4.2 Types of Political Systems: Learning Objectives
4.2 Types of Political Systems: Learning Objectives
2. Explain why authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are more unstable politically than
Various states and governments obviously exist around the world. In this context, state means the
political unit within which power and authority reside. This unit can be a whole nation or a
subdivision within a nation. Thus the nations of the world are sometimes referred to as states (or
nation-states), as are subdivisions within a nation, such as California, New York, and Texas in the
United States. Government means the group of persons who direct the political affairs of a state, but
it can also mean the type of rule by which a state is run. Another term for this second meaning of
government is political system, which we will use here along with government. The type of
government under which people live has fundamental implications for their freedom, their welfare,
and even their lives. Accordingly we briefly review the major political systems in the world today.
Democracy
The type of government with which we are most familiar is democracy, or a political
system in which citizens govern themselves either directly or indirectly. The
term democracy comes from Greek and means “rule of the people.” In Lincoln’s stirring
words from the Gettysburg Address, democracy is “government of the people, by the
people, for the people.” In direct (or pure) democracies, people make their own
decisions about the policies and distribution of resources that affect them directly. An
example of such a democracy in action is the New England town meeting, where the
residents of a town meet once a year and vote on budgetary and other matters. However,
such direct democracies are impractical when the number of people gets beyond a few
hundred. Representative democracies are thus much more common. In these types of
democracies, people elect officials to represent them in legislative votes on matters
affecting the population.
The defining feature of representative democracy is voting in elections. When the United
States was established more than 230 years ago, most of the world’s governments were
monarchies or other authoritarian regimes (discussed shortly). Like the colonists,
people in these nations chafed under arbitrary power. The example of the American
Revolution and the stirring words of its Declaration of Independence helped inspire the
French Revolution of 1789 and other revolutions since, as people around the world have
died in order to win the right to vote and to have political freedom.
Democracies are certainly not perfect. Their decision-making process can be quite slow
and inefficient; as just mentioned, decisions may be made for special interests and not
“for the people”; and, as we have seen in earlier chapters, pervasive inequalities of social
class, race and ethnicity, gender, and age can exist. Moreover, in not all democracies
have all people enjoyed the right to vote. In the United States, for example, African
Americans could not vote until after the Civil War, with the passage of the 15th
Amendment in 1870, and women did not win the right to vote until 1920, with the
passage of the 19th Amendment.
In addition to generally enjoying the right to vote, people in democracies also have more
freedom than those in other types of governments. Figure 14.1 "Freedom Around the
World (Based on Extent of Political Rights and Civil Liberties)" depicts the nations of
the world according to the extent of their political rights and civil liberties. The freest
nations are found in North America, Western Europe, and certain other parts of the
world, while the least free lie in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Figure 14.1 Freedom Around the World (Based on Extent of Political Rights and Civil Liberties)
Source: Adapted from Freedom House. (2010). Map of freedom in the world. Retrieved
from http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2010.
Monarchy
Monarchy is a political system in which power resides in a single family that rules from
one generation to the next generation. The power the family enjoys is traditional
authority, and many monarchs command respect because their subjects bestow this
type of authority on them. Other monarchs, however, have ensured respect through
arbitrary power and even terror. Royal families still rule today, but their power has
declined from centuries ago. Today the Queen of England holds a largely ceremonial
position, but her predecessors on the throne wielded much more power.
Queen Elizabeth II of England holds a largely ceremonial position, but earlier English
monarchs held much more power.
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queen_Elisabeth_II.JPG.
Since World War II, which helped make the United States an international power, the
United States has opposed some authoritarian and totalitarian regimes while supporting
others. The Cold War pitted the United States and its allies against Communist nations,
primarily the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and North Korea. But at the same time the
United States opposed these authoritarian governments, it supported many others,
including those in Chile, Guatemala, and South Vietnam, that repressed and even
murdered their own citizens who dared to engage in the kind of dissent constitutionally
protected in the United States (Sullivan, 2008).Sullivan, M. (2008). American
adventurism abroad: Invasions, interventions, and regime changes since World War
II (Rev. and expanded ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Earlier in U.S. history, the federal
and state governments repressed dissent by passing legislation that prohibited criticism
of World War I and then by imprisoning citizens who criticized that war (Goldstein,
2001).Goldstein, R. J. (2001). Political repression in modern America from 1870 to
1976 (Rev. ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. During the 1960s and 1970s, the
FBI, the CIA, and other federal agencies spied on tens of thousands of citizens who
engaged in dissent protected by the First Amendment (Cunningham,
2004).Cunningham, D. (2004). There’s something happening here: The new left, the
Klan, and FBI counterintelligence. Berkeley: University of California Press. While the
United States remains a beacon of freedom and hope to much of the world’s peoples, its
own support for repression in the recent and more distant past suggests that eternal
vigilance is needed to ensure that “liberty and justice for all” is not just an empty slogan.