relation is a generalization of arithmetic relations, such as "=" and "<", which occur in statements, such as "5 < 6" or "2 + 2 = 4". See relation (mathematics), binary relation (of set theory and logic) and relational algebra.
- In relational modeling, a relation is a set of tuples, otherwise known as a table.
- In logic and philosophy, a relation is a two-argument property or predicate. Category:Data modeling

Governance

Governance comprises the processes and systems by which an organization or a society operates. Frequently, people establish a government to administer these processes and systems. English-speakers sometimes erroneously confuse the term governance with the term government. One should distinguish the concept of governance from its associated concept, politics. Politics involves processes by which a group of people with initially divergent opinions or interests reach collective decisions generally regarded as binding on the group, and enforced as common policy. Governance, on the other hand, conveys the administrative and process-oriented elements of governing rather than its antagonistic ones. Corporate organizations often use the word governance to describe the manner in which boards or their like direct a corporation, and laws and customs applying to that direction. The term governance also occurs in industry - especially in the information technology (IT) sector -- to describe the processes to follow in a successful department, team or project. A fair governance implies that these mechanisms function in a way that allows the executives (the "agents") to respect the rights and interests of the stakeholders (the "principals"), in a spirit of democracy. Global governance refers to a system-wide structure that both allows and constrains the behavior of actors in interdependent relationships in the absence of an overarching political authority. The global international system offers the best example of this.

Corporate governance

See the main article at corporate governance. The fundamental concerns of corporate governance include:- :
- ensuring that conditions apply whereby a firm's directors and managers act in the interests of the firm and of its shareholders and even of its workers :
- ensuring the means exist to hold managers accountable to investors and employees for the use of assets Corporate governance specifies the relationships between, and the distribution of rights and responsibilities among, the main groups of participants:- :
- the board of directors :
- the managers (if any) :
- the workers :
- the shareholders or owners :
- the regulators :
- the customers :
- the community (people affected by the actions of the organisation) :
- the suppliers The individuals within the above groups transact with the firm for their own individual purposes, so as the entire group can achieve more mutual benefit than any individual can alone. For instance, directors, workers and management receive salaries, benefits and reputation; whilst shareholders receive capital return. Customers receive goods and services; and suppliers receive compensation for their goods or services. In return, these individuals provide the time, labour, expertise, capital, goods, services, consent, etc required for the organisation to pursue its purpose. The edifice of corporate governance includes:- :
- the national/regional laws governing the formation of corporate bodies :
- the bylaws established by the corporate body itself :
- the organisational structure of the corporate body Corporate governance aims to: :
- align the actions of the individual parts of an organisation toward aggregate mutual benefit :
- provide the means by which each individual part of the organisation can trust that the other parts each make their contribution to the mutual benefit of the organisation and that none gain unfairly at the expense of others :
- provide a means by which information can quickly flow between the various stakeholders to ensure that the changing nature of both the stakeholder needs and desires and the environment in which the organisation operates get effectively factored into decision processes

Project governance

The term governance as used in industry (especially in the information technology (IT) sector) describes the processes that need to exist for a successful project. A project governance will: :
- Outline the relationships between all internal and external groups involved in the project :
- Describe the proper flow of information regarding the project to all stakeholders :
- Ensure the appropriate review of issues encountered within each project :
- Ensure that required approvals and direction for the project is obtained at each appropriate stage of the project. Important specific elements of good project governance include: :
- A compelling business case, stating the objects of the project and specifying the in-scope and out-of-scope aspects :
- A mechanism to assess the compliance of the completed project to its original objectives :
- identifying all stakeholders with an interest in the project :
- A defined method of communication to each stakeholder :
- A set of business-level requirements as agreed by all stakeholders :
- An agreed specification for the project deliverables :
- The appointment of a project manager :
- Clear assignment of project roles and responsibilities :
- A current, published project plan that spans all project stages from project initiation through development to the transition to operations. :
- A system of accurate upward status- and progress-reporting including time records. :
- A central document repository for the project :
- A centrally-held glossary of project terms :
- A process for the management and resolution of issues that arise during the project :
- A process for the recording and communication of risks identified during the project :
- A standard for quality review of the key governance documents and of the project deliverables.

Global governance

:see the main article at Global governance for a more detailed explanation. In contrast to the traditional meaning of governance some authors like James Rosenau have used "global governance" to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority. The best example of this in the international system or relationships between independant states. The term can however be applied wherever a group of free equals need to form a regular relationship.

External links

- [http://topics.developmentgateway.org/governance Development Gateway Governance Community]
- [http://www.encycogov.com The Encyclopaedia about Corporate Governance]
- [http://www.digite.com/resources/download_whitepaper.htm?resources/it_governance.pdf A Whitepaper on IT Governance]
- [http://mcdanielassoc.com/AboutCIG.html The Inspector General - A Governance Legacy] Category:Society Category:Industries

Government

A government is the body that has the power to make and enforce laws within an organization or group. In its broadest sense, "to govern" means to administer or supervise, whether over an area of land, a set group of people, or a collection of assets. The word government is derived the Greek Κυβερνήτης (kubernites), which means "steersman", "governor", "pilot" or "rudder".

