Systems of government
A government is an organization that rules and has authority over a
land space and the people who live there.
The idea of a government usually means that there is some formal
authority. By formal, it means there is an agreement on how to run
the area, some written laws, and a usual procedure for making an
area safe for the citizens to live in and prosper. “Formal” means that
everyone knows how things are supposed to function.
In all areas of the modern world, there is some form of government.
It is nearly always formal, but there are a few exceptions.
There are a few general categories where we can put most forms of
government of the 20th century. They are:
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Single-Person Rule
Rule by a small group
Rule by the mass of citizens
No rule or authority
1. Single-Person rule
In history, it was possible in older times for one person to have nearly
all the power in a country. That person could make rules and laws
just by speaking. Or, they would tell the government what to do and it
obeyed. A general term for a single ruler with huge power is
autocracy.
Monarchy: This is a type of government where one person holds
control based on what family he or she came from. Typically, the
leader was a man and he was usually the oldest son of the previous
leader. Monarchs have been very diverse. Some were wise,
effective, kind, and very good for their country. Others could be
mean, incompetent, stupid, genuinely insane, cruel, etc. In general,
they were simply people. And we all know not every person is cut
out to be a leader. The trouble with a monarch is that the next person
in line became the leader—even if they were very incompetent. If
you had a poor leader, you had to wait for the monarch to die for
change to happen.
Absolute Monarch: This type of king or queen claimed COMPLETE
and TOTAL control of the country. No argument with the monarch
would have been tolerated.
Enlightened Absolutism: These monarchs claimed total power, but
they said they would use their power for good purposes. They would
help the country and not be harsh to the citizens.
Titles of monarchy are different in different places. Here are some
examples of the titles of royal rulers:
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Emir
Tsar
Kaiser
King/Queen
Emperor
All of these rulers are chosen to rule because they are related to the
previous leader. Heredity is what ties them all together.
In the 1900s, numerous people held nearly single-handed power over
their countries. Dictatorship is a general term for ruling in this way.
Different dictators have ruled nations but they usually have certain
things in common.
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Dictators ruled harshly with strict rules.
Tough militaries and police punished opponents.
The dictator shared power with no one or only a small group.
The dictator and his close friends and families became rich
from running the government.
 Dictators typically tried to glorify themselves.
Other terms for dictatorships like this are tyranny and despotism.
Some of the famous dictators in the 1900s included:
 Adolf Hitler (Germany)
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Josef Stalin (Soviet Union)
Mao Zedong (China)
Vladimir Lenin (Soviet Union)
Saddam Hussein (Iraq)
Josip “Tito” Broz (Yugoslavia)
Benito Mussolini (Italy)
Francisco Franco (Spain)
Kim Jong Il (North Korea)
Pol Pot (Cambodia)
Some of the titles chosen by these leaders were clearly meant to
glorify themselves: “Supreme Leader” “Maximum Leader” “Fuhrer”
“Il Duce” “Great Leader” “Great Helmsman”
Problems with Autocracy
Autocracy has some problems that usually lead to ruin and warfare.
One problem with autocracy is that dictators frequently made
decisions to do crazy things and no one could stop them. Pol Pot
ordered all people in Cambodia to leave the cities and move to
camps in the country. Phnom Penh was a city of millions and it
became completely empty. Another example of bizarre decisionmaking was when Adolf Hitler attempted to deport and murder all the
Jews of Europe. Dictators also make bad decisions to attack their
neighbors, such as when Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of
Kuwait in 1990. Iraq was ruined when many nations of the world
joined together to smash the Iraqis out of Kuwait.
A second big problem with autocracy is how to transfer power to the
next person. Succession is when one leader or government replaces
the previous leader. Dictators and monarchs are human and they will
sooner or later die. Monarchs try to give power to the next relative,
but what if a king had no children? Dictators might make unpopular
decisions, but citizens cannot vote them out of office. Dictators can
only be killed or chased out of their countries.
2. Oligarchy (The Rule of the few)
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Oligarchies are governments in which a small, elite group in society
has power. The group can be identified in different ways. Members
of the group are all:
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From the same family (Monarchy)
Wealthy (Plutocracy)
Well educated or elite in some way (Aristocracy)
Members of the military (Junta)
Members of the same religious group (Theocracy)
Members of the same political party
Because members of oligarchies want to hold power by themselves,
they must work to keep ordinary citizens out of the system. This can
be done in various ways.
Here are some typical examples:
 The oligarchy allows people to vote and make it look like a
democracy. However, the oligarchy will fake the election
results so that they always win. Strong police and military
power suppress anyone who complains.
 The oligarchy prevents people from voting or participating in the
system. Strong police and military power suppress anyone
who complains.
 The oligarchy allows only certain trusted people to vote and
participate. These people might be chosen for their race,
religion, political beliefs, wealth, etc. Strong police and military
power suppress anyone who complains.
 The oligarchy allows many people to vote, but the oligarchy
chooses all the candidates. Strong police and military power
suppress anyone who complains.
These methods are a bit different. What is the ONE thing oligarchies
must all use to maintain control of the system?
3. Democracy (The rule of the many)
Democracy is a government in which the huge majority of people are
allowed to participate. People can participate by voting, by running
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for election, or by working for the government. Democracy is
consensus government. Consensus means agreement between
people or groups. Democracy is a desirable form of government
because it allows the most people and groups to participate.
Being a democracy depends on several things:
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Free and fair elections with competition
Government that works fairly to help all citizens
A fair and impartial legal system
A system of free expression for all political ideas
A system of media that is open to all citizens.
