Types of Government
A government is a body of people who create laws for its citizens to abide by in order to keep the region from being in complete chaos. It’s important to have this body to create rules and laws that reward the good citizens and punish the bad ones, while trying to make everyone feel safe. Government is not a concept that has one universal application; therefore each region in the world has their own type of government that works for them. A country’s government is based a lot on how they have governed in the past, in addition to the religion. There are essentially three different types of government: autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy. Under these three, there are various separate types, and countries will often use a combination of the different ideas and create a hybrid government.
Autocracy
This type of government involves having one absolute ruler who has complete power regarding making legislative and executive decisions. This person either has complete control of the laws, or must confer with their parliament before enacting any rules or laws. Autocracies need some type of structure in order to rule their people properly, such as the military or their nobles.
There are different types of autocratic governments that branch off the general term of autocracy. Monarchies are ruled by a king or queen, and this person stays in power until death or abdication. When this happens, the next person in line in the family will take over. Totalitarianism involves this ruler having total control over everything, including having power of public and private life. Dictatorship is similar to a monarchy except without the family lineage. Often, dictatorships will be military based and the dictator will abuse the amount of personal power that they possess.
Autocracies are efficient because they don’t rely on a consensus, and so decisions get made easily. One of the biggest problems is not getting input from the people, and the people are often upset and do not agree with the decision that their ruler makes. The person in the power can sometimes become very power hungry and create several problems for their country.
Oligarchy
An oligarchy government is one in which a select few people have the power to make the decisions for the region. Generally, the select few are the people who are the wealthiest within the country, causing them to be the most powerful. Oligarchies are not run by a constitution or charter, and the rules are made up by the elite and they see fit.
In an oligarchy, decisions can be made easily and quickly, and there is power sharing involved because there is not one absolute ruler. Problems with this type of government involve not getting the people’s input when making decisions. The general public does not even get to decide the people in power because they are chosen by the other wealthy and elite people.
Democracy
This form of government is considered to be the most fair, and is based on involving the people in making decisions for the bettering of the country. Unlike the previous two types of government, democracy allows for the people to vote on laws to gather their input and decide what will be best for the country as a whole. The decision that gets the highest number of votes ultimately wins and is enacted.
Although it is the fairest option, there are some problems with it. As the democracy gets larger, it is harder to get mostly everyone to agree on the issue and also keep everyone informed of all of the information. Also, by taking the most popular vote, the minority gets ignored and exploited. Sometimes the most popular decision is not exactly the right one, and it takes an even longer process to go about changing it and/or informing people of new information.