Definitions

One approach is to define government as the decision-making arm of the state, and define the latter on the basis of the control it has over violence and the use of force within its territory. Specifically, the state (and by extension the government) has been considered by some to be the entity that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. This view has been taken by the political economist Max Weber and subsequent political philosophers. The exact meaning of it depends on what is understood by “legitimate”. If we use the term in an ethical sense, then this definition would suggest that an organisation might be considered a state by its supporters but not by its detractors. An alternative definition is to take "legitimate" violence to be simply that which has active or tacit acceptance by the vast majority of the population. In this view, the presence of insurrection or civil war against an entity would jeopardise its claim to be a state, provided the insurrection enjoyed significant popular support. Similarly, an entity that shared military or police power with independent militias and bandits could be considered to have a monopoly on “legitimate” violence but to be failing to enforce it, reducing its claim to statehood. In practice, such situations are often described as "failed states". Government can also be defined as the political means of creating and enforcing laws; typically via a bureaucratic hierarchy. Under this definition, a purely despotic organization which controls a territory without defining laws would not be considered a government. Another alternative is to define a government as an organisation that attempts to maintain control of a territory, where "control" involves activities such as collecting taxes, controlling entry and exit to the state, preventing encroachment of territory by neighbouring states and preventing the establishment of alternative governments within the country. In Commonwealth English, the word "Government" can also be used to refer only to the executive branch, in this context being a synonym for the word "administration" in American English (e.g. the Blair Government, the Bush Administration). In countries using the Westminster system, the Government (or party in Government) will also usually control the legislature. The French use of the word gouvernement covers both meanings, whereas Canadian French generally uses it to mean the executive branch. The German word Regierung refers only to government as the executive branch; the wider meaning of the word, government as a system, can be translated as Staatsgewalt.

Forms of government

Various forms of government have been implemented. A government in a developed state is likely to have various sub-organisations known as offices, departments, or agencies, which are headed by politically appointed officials, often called ministers or secretaries. Ministers may in theory act as advisors to the head of state, but in practice have a certain amount of direct power in specific areas. In most modern democracies, the elected legislative assembly has the power to dismiss the government, but in those states that have a separate head of government and head of state, the head of state generally has great latitude in appointing a new one.

Theories

There are a wide range of theories about the reasons for establishing governments. The four major ones are briefly described below. Note that they do not always fully oppose each other - it is possible for a person to subscribe to a combination of ideas from two or more of these theories.

Greed and oppression

Many political philosophies that are opposed to the existence of a government (such as Anarchism, and to a lesser extent Marxism), as well as others, emphasize the historical roots of governments - the fact that governments, along with private property, originated from the authority of warlords and petty despots who took, by force, certain patches of land as their own (and began exercising authority over the people living on that land). Thus, it is argued that governments exist to enforce the will of the strong and oppress the weak.

Order and tradition

The various forms of conservatism, by contrast, generally see the government as a positive force that brings order out of chaos, establishes laws to end the "war of all against all", encourages moral virtue while punishing vice, and respects tradition. Sometimes, in this view, the government is seen as something ordained by a higher power, as in the divine right of kings, which human beings have a duty to obey.

Natural rights

Natural rights are the basis for the theory of government shared by most branches of liberalism (including libertarianism). In this view, human beings are born with certain natural rights, and governments are established strictly for the purpose of protecting those rights. What the natural rights actually are is a matter of dispute among liberals; indeed, each branch of liberalism has its own set of rights that it considers to be natural, and these rights are sometimes mutually exclusive with the rights supported by other liberals.

Social contract

One of the most influential theories of government in the past two hundred years has been the social contract, on which modern democracy and most forms of socialism are founded. The social contract theory holds that governments are created by the people in order to provide for collective needs (such as safety from crime) that cannot be properly satisfied using purely individual means. Governments thus exist for the purpose of serving the needs and wishes of the people, and their relationship with the people is clearly stipulated in a "social contract" (a constitution and a set of laws) which both the government and the people must abide by. If a majority is unhappy, it may change the social contract. If a minority is unhappy, it may persuade the majority to change the contract, or it may opt out of it by emigration or secession.

Operations

Governments concern themselves with regulating and administering many areas of human activity, such as trade, education, medicine, entertainment, and war.

Enforcement of power

Governments use a variety of methods to maintain the established order, such as police and military forces, (particularly under despotism, see also police state), making agreements with other states, and maintaining support within the state. Typical methods of maintaining support and legitimacy include providing the infrastructure for administration, justice, transport, communication, social welfare etc., claiming support from deities, providing benefits to elites, holding elections for important posts within the state, limiting the power of the state through laws and constitutions (see also Bill of Rights) and appealing to nationalism. Different political ideologies hold different ideas on what the government should or should not do.

Territory

The modern standard unit of territory is a country. In addition to the meaning used above, the word state can refer either to a government or to its territory. Within a territory, subnational entities may have local governments which do not have the full power of a national government (for example, they will generally lack the authority to declare war or carry out diplomatic negotiations).

Scale of government

Main articles: government ownership, government spending The scale to which government should exist and operate in the world is a matter of debate. Government spending in developed countries varies considerably but generally makes up between about 30% and 70% of their GDP.

State

:This article discusses states as sovereign political entities; for other meanings, see state (disambiguation). A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. Recognition of the state's claim to independence by other states, enabling it to enter into international agreements, is often important to the establishment of its statehood, although some theories do not make this a requirement - for instance, the Montevideo Convention. The "state" can also be defined in terms of domestic conditions, specifically, as conceptualized by Max Weber, "a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." [http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/xweb.htm] The exact meaning of this definition depends on what is understood by "legitimate". For more information see government.

