The 6 forms of government that govern our social life

The human being is made to live in society, that is, to associate with others to reach ends collectively. However, in practice these interactions do not always benefit all parties involved in the same way. There are norms and laws that can tip the balance of justice towards the position of some people, arbitrarily privileged, who use their power to impose their will on others.

On a day-to-day basis, these loopholes through which certain particular interests sneak into the political agenda of a country or region are evidence in the fact that a political system is not yet known that, applied here and now, creates conditions of absolute democracy and pure. Instead there are different forms of government, each one with her own peculiarities, with her strengths and weaknesses.

Next we will see what these forms of government are like and how they influence our lives and our way of conceiving social life.

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The importance of political systems

Practically since civilizations exist, there are also sets of rules and regulations that govern the behavior of their citizens. The code of Hammurabi, for example, is a compilation of laws and norms that is more than 3000 years old, created under the rule of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, is an example of this.

The reason for this fact is that cities and civilizations in general are social systems that, going beyond the size of a tribe, are so large and complex that they need a series of rules to maintain a certain stability and harmony. These rules can be applied to all kinds of actions and relationships: from commerce to how families should be formed, or even whether one is obliged to attend rituals or not.

But with the excuse of preserving the well-being of a civilization, it is very easy to create situations in which a minority has much more power than the rest of the people. To exemplify this we can see the difference between democracy and autocracy.

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Two poles that allow us to understand the types of government

As we will see, there are several forms of government, each of which can be understood as a completely differentiated entity from the rest. In other words, as if each form of government was governed by its own rules and was a hermetic category in which all its pieces form a whole. unique.

However, it is also possible to establish a continuum between two poles that allows distributing these political systems in a distribution ranging from the highest possible democracy to the lowest level of democracy. This can be useful for remember certain basic characteristics of these forms of power.

Thus, this continuum is established between democratic forms of government and autocratic forms of government.

What is autocracy?

Autocracy is a political system in which all power is held by one person or entity. Etymological comes from the Greek word autokrateia, in which "autos" means "oneself" and "krateia", power.

In these forms of government, all decisions and evaluations of the results of a political strategy are made not by the population, but by a person or small group of people who hold all the power without anyone else being able to discuss or regulate these actions.

Autocracy can be divided into totalitarian regimes and authoritarian regimes. The former are those in which the State has absolute power of control over everything that happens at the political level in the region, while in the totalitarian parties allow the existence of a limited variety of political parties (only those whose fundamental ideas do not clash with the interests of the elite).

What is democracy?

This term also comes from the Greek, although in this case instead of "autos" the word "demos" is used, which means "people". That is, in this form of government, unlike the autocracy, all the inhabitants of the area that constitute a sovereign subject are able to participate equally in political lifeto.

However, in practice the debate on what type of concrete political system generates the purest conditions of democracy is not clear, as we will see.

The forms of government

Going into more detail, forms of government can be classified into the following categories.

1. Parlamentary republic

The republic is a form of government based on the principle of popular sovereignty, which has no exceptions. As part of the republican ideas, it is assumed that all people are born equal before the law and that there are no hereditary rights that can violate that.

The parliamentary republic, for example, in addition to not having the figure of a king or queen, is based on a parliamentary system in which there is a distinction between Head of State and Head of Government. In this way, a clear difference is established between the legislative power and the executive power.

2. Presidential republic

In the presidential republic there is no king or queen and there is also a parliament. However, in this case, the Head of State is elected directly by the voters, and not by the members of Congress or Parliament, and also acts as Head of Government, the legislative and executive powers being relatively united.

3. One-party republic

The form of government of the one-party republic is based on the existence of a single political party capable of accessing power and, at the same time, in the holding of elections in which everyone can vote or in which everyone can stand (as independents). The democratic character of this system is questioned, although at the same time it does not fit exactly with the concept of dictatorship, since in the latter there are either no or very limited elections.

4, Parliamentary monarchy

In this form of government there is a king or queen who acts as Head of State, but his power is very limited by both the legislative and the executive powers. In many countries, the type of parliamentary monarchy thate is used gives the monarch a purely symbolic role, created primarily to give an image of unity or to act in cases of national emergency.

5. Absolute monarchy

In absolute monarchies the king or queen has absolute or almost absolute power to impose her will on the rest of the citizens. All rule-enforcement tools created to regulate social life are situated under the power of the monarch, which can modify them and is not subject to its control.

Traditionally, absolute monarchies have remained legitimate under the idea that the king or queen is chosen by divine forces to guide the people.

6. Dictatorship

In dictatorships there is the figure of a dictator, who has total control over what happens in the region, and who normally holds this power through the use of violence and weapons. In a sense, dictatorship is the form of government in which someone has the ability to run the country just as a single person could run his house.

In addition, contrary to what happens in the absolute monarchy, there is no attempt to maintain a positive public image before the citizens, it is simply ruled over them using terror and threats through rules based on punishment.

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