Form Of Government

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A form of government is a 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.http://assets.cambridge.org/052184/3162/excerpt/0521843162_excerpt.pdf Kopstein and Lichbach, 2005 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.

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.
Luxembourg is a Grand Duchy.
The United Arab Emirates is a collection of Muslim states, each an emirate in their own right
Malaysia, Russia, Switzerland, and Saint Kitts & Nevis are each a federation.
Libya is a jamahiriya
There are 33 kingdoms in the world, but 18 termed as such (the other 15 are known as realms). 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 132 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 People's Republic of 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 Independence States, while the United States of America and Mexico are United States.
Brunei and Oman are Sultanates
Burma simply states that it is a Union

Attributes of government Beyond official typologies it is important to think about regime types by looking at the general attributes of the forms of government http://www.polisci.ccsu.edu/brown/regime_types.htm:

Traditional (clan or kinship) or modern (bureaucracies)

Personalistic (North Korea) or impersonal (Germany)

Totalitarianism (Nazi Germany), Authoritarian (Zimbabwe) or Democratic (Belgium)

Elections (US) or heredity (Brunei)

Direct (Mexico) or indirect elections (Electoral College in the US)

Secular (European Union) or non-secular (Iran)

Division of powers, such as executive, judicial, and legislative boxes (India) or absence of division of powers (Peru under Alberto Fujimori).

Parliamentarian (Greece), Presidential (USA) or Monarchical (UK).

Number of people in the Executive power (Switzerland has 7, France 2, US 1).

Composition of the legislative power (autocratic, unicameral, bicameral...)

Number of coalitions or party-appointed legislators in Assemblies

Federal (Argentina) or Unitary (France, China)

Rules of the electoral system:

plurality (most votes wins) - known as "First past the post" (U.K)

majoritarian (51%), including run-off elections (Argentina)

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)

unanimity - (100% votes wins) (such as for the board of directors of a company)

Type of economic system

Prevalent ideologies and cultures

Strong institutional capacity (US) or weak capacity (Iraq)

Legitimate (South Africa) or illegitimate (former communist Romania)

De facto (effective control) or De jure (nominal control) of government

Sovereign (US), semi-sovereign (Puerto Rico), or not sovereign (Chechnya)

Racial segregation (Rhodesia) or desegregation

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. In political science, it has long been a goal to create a typology or taxonomy of polities, as typologies of political systems are not obvious Lewellen, Ted C. Political Anthropology: An Introduction Third Edition. Praeger Publishers; 3rd edition (November 30, 2003). It is especially important in the political science fields of comparative politics and international relations. One important example of a book which attempts to do so is Robert Dahl's Polyarchy (Yale University Press (1971)).

One approach is to further elaborate on the nature of the characteristics found within each regime. In the example of the US 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 referendums 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 political party 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.