Introduction

The word "state" in contemporary parlance often means the "Westphalian state", in reference to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. In this sense, the modern state is an entity that enjoys extensive autonomy in its domestic economic and social policy, largely free from interference from other states and powers. A number of modern commentators have claimed that we are experiencing the decline of the Westphalian state as the principal actor of the international system, pointing to economic, cultural, political, and technological changes in the world, such as globalization and the emergence of regional and supernational groupings such as the European Union. The term "state" is also used to describe subnational territorial divisions within a federal system, as in the case of the United States of America. See state (law) and state (non-sovereign). In common speech, the terms country, nation and state are casually used as synonyms, but in a more strict usage they are distinguished:
- country is the geographical area.
- nation designates a people (however, national and international both confusingly refer as well to matters pertaining to what are strictly states, as in "national capital", "international law").
- state refers to the government, and an entity in international law. Currently, the entire land surface of the Earth is divided among the territories of the roughly two hundred states now existing, with the special case of Antarctica, a variety of disputed territories, and a number of areas where state power exists in theory, but not in practice (the most significant of these being Somalia and Iraq).

Etymology

The word "state" originates from the medieval state or throne upon which the head of state (usually a monarch) would sit. By process of metonymy, the word state became used to refer to both the head of state and the power entity he represented (though the former meaning has fallen out of use). A similar association of terms can today be seen in the practice of referring to government buildings as having authority, for example "The White House today released a press statement..."

Formation of the state

The birth of the state, in the broadest sense of the word, coincides with the rise of civilization. For most of the existence of the human species, people lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. That lifestyle began to change with the invention of agriculture around the 9th millennium BC. The practice of agriculture made it necessary for human beings to build permanent settlements and spend most of their lives in close proximity to the land they cultivated. Thus, control over land became an issue for the first time. To express that control, various forms of property rights developed, with people claiming different kinds of rights over various areas of land. Disagreements over the nature and extent of such claims of ownership degenerated into violence and the first "wars". In some parts of the world, notably Mesopotamia and the Nile valley, natural conditions favoured the concentration of land ownership in few hands. Eventually, a small group of people found themselves owning the land on which many other people worked for a living. This control over the land meant control over the people whose livelihoods depended on the land; thus, the first primitive states arose. These states were usually despotic and unstable, with the ruler(s) holding absolute power over their subjects until some other ruler(s) displaced them. Since there were no laws and no infrastructure, and since power was exercised arbitrarily, some political theorists and historians do not consider such early forms of despotic rule to have been states in the proper sense of the word; they are sometimes called proto-states. One of the earliest known sets of laws, the Code of Hammurabi, has been dated to ca. 1700 BC. It was around this time that the concept of law - one of the foundations of the modern state - began to appear. But the rulers of the Ancient Near East had a long tradition of holding absolute power and claiming the status of god-kings (see hydraulic despotism). Thus, laws limiting the power of monarchs did not develop very far in that region. The city-states of Ancient Greece were the first to establish states whose powers were clearly defined in laws (even if the laws themselves could usually be changed quite easily). Also, notably, the idea of democracy was born in ancient Athens (see Athenian democracy). Many institutions of the modern state (especially in Western Europe and areas once dominated by Western-European empires) can trace their origins back to Ancient Rome, which inherited the political traditions of the Greeks and developed them further (particularly the rule of law, albeit in incomplete form). However, the Roman Republic gave way to the Roman Empire - which, in turn, created the concept of universal empire: the idea that the entire world was (or should be) under the authority of one single legitimate state. The fall of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations changed the character of European politics. The "barbarian" (i.e., non-Roman) kingdoms and chieftains that followed the Roman Empire were ephemeral and transitory and bore little resemblance to the modern state. Even the kingdom of Charlemagne was fleeting; without the tradition of primogeniture, it dissolved into three smaller kingdoms with the Treaty of Verdun in 843. These kingdoms were treated more as land holdings by the royalty that ruled them. Once again, the state became little more than an expression of the ruler's private ownership of a certain area of land. The lack of a real successor to the Roman Empire in Western Europe created a power vacuum. The kingdoms of Western Europe were besieged by invaders on the frontiers - first, the Muslim invasions from the south, then a series of new migrations from the east and finally the Viking invasions from the north. At the same time, the various kingdoms (and smaller political units) were often involved in wars with each other over territory and succession. The solution that evolved out of these affairs was decidedly opposed to the system of independent states and temporary alliances that dominate the modern international system. Religion, which had rarely been a factor in the power calculations of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, became the cornerstone of an extremely loose pan-European defensive bloc under the aegis of the Catholic Church. This system produced an extensive framework of institutions - sometimes called "feudalism" - that regulated internal conflict and enabled Western Europe to confront exterior threats, even while no individual secular entity was truly independent in the sense of the modern state. This system asserted itself abroad in the form of the Crusades as the Middle Ages progressed. In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII stated that the political powers of Christendom exercised their prerogatives "at the command and sufferance of the priest." This limited the power of kings, who were obliged to pledge their ultimate allegiance to the Pope. The Holy Roman Empire, one of the strongest medieval authorities, emerged as a competitor to Papal power under Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who invaded Italy to press his claims to secular authority in the mid-12th century. The weakening of the papacy was a major theme of the Middle Ages; the Western Schism in the later 14th century, a dispute over papal succession, was exploited by secular authorities and contributed to their growing power. The emergence of large, stable land holdings by single dynasties - for instance, France and Castile - enabled them to take a more active and independent role than their traditionally subsidiary role in the earlier middle ages. This shift to more independent, more secular actors would become a major point of controversy in Early Modern Europe. The great dynasties of Europe dramatically consolidated power by the beginning of the 16th century; additionally, the external threats to Europe had considerably lessened. The Reformation was to have a powerful impact on the structure of European politics; the dispute was not only theological, but also threatened the very fabric of the ancient political institutions of feudalism. The bloody conflicts that followed, blending the religious and political, pitted those who asserted the authority of the Pope (and in Germany, the Holy Roman Emperor) against those who asserted the authority of secular authorities and their sovereign ability to make internal policy, particularly when that policy reflected religious affiliation, Roman Catholic or Protestant. These conflicts culminated in the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century. In 1648, the powers of Europe signed the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the religious violence for purely political motives and the Church was stripped of temporal power - even though religion continued to play a political role as the foundation of the divine right of kings. The principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" established at Westphalia and previously in the Peace of Augsburg set a precedent of noninterference in other states' internal affairs that was key in the evolution of the modern state. In Germany, the office of the Holy Roman Emperor, the most prominent symbol of lingering institutions of feudalism, was emasculated as a secular authority in favor of the constituent elements of the Holy Roman Empire. The modern state was born. The state continued to develop as monarchs brought nobles and free towns into line and amassed spectacular resources and prestige. The growing numbers of civil servants eventually became known as the bureaucracy after the elevation of the Republican ideal. Nearly a century and a half after the Peace of Westphalia, the state became fully modern through the French Revolution. Claiming 'national will' as its justification, Napoleon and the Grande Armee of France swept over Europe. In response, conquered and neighboring principalities discarded their old systems and adopted the new model of the nation state. The nation state has remained the dominant political entity all over the world ever since, even though the many ideologies of the 19th and 20th century have created numerous different ways of running the affairs of nation states, as well as numerous different forms of internal and external organization (see political system and economic system).

