Government

From Wikinfo

The word government is derived from the Greek Κυβερνήτης (kubernites), which means "steersman", "governor", "pilot" or "rudder". A government is the recognized body that represents and has the authority to govern the members of an organization. In its broadest sense, "to govern" means to administer or supervise, whether over an area of land, a group of people, or a collection of things. Generally, a government's duty is to administrate and represent, with the intent of increasing the survival of people, places and/or things. With religions, the administrative body is rarely called its government, but serves a similar function by insuring the survival of the religion's ideas. This article concerns itself with countries' governments.

In some countries, the government is named by its current executive, i.e. the Blair Government or the Clinton administration. Other examples of note: The Welsh Assembly Government is the name of the executive branch of Wales, and Scottish Government is the unofficial term to describe the Scottish Executive. In countries using the Westminster system, the party in government will usually control the legislature.

Maxims

It is the duty of a country's government to organize its people and resources toward the better survival. Successful governments do this and unsuccessful governments tend to get changed or become overthrown. In addition, successful government requires that people be aware how their government is working toward their betterment.

Definitions

One approach to defining government considers control of violence to be the key defining element of government success. The government is the decision-making arm of the state, and the state is responsible for controllingviolence to do so it uses 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 organization 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 jeopardize 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".

Another alternative is to define a government as an organization 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 neighboring states and preventing the establishment of alternative governments within the country.

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.

Branches of government

Under modern political theory, government is understood as having three manifestations of power: legislative (the power to make laws), executive (the power to implement laws) and judiciary (the power to interpret laws and apply them to specific instances; the power includes meting out punishment). The executive branch has the attached job of representing the people to foreign powers.

Under traditional forms of government, such as monarchy and oligarchy, that ruled most of the world until the last few centuries, these powers were concentrated in the hands of one person or a small group of people. One of the innovations of modern democracy is the separation of powers into three distinct branches of government that operate independently while acting as checks and balances for each other. This separation is intended to prevent an individual or small group from acquiring power and ruling without the consent of the people.

Forms of government

Many different forms of government have existed in the past and exist today. They are traditionally classified according to the number of people who hold political power:

Autocracies are governments where one individual ultimately holds all power. This category includes absolute monarchies as well as republican dictatorships with an all-powerful president or other central figure.
Oligarchies are governments where political power is held by a small group of individuals who share similar interests with each other. A common type of oligarchy is plutocracy, where the small group of powerful individuals is composed of the wealthiest members of society.
Democracies are governments were the people as a whole - not just some of them - hold political power. There are two major kinds of democracy:
- Representative democracy, where the people elect representatives every few years to make governmental decisions on their behalf. This is the dominant form of government in the world today.
- Direct democracy, where the people vote on governmental decisions directly.
Classical republics are governments of mixed elements; i.e. they combine two or more of the simple forms of government. It is complex form of government that includes many classes of society that participate in governing in combination with each other.

The line between some of the above forms of government can sometimes be ambiguous. For example, during the 19th century, most self-proclaimed "democracies" restricted voting rights to a minority of the population (e.g. property-owning males). This could qualify them as oligarchies rather than democracies. On the other hand, the voting minority was often quite large (20-30% of the population) and its members did not form the compact group with common interests that is the hallmark of most oligarchies. Thus, this form of government occupied a space between democracy and oligarchy as they are understood today.

Reasons for government

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 - both in the sense of a definition of "rights", and in the sense of listing which rights are natural. 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, poverty, illiteracy) 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.

Governmental 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 secrecy, 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).

Size 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. One major exception is the United States, where central government spending takes up less than 20% of GDP.

Government

From Wikinfo

Contents

Maxims

Definitions

Branches of government

Forms of government

Reasons for government

Greed and oppression

Order and tradition

Natural rights

Social contract

Governmental operations

Enforcement of power

Territory

Size of government

See also

Relevant lists

Views

Personal tools

Navigation

Toolbox

Search

Toolbox

In other languages