An extremely large portion of citizens must be free to
participate.
Partial democracies are countries that do not completely meet all the
standards. For example, for dozens of years the Republic of South
Africa had regular elections with competing political parties. This
appears very democratic until it is pointed out that black citizens of
South Africa were not allowed to vote or participate. South Africa
changed this system in the 1990s. Other countries have banned
opposition political parties or have not allowed certain political parties
or personalities to be on television.
The first example of large-scale democracy was in ancient Athens.
They even invented the word “Democracy” to describe their system.
Athenian democracy was good because no place on earth had yet
allowed so many ordinary citizens to take part. The democracy was
imperfect because it allowed slavery and only official citizens of
Athens could vote.
The Athenians used a form called Direct Democracy. Direct
democracy is a system where citizens get to vote on the laws
themselves instead of electing people. Athens was not big and direct
democracy works only in small groups. A modern example of direct
democracy would be a town meeting of citizens to make decisions.
Tribal or Clan authority is usually like a small-scale democracy.
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Representative democracy is the system most democracies use
today. Citizens elect officers and representatives to run the
government for them. Citizens have regular opportunities to vote
against these officers, or even to run against them in an election.
The assembly of a group of representatives to make laws is called a
legislature. These assemblies have different names in different
countries. Here are some examples:
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Parliament
Congress
Diet
Assembly
Duma
A name often given to democracies is Republic. The name mostly
means that there are elections for office and there is no monarch as
leader. Typical titles of democratic leaders include:
 President
 Prime Minister
 Chancellor
Elected officers in Democracies must run again for election at regular
times. This is an opportunity for citizens to remove unpopular
leaders. Many countries have time limits on how long a person can
be in office. Any president of Mexico, for example, has one term of
six years. Then they must leave. A president of the US may be
elected two times, and then they must leave.
Constitutions
Part of a good democracy is to have constitution, which is a set of
rules, procedures and principles on how a government should
function. These rules are written down so there is no doubt about
what they say. Each time the government wants to act, pass a law,
make a treaty, etc, the government must follow the rules that are
written. Some democratic countries, such as the UK, do not have all
the rules and procedures written down as one document. Instead,
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the UK uses the written record of court cases, previous laws and
treaties to decide how the government can proceed.
Of course, there are often arguments about what the words in a
constitution might mean. In cases like these, a good constitution will
have a procedure on how to settle disputes. In the United States,
there are courts and judges who decided the meaning and
interpretation of the rules. There are also rules and procedures on
how to select these judges and create the courts. A good constitution
has a rule or procedure for everything—and a procedure to figure out
what to do if there is a problem.
As times change, a government invented many years ago might find
it has to have a rule or procedure that did not exist. For example,
most governments of the world were created BEFORE the internet
allowed the easy sharing and transfer of information and data. In the
United States, the Constitution gives power to the legislature
(Congress) to create new rules on how the internet is allowed to
operate.
4. Anarchy
Anarchy is the absence of government or authority.
Prehistoric or “caveman” times could be considered anarchy. There
was no law anyone had to obey. There was no system of leadership.
There was no organization of society into countries, cities or towns.
Since these prehistoric times, anarchy rarely occurs because some
sort of authority usually takes control over a land area.
The closest modern examples of anarchy might be in Somalia and
parts of Pakistan. In Somalia and Pakistan, tribal or clan groups rule
the areas outside the control of the central government. These
groups run things like a government. They have rules on behavior
and they punish those who break the rules. However, they seldom
have written laws or procedures. Things are done in a traditional
way. Nothing is formal or written down. Tribes or clans do not obey
the central government and they do not obey each other. They often
fight each other, in fact.
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In Somalia, the lack of central authority has famously allowed people
to take small ships and sail out into the Indian Ocean and act as
pirates.
In Pakistan, the lack of central authority has allowed Osama bin
Laden and other known terrorists to live and be safe among tribes
that welcome them.
The Historic Trend Towards Democracy
The general movement of history has been for places of anarchy to
be put under the control of some authority. This usually meant the
authority of a single person (usually a king or queen). Beginning in
the 1700s, the idea of a royal family controlling things went under
attack.
The next movement was to take control from the single person and
give it to even more people. The Americans were the first modern
people to completely discard the idea of a monarch. The United
States formed a government in 1789 that had a written down
procedure that explained how the government would do things
(constitution). The US Constitution was the first to provide that the
leaders and representatives would be chosen by citizens (but only
men at first).
In the time since the American Revolution, more countries began to
take control from their monarchs and give it to the elected
representatives in the legislature. Not all countries discarded the idea
of a monarch. They kept the king or queen as a symbol, even though
the king or queen had no power to make rules or judgments anymore.
Types of Government Systems in 1900
Some countries took away the power of their monarchies faster than
others. But by 1900, there were only ten democracies in the world—
none of them allowed women to vote. The British and French were
leading democracies in Europe. Britain had a monarch with no
power, and the French had no monarch at all. In both countries, a
legislature made all the laws. Judges and courts made decisions in
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all disputes. The US and Canada were leading democracies in North
America. In Russia, Austria, and Germany, the monarch still had
important power and influence.
In Latin America, there were no more monarchs. However, the
governments in Latin America at this time were not democratic either.
Usually, a small group of elite families and business people controlled
the government.
Conclusion
The 1900s was a century of change. Early in the century, a gigantic
war set loose a huge amount of change in politics, economy, and
society that affected events for decades. One of the biggest forces of
change was the clash of different political systems as many countries
experimented to find a better way to run their country than the
systems that led to the Great War of 1914-1918.
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