International point of view

The legal criteria for statehood are not obvious. A document that is often quoted on the matter is the Montevideo Convention from 1933, the first article of which states: :The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Also, in article 3 it very clearly states that statehood is independent of recognition by other states. This is the declarative theory of statehood. While the Montevideo is a regional American convention and has no legal effect outside the Americas, some have nonetheless seen it as an accurate statement of customary international law. On the other hand, article 3 of the convention is attacked by the advocates of the constitutive theory of statehood, where a state exists only insofar as it is recognized by other states. Which theory is correct is a controversial issue in international law. An example in practice was the collapse of central government in Somalia in the early 1990s: the Montevideo convention would imply that the state of Somalia no longer existed, and the subsequently declared republic of Somaliland (comprising part of the so-called "former" Somalia) may meet the criteria for statehood. However the self-declared republic has not achieved recognition by other states. Article 1 of the convention is also attacked by those who claim that it fails to take into account the complicated situations of military occupation, territorial cession, and governments in exile. Richard W. Hartzell is a leading proponent of this view, and stresses that the four criteria of article 1 need to be expanded to nine. See [http://www.taiwanadvice.com/conventions/montconv.htm The Montevideo Convention and Military Occupation].

The domestic point of view

Looked at from the point of view of an individual nation, the state is a centralized organization of the whole country. Those studying this dimension emphasize the relationship between the state and its people. The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that in order to avoid a multi-sided civil war, in which life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", individuals must necessarily surrender many of their "natural rights" -- including that of attacking each other -- to the "Leviathan", a unified and centralized state. In this tradition, Max Weber and Norbert Elias defined the state as an organization of people that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a particular geographic area. Also in this tradition, the state differs from the "government": the latter refers to the group of people who make decisions for the state. For Weber, this was an "ideal type", or model, or pure case of the state. Many institutions that have been called "states" do not live up to this definition. For example, in countries such as Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the central state has so far not succeeded in monopolizing the legitimate use of force, and must compete with various local warlords. These cases are sometimes called "failed states". One of the most basic characteristics of a modern state is regulation of property rights, investment, trade and the commodity markets (in food, fuel, etc.) typically using its own currency. Although many states (by their own decision) increasingly cede these powers to trade bloc entities, e.g. North American Free Trade Agreement, European Union, it is always controversial to do so, and opens the question of whether these blocs are in fact simply larger states. The study of political economy, which evolved into the modern study of economics, deals with these specific questions in more detail. However, although states are often influenced in their decisions and no longer hold an absolute jurisdiction over their internal affairs, they are nonetheless much stronger in relation to international organizations or to other states than lower (substate) political subdivisions normally are. But the trend at the moment is for the power of superstate levels of governance to increase, and there is no sign of this increase abating. Many (especially those who favour constitutional theories of international law) therefore reject as outdated the idea of sovereignty, and view the state as just the chief political subdivision of the planet.

