Political system

Table of Contents

• Article

• Typologies of government

  • Supranational political systems

    • Empires

    • Leagues

    • Confederations and federations

    • The United Nations organization

  • National political systems

    • Unitary nation-states

    • Federal systems

  • Subnational political systems

    • Tribal communities

    • Rural communities

    • Cities

    • Regions

  • Issues of classification

    • Types of classification schemes

    • Modern classifying systems

  • Governments classified by mode of succession

    • Hereditary succession

    • Succession by constitutional prescription

    • Succession by election

    • Succession by force

    • Autocratic versus nonautocratic rule

  • Governments classified by stage of development

    • Analyzing political change

    • Emergence of advanced nation-states

• The structure of government

  • Contemporary forms of government

    • Monarchy

    • Dictatorship

    • Oligarchy

    • Constitutional government

  • Contemporary levels of government

    • National government

    • Regional and state government

    • City and local government

  • Contemporary divisions of government

    • The legislature

    • The executive

    • The judiciary

• The functions of government

  • The tasks

    • Self-preservation

    • Supervision and resolution of conflicts

    • Regulation of the economy

    • Protection of political and social rights

    • Provision of goods and services

  • Public administration

• Development and change in political systems

  • Causes of stability and instability

    • Unstable political systems

    • Stable political systems

  • Types of political change

    • Radical revolution

    • Structural revision

    • Change of leaders

    • Change of policies

• Additional Reading

  • General works

  • Typologies of government

  • Supranational political systems

  • National political systems

  • Subnational political systems

  • Development of governments

  • The structure of government

    • Contemporary forms of government

    • Contemporary levels of government

    • Contemporary divisions of government

  • The functions of government

  • Development and change in political systems

• Year in Review Links

• Citations

Political system is the set of formal legal institutions that constitute a “government” or a “state.” This is the definition adopted by many studies of the legal or constitutional arrangements of advanced political orders. More broadly defined, however, the term comprehends actual as well as prescribed forms of political behaviour, not only the legal organization of the state but also the reality of how the state functions. Still more broadly defined, the political system is seen as a set of “processes of interaction” or as a subsystem of the social system interacting with other nonpolitical subsystems, such as the economic system. This points to the importance of informal sociopolitical processes and emphasizes the study of political development.

Traditional legal or constitutional analysis, using the first definition, has produced a huge body of literature on governmental structures, many of the specialized terms that are a part of the traditional vocabulary of political science, and several instructive classifying schemes. Similarly, empirical analysis of political processes and the effort to identify the underlying realities of governmental forms have yielded a rich store of data and an important body of comparative theory. The third definition has inspired much scholarly work that employs new kinds of data, new terms, and some new concepts and categories of analysis. The discussion that follows draws on all three approaches to the study of political systems.

Typologies of government

The most important type of political system in the modern world is the nation-state. The world today is divided territorially into more than 190 countries, in each of which a national government claims to exercise sovereignty—or the power of final authority—and seeks to compel obedience to its will by its citizens. This fact of the world’s political organization suggests the distinction employed in the following section among supranational, national, and subnational political systems.

Supranational political systems

The formation of supranational relationships is a principal result of the division of the world into a number of separate national entities, or states, that have contact with one another, share goals or needs, and face common threats. In some cases, as in many alliances, these relationships are short-lived and fail to result in significant institutional development. In other cases, they lead to interstate organizations and supranational systems. The discussion below examines several types of supranational political systems, together with historical and contemporary examples of each.

Empires

Because they are composed of peoples of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, all empires are ultimately held together by coercion and the threat of forcible reconquest. Imposing their rule on diverse political structures, they are characterized by the centralization of power and the absence of effective representation of their component parts. Although force is thus the primary instrument of imperial rule, it is also true that history records many cases of multiethnic empires that were governed peaceably for considerable periods and were often quite successful in maintaining order within their boundaries. The history of the ancient world is the history of great empires—Egypt, China, Persia, and imperial Rome—whose autocratic regimes provided relatively stable government for many subject peoples in immense territories over many centuries. Based on military force and religious belief, the ancient despotisms were legitimized also by their achievements in building great bureaucratic and legal structures, in developing vast irrigation and road systems, and in providing the conditions for the support of high civilizations. Enhancing and transcending all other political structures in their sphere, they could claim to function as effective schemes of universal order.

In contrast to the empires of the ancient world, the colonial empires of more recent times fell far short of universal status. In part, these modern European empires were made up of “colonies” in the original Greek sense; peopled by immigrants from the mother country, the colonies usually established political structures similar to those of the metropolitan centre and were often able to exercise a substantial measure of self-government. In part, also, the European empires were composed of territories inhabited by native populations and administered by imperial bureaucracies. The government of these territories was generally more coercive than in the European colonies and more concerned with protection and supervision of the commercial, industrial, and other exploitative interests of the imperial power. The disintegration of these empires occurred with astonishing speed. The two world wars of the 20th century sapped the power of the metropolitan centres, while their own doctrines of democracy, equality, and self-determination undermined the principle of imperial rule. Powers such as Britain and France found it increasingly difficult to resist claims to independence couched in terms of the representative concepts on which their home governments were based, and they lacked the military and economic strength to continue their rule over restive native populations. In the two decades after 1945, nearly all the major colonial territories won their independence; the great colonial empires that had once ruled more than half the world were finally dismembered.