Philosophies of the state

Different political philosophies have distinct opinions concerning the state as a domestic organization. In the modern era, these philosophies emerged with the rise of capitalism, which coincided with the (re)emergence of the state as a separate and centralized sector of society. Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau pondered issues concerning the ideal and actual roles of the state. Recent philosophers like John Rawls and Robert Nozick were more concerned with distributive justice and the morality of exercising political power. There are four theories about the origin (and indirectly the justification) of the state. They are:
- Supernatural or natural authority - In this view, the state is either ordained by a higher power (such as God for the "Divine right of kings") or arises naturally out of a presumed human need for order and authority.
- Natural rights - According to this theory, human beings have certain rights that are "natural" (the implications of this word may vary), and establish states for the protection of those rights.
- Social contract - This idea holds that the state is established by the people (i.e. through the consent of the governed) in order to provide for various collective needs that cannot be satisfied through individual efforts, such as national defense, public roads, education, "the general welfare", etc.
- Conflict - Perhaps the simplest of the theories, it holds that the state did not arise out of any conscious decision, but merely as the result of violent conflict. Various groups of people fought each other for control over land or other resources, and the winning side imposed its domination on the losing side. These four theories can accommodate the full spectrum of political views. In practice, most people (and most political philosophies) subscribe to a combination of two or more of the above theories - arguing, for example, that different states have different origins. The conflict theory, in particular, is often combined with one of the other three in order to separate the illegitimate states (those created through conflict and subjugation) from the legitimate ones. There are at least five major philosophies of the state today, the last four of which correspond to specific political ideologies: contractarianism, liberalism, Marxism, conservatism, and anarchism. Contractarianism, as the name implies, is based on the social contract theory. It is also the only major philosophy of the state that does not fall within any single political ideology - perhaps because several different ideologies have adopted it as their own. Contractarianism is the foundation of modern democracy, as well as most forms of socialism and some types of liberalism. In contractarian thinking, the state should express the public interest, the interests of the whole society, and reconcile it with the separate interests of individuals. The state provides public goods and other kinds of collective consumption, while preventing individuals from free-riding (taking advantage of collective consumption without paying) by forcing them to pay taxes. Liberalism, in the classical sense, is based mainly on the natural rights theory. In this view, some or even all "rights" exist naturally and are not created by the state. For example, John Locke believed that individual property rights existed prior to the creation of the state, while the state's main job should be to preserve those rights. Historically, liberals have been less concerned with determining what the state should do and far more interested in stipulating what the state shouldn't do. The liberal philosophy of the state holds that the powers of any state are restricted by natural rights that exist independently of the human mind and overrule any social contract. However, there has been considerable debate among liberals as to what these natural rights actually are. Critics argue that they do not exist at all, since they are not evident from any observations of nature. On the other hand, there are also liberals who subscribe to the contractarian theory. In most cases, they fall on the left wing of liberalism, being social liberals ("New Deal" liberals; see American liberalism) and arguing for a welfare state. They stand in opposition to adherents of the natural rights theory, who tend to be libertarians, falling on the right wing of liberalism and arguing for a "minimal" state. The Marxist philosophy of the state is based on the conflict theory - specifically, on the idea of class conflict. In this view, the primary role of the state in practice is to enforce the existing system of unequal property and personal rights, class domination, and exploitation. The state also mediates in all types of social conflicts, and supplies necessary social-infrastructural conditions for society as a whole. Under such systems as feudalism, the lords used their own military force to exploit their vassals. Under capitalism, on the other hand, the use of force is centralized in a specialized organization which protects the capitalists' class monopoly of ownership of the means of production, allowing the exploitation of those without such ownership. In modern Marxian theory, such class domination can coincide with other forms of domination (such as patriarchy and ethnic hierarchies). Further, in Marxist theory, classes and other forms of exploitation should be abolished by establishing a socialist system, to be followed later by a communist one. Communism, the final goal, is a classless, propertyless and stateless society; however, socialism still preserves personal property and a (democratic) state. Thus, Marxism is opposed to the state (which it views as illegitimate, in accordance with the conflict theory), but does not wish to abolish the state immediately. As such, there is some overlap between Marxism and contractarianism: the socialist state that Marxists wish to establish as their short-term goal is to be based on a form of social contract. This state ought subsequently to slowly "wither away" as the representative democracy of socialism gradually transforms into the direct democracy of communism. Once the process is complete, the communist social order has been achieved and the state no longer exists as an entity separate from the people. In conservative thinking, which is based on the theory of (super)natural authority, the existing structure of traditions and hierarchies (of class, patriarchy, ethnic dominance, etc.) is seen as benefiting society overall. Thus, in a way, conservatives accept some ideas from both the Marxist and the liberal schools of thought, but view them in a different light: the state forces people to accept class and other kinds of domination, but this is seen as being for their own good. This perspective posits that, in general, current traditions only exist because they have been demonstrably successful in the past. Further, as with the liberals, the state is seen as always existing and/or "natural". Many conservatives, especially in recent decades, have come out in favor of the liberal theory of natural rights. Finally, in anarchist thinking, the state is nothing but an unnecessary and exploitative segment of society. Totally rejecting the Hobbesian notion that only a state can prevent chaos, anarchists argue that the state's monopoly of violence creates chaos. They believe that if the state and its restrictions on individual freedom were abolished, people could figure out how to work together peacefully and individual creativity would be unleashed. Contrary to the Marxist perspective, the anarchists see the state as an unnecessary evil, rather than a tool to be used in the class struggle.

References

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External links

- Franz Oppenheimer; [http://www.opp.uni-wuppertal.de/oppenheimer/st/state0.htm The State. (1914/1922)]
- Franz Oppenheimer; [http://www.opp.uni-wuppertal.de/oppenheimer/fo27a.htm The Idolatry of the State. (1927)] Category:International law Category:International relations Category:Social sciences Category:Political geography ja:国家 simple:State th:รัฐ

Political system

A political system is a social system of politics and government. It is usually compared to the law system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems. There are several definitions of "political system":
- A political system is a complete set of institutions, political organizations, interest groups (such as political parties, trade unions, lobby groups), the relationships between those institutions and the political norms and rules that govern their functions (constitution, election law).
- A political system is composed of the members of a social organization (group) who are in power.
- A political system is a system that has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force and legislation.
- A political system is a systems that necessarily has two properties: a set of interdependent components and boundaries toward the environment with which it interacts.
- A political system is a concept in which theoretically regarded as a way of the government makes a policy and also to make them more organized in their administration. Commonalities between political systems: -Interdependent Parts
- citizens
- government -Boundaries
- citizenship
- territory
- Property

Source

- Almond, Gabriel A., et al. Comparative Politics Today: A World View (Seventh Edition). 2000. ISBN 032101853. Category:Political systems Category:Political terms

Comparative government

Comparative government or comparative politics is the field of political science that focuses on comparing the varying forms of government in different settings, especially the governments of different states and nations, though it may also compare governments across different periods of history. A closely related area of study is civics. =Assemblies (diets, legislatures, houses, senates, parliaments)=
- 3 institutions in policy making
- executive, legislative, bureaucratic elites legislatures aka assemblies have lasted for thousands of years
- ancient greece and roman senates
- iceland Althingi is the oldest existing assembly
- generally elected through a popular vote, approves policies, 80% of UN nations have legislative bodies

Assembly functions

- deliberate, debate, vote on specific public policies
- control budgets, appointment powers, initiates legislation such as US Congress or legitimize decisions made by others such as China’s People’s Congress
- Legislature’s reputation is a function of government perception, not policy influence
- Serve as sites for elite recruitment and interests to be articulated and aggregated
- Contributes to political discourse through floor debates

Assembly structure

- unicameral or bicameral (one house or two)
- different powers in each house
- estates developed in Europe, such as France’s 3 estates (nobles, clergy, other classes)
- England has hereditary house of lords and the house of commons
- Democracies and authoritarian governments typically have two chambers
- One chamber is representative of the population (ie US house of rep)
- Other based on geographic units (ie senate)
- Thus two chambers can check and balance each other as both their approvals are often required for major policy initiatives
- in most bicameral legislatures, there is a dominate and subordinate chamber
- usually the policy making chamber is more important and is where the cabinet is usually chosen from
- internally, legislatures have two types of organization
- political parties
- formal subunits (presiding officers, committees)
- the power of political parties and the subunits vary inversely
- british vote party line more often, while US congress members supposedly are more independent
- committees have internal structures to increase efficacy in dealing with the legislative workload
- have large staffs and a clear division of labor
- other governments such Britain’s rotate their staffs on committee’s thus preventing them from having an area of expertise
- American political committees are the strongest, British weaker, Japan and Germany in between =Political Executive=
- largest most complex branch of government and therefore most powerful
- most governments have chief executives who are at the top of the branch, main formulators and executors of policy
- democracies have a single chief executive or two (one ceremonial, one the real power)
- parliamentary distinction between heads of state (japanese emperor) and heads of government (Japanese prime minister)
- US, french, chinese executives are power, capable of individual decision making, rather than collective decision making
- British executive is more collective, except in times of war/emergency
- executive branch composed of elected or appointed members (elected president, appointed heads of bureaucracies)
- Monarchies are rare in the 20th century but still exist
- Powerful kings in Saudi Arabia but mostly ceremonial ones in Europe (British Royal Family, Scandinavian kings, low countries monarchs)
- Some monarchs live a pomp and circumstance lifestyle, others are more normal
- presidents in parliamentary governments serve largely a symbolic role, US president combines symbolism with real political power

The Cabinet

- powerful policy making body
- contains leaders of major government departments (ie ministers or secretaries of state)
- appointed by head of government
- in presidential systems, presidential prerogative to select cabinet members
- in parliamentary systems, cabinets need to maintain confidence of parliament, therefore cabinet composition is dependant on the parliamentary elections
- in a multiparty election, if no party has an outright majority, cabinet’s are often made up of a coalition from many different parties, that may or may not have agreed to form a coalition cabinet before or after the election took place
- the bargaining for cabinet composition therefore can create minority rule situations and political instability

Functions of the Executive

- initiates policy, can stop it with veto powers in some presidential systems
- in parliamentary systems, a veto power is less likely
- oversees policy implementation and has a major role in foreign policy (Bush I and II in Iraq, Thatcher in Falkland island crisis)
- political ministers and executives prevent bureaucracies from sliding to inefficiency and inertia, where they just implement past policies, without innovation or improvement
- when there’s a separation of powers, the executive is limited if an opposition party controls the legislature
- executives are psychologically the most important in shaping the perception of government and the nation in the minds of young people as well
- has power to make key appointments in cabinet, politburo, judges, civil servants, ambassadors and military officers
- pivotal role in communication and mobilizing support or opposition for and to certain policy initiatives

External Links

- [http://home.millsaps.edu/~omobai/LEC-A130.HTM What is comparative politics?] Category:Politics

List of forms of government

This article lists forms of government and political systems, according to a series of different ways of categorising them. The systems listed are of course not mutually exclusive, and often have overlappping definitions (for example autocracy, despotism, totalitarism, monarchy and tyranny).

Alphabetical list with hierarchy

The following list groups major political systems (recognized by political science) in alphabetical order. The various subtype political systems are listed below the main system of government.
- Anarchism (perhaps better defined as a system of non-hierarchical government)
- Anarcho-communism
- Anarcho-capitalism
- Eco-anarchism
- Anarcho-socialism
- Authoritarianism
- Police state
- Corporate police state
- Totalitarianism
- Single-party state
- Communist states (their relationship with the communist movement is disputed)
- Fascism
- Autocracy
- Absolutism
- Despotism
- Enlightened Despotism, and the modern equivalent Benevolent Dictatorship
- Dictatorship (not all dictatorships are autocracies)
- Military Junta
- Monarchy
- Absolute monarchy
- Constitutional monarchy
- Despotate
- Duchy
- Grand Duchy
- Elective monarchy
- Emirate
- Hereditary monarchy
- Popular monarchy
- Principality
- New Monarchs
- Self-proclaimed monarchy
- Viceroyalty
- Patriarchy
- Patrimonalism
- Tyranny
- Democracy
- Deliberative democracy
- Direct democracy
- Participatory democracy
- Representative democracy
- Westminster system
- Parliamentary system
- Consensus government
- Presidential system (Congressional system)
- Semi-presidential system
- Social democracy (also a political movement)
- Soviet democracy
- Oligarchy (note: the various oligarchies have never totally identified themselves as such)
- Aristocracy
- Corporatism
- Gerontocracy
- Kleptocracy
- Meritocracy
- Plutocracy
- Technocracy
- Republic
- Federal Republic
- Constitutional Republic
- Commonwealth
- Socialist republic
- Theocracy (Hierocracy)
- Caliphate
- Holy See
- Islamic Republic
- Sultanate
- Tribalism

By approach to regional autonomy

This list focuses on differing approaches that political systems take to the distribution of sovereignty, and the autonomy of regions within the state.
- Sovereignty located exclusively at the centre
- Empire
- Unitary state
- Sovereignty located at the centre and in peripheral areas
- Federation and Federal republic
- Confederation
- Supranational union

By political franchise

This list shows a division based on differences in political franchise (suffrage).
- rule by all
- anarchy
- rule by majority
- democracy
- rule by minority
- oligarchy
- rule by one
- autocracy

According to Weber's tripartite classification of authority

Max Weber in his tripartite classification of authority distinguished three ideal types of political leadership, domination and authority:
- charismatic domination (familial and religious)
- traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonalism, feudalism)
- legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy)

According to an etymologist approach

Finally, the list below present an etymologist's approach to forms of government: the following are real, possible or imaginary forms of government, all made different by the prefix and suffix combination. Nearly all use one of two suffixes: -archy meaning "leadership" (eg. anarchy - no leadership), and -cracy suffix from Greek "kratos" and means "strength" and "power" (e.g., democracy - people's power). The major exception is the Republic, which is derived from the Latin res publicae, which means "the public matter" or, more literally, "the thing of the people", i.e. socio-political affairs. For various extant terms, an example or annotation is juxtaposed.
- adhocracy government in an unstructured fashion; an unstructured organization
- anarchy absence of government
- andrarchy/androcracy government by men
- aristocracy government by the nobility (aristo="the best")
- autarchy government by an absolute ruler
- autocracy government by one individual, autarchy
- bureaucracy government by civil servants; also the civil servants themselves
- confederacy a union of sovereign states
- corpocracy government by corporations (industry)
- demarchy government by the people by lot
- democracy government by the people, either direct (through referendum or popular assembly) or via elections (representative form)
- ethnocracy government by a particular ethnic group
- geniocracy government by those of a high average intelligence
- gerontocracy government by the aged - see the Spartan gerousia
- gynarchy government by women
- gynocracy government by women; gynarchy
- hierarchy government by a ranked body; government by priests
- hierocracy government by priests or religious ministers
- kakistocracy government by the worst
- kleptocracy government by thieves - not an existing form, but a negative appreciation of any regime where corruption is excessive
- klerostocracy government by all, by sortition (random selection, lot)
- kritarchy
- krytocracy government by judges
- matriarchy government by women or mothers
- meritocracy government by those with merit
- minarchy government with the smallest possible bureaucracy or size
- monarchy government by one individual
- ochlocracy government by mobs
- oligarchy government by the few; sometimes specified after their fixed number :
- dyarchy government by two, as in a dual monarchy
- heptarchy government by seven people
- triumvirate government by three people
- tetrarchy government by four people
- panarchy universal rule or dominion
- particracy government by political parties
- patriarchy government by fathers - the original Roman Senate, styling itself Patres ('fathers'), came close; usually just said of rule by men
- plantocracy government by plantation owners
- plutocracy government by the wealthy
- polyarchy government by many people, a vague antonym to monarchy and oligarchy
- pornocracy government by prostitutes
- republic government by professional politicians elected by the populace
- sociocracy government by equal individuals, based on consent
- stratocracy government by the armed forces - usually termed military dictatorship or junta
- synarchy joint sovereignty, just as the condominium of Andorra
- technocracy government by technical experts
- thalassocracy sovereignty of the seas
- theocracy government by a deity through clergy or by religious law
- timocracy government by the propertied class

Representative democracy

Representative democracy is a form of democracy and theory of civics in which voters choose (in free, secret, multi-party elections) representatives to act in their interests, but not as their proxies—i.e., not necessarily according to their voters' wishes, but with enough authority to exercise initiative in the face of changing circumstances. Modern liberal democracies are important examples of representative democracy. In the United States the term is often synonymous with "republic." Another form of representative democracy involves impartial selection of representatives through sortition. A representative democracy may involve more powers given to the legislators than under a constitutional monarchy or participatory democracy, so almost all constitutions provide for an independent judiciary and other measures to balance representative power:
- A representative democracy may provide for recall of elected representatives that voters become dissatisfied with.
- It may also provide for some deliberative democracy (e.g., Canadian Royal Commission) or
- direct democracy (e.g., referendum) measures. However, these are not always binding and usually require some legislative action - legal power usually remains firmly with representatives.
- Sometimes there is an "upper house" that is not directly elected, such as the Canadian Senate, which was in turn modelled on the UK House of Lords. A European medieval tradition of selecting representatives from the various estates (effectively, social classes, but not as we know them today) to advise/control monarchs led to relatively wide familiarity with representative systems. Edmund Burke in his speech to the electors of Bristol classically analysed their operation in Britain and the rights and duties of an elected representative. Representative democracy came into particular general favour in post-industrial revolution nation states where large numbers of subjects or (more recently) citizens evinced interest in politics, but where technology and population figures remained unsuited to direct democracy. Globally, in 2003, a majority of the world's people live in representative democracies (including constitutional monarchies with a strong representative branch)—the first time in history that this has been true. Representative democracy has been the most successful form of civics since absolute monarchy. Indeed, many (perhaps most) absolute monarchies were overthrown by the advocates of representative democracy, either in a revolution or through a gradual process of reform that saw the monarch lose most of his/her powers. Normally each representative is elected by, and responsible to, a particular subset of the total electorate: this is called his or her constituency. Most modern representative democracies incorporate elements of direct democracy: for example Switzerland always had a strong tradition in this sense. For other countries the reservations against direct democracy are often still stronger. In the European Union, for example, such differences between countries became apparent in the different approval procedures for the new European constitution. In some countries the constitution could only be accepted by referendum; in other countries such referendums are not compulsory and/or not binding, while yet other countries held no referendum at all.

United States

:For alternative meanings, see the disambiguation page for US, USA, United States, or American. The United States of America is a federal democratic republic situated primarily in central North America. It comprises 50 states and one federal district, and has several territories. It is also referred to, with varying formality, as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the States, or simply and most commonly, America. The official founding date of the United States is July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of the government was profoundly changed in 1788, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The date on which each of the fifty states adopted the Constitution is typically regarded as the date that state "entered the Union" (became part of the United States). Since the mid-20th century, following World War II, the United States has emerged as a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological, and cultural affairs.

Geography and climate

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia, the Bahamas, and numerous smaller nations. It is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, in the west; the Arctic Ocean, in the northernmost areas; and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, in the eastern and southeastern areas. Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, sometimes abbreviated CONUS, and as the Lower 48. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower 48 by Canada. The archipelago of Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization. When inland water is included in the total area, only Russia and Canada are larger than the United States; if inland water is excluded, China ranks third and the U.S. ranks fourth. The United States' total area is 3,718,711 square miles (9,631,418 km²), of which land makes up 3,537,438 square miles (9,161,923 km²) and water makes up 181,273 square miles (469,495 km²). The United States' landscape is one of the most varied among those of the world's nations: among its many features are temperate forestland and rolling hills, on the east coast; mangrove, in Florida; the Great Plains, in the center of the country; the Mississippi–Missouri river system; the Great Lakes, four of the five of which are shared with Canada; the Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains; deserts and temperate coastal zones, west of the Rocky Mountains; and temperate rain forests, in the Pacific northwest. Alaska's tundra, and the volcanic, tropical islands of Hawaii add to the geographic diversity. Hawaii The climate varies along with the landscape, from tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida to tundra in Alaska and atop some of the highest mountains. Most of the North and East experience a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold win

System of government

Types of government

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References

External links

Further reading

Person

Are all persons human?

Are all humans persons?

Possible criteria for personhood

Personhood theory

Implications of the personhood debate

Individual rights and responsibility

Corporations as persons

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References

Relations

Governance

Corporate governance

Project governance

Global governance

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External links

Government

Definitions

Forms of government

Theories

Greed and oppression

Order and tradition

Natural rights

Social contract

Operations

Enforcement of power

Territory

Scale of government

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Relevant lists

State

Introduction

Etymology

Formation of the state

International point of view

The domestic point of view

Philosophies of the state

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References

External links

Political system

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Source

Comparative government

Assembly functions

Assembly structure

The Cabinet

Functions of the Executive

External Links

List of forms of government

Alphabetical list with hierarchy

By approach to regional autonomy

By political franchise

According to Weber's tripartite classification of authority

According to an etymologist approach

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Representative democracy

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United States

Geography and climate