Who Rules- (Types of Government)

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Our next section involves who rules, and this took a look at a number of different types of
governments that we have around the world. And one of the first ones that we looked at is
any form of government with a single ruler would classify as an autocracy. Now that's going
to be divided into two main types where one person has all the power with a monarchy and
a dictatorship.

Let's start with monarchy. That's the traditional king and queen ruling the country, and
power is inherited through family line, typically the firstborn son. And a lot of the, you know,
if you've taken European history or just know about the kingdoms there, they started out as
an absolute monarchy where the monarch would have complete control over the country.

Since then, they still have monarchies in Europe, but they're constitutional monarchies,
which means that the monarchs are still the head of state. They do a lot of the diplomacy
and things like that. However, it's really more of a ceremonial position.

There's still a constitution. They still have a republic. They vote for parliament and certain
representatives, but there still are existing monarchies throughout the world.

Dictatorship is the one we're probably the most familiar with, certainly in a sense of former
dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Adolf Hitler, Bashar al-Assad of Syria. We hear that word
dictatorship. One leader has absolute control over citizens' lives.

United States ousted Saddam Hussein several years ago when we invaded Iraq. People now
are questioning, you know, if you had to pick a poison, is it better to have a Hobbes
viewpoint to have someone like that in control? It's not the best, but it keeps stability in the
region. Or what happens when you try to create a democratic government and you have
different people competing? Yeah, that's a good point.

I mean, is it better to have a dysfunctional dictatorship that violates people's rights but
keeps order versus a completely dysfunctional democracy that is closer to anarchy? And
really, neither of them are good situations. But the goal is to try to get towards a more
secure and orderly state without having to take away everyone's rights. And that's the goal
of each government.

Yeah, we'll take a look at democracy now. Citizens hold the political power. Two types of
democracy.

We're going to have representative democracy and direct. OK, representative democracy is
the type that we have at our federal level, our national level of government. In that type of
democracy, people have the power, but people don't engage in the day-to-day running of
government or decision making.

They elect representatives to do it for them. In a country of more than 300 million people, it
would just literally be impossible for us to have a direct democracy on a large scale. So
instead, what we do is we vote in elections to elect leaders that represent us.
The form of democracy that would probably work best in maybe smaller communities, we
showed pictures of ancient Greece where you can have everyone directly participating in
making the laws. Now, do we have forms of direct democracy today? Sure. At the state
level, citizens can actually get enough signatures and on a ballot, they can come up with
their own initiatives.

Where they can vote directly and make the laws directly. So we do see it today in various
forms and in certain states around the United States. Another example, locally in the New
England region, they have a lot of town meetings still that determine budgets and things like
that.

And every citizen in the town can go to the meeting and has their own particular vote. They
don't have a representative at all. They vote themselves in those elections.

An oligarchy is a small group that has all the power. An example of that would be a military
junta. And that is where small groups of officers take over a government, overthrow the
established regime, whether it be a dictatorship or a democracy or any other type of
government.

And then they control the country by brute force. They weren't elected. They didn't get it by
family ties or heredity.

They just take over the country with the military. Are there any examples of military juntas
today? Well, usually we would see something like this in maybe Central Africa. We do see
governments that have broken down.

And as a result, it's honestly who has the most guns or who has experience in the military
and is then taking that for their own personal gain, a group of military officers. I know in our
reading, they mentioned the country of Myanmar or Burma for a while had a military junta
ruling the country. And you could even maybe make the argument South Africa, not a
military junta, but certainly an oligarchy where maybe one group in the case of different
races having political power for a while during the apartheid era.

OK, that's a good example. An oligarchy doesn't have to be a military junta. There's other
types of small group ruling throughout the world.

OK, theocracy, this is where we involve religion with this type of government. Now, with
that, we see mostly Islamic republics typically have theocracies. But just because if you have
a theocracy, does that mean that you're a dictatorship or you're a monarchy or you're a
democracy? Does it apply to all of them? Is it just one? Why don't we take a look at where
theocracy actually applies? OK, well, one example would be, like you mentioned, Iran.

And that is an example of a republic. They have elections and they have representatives, but
they also have Islamic law. OK, so they are a theocracy.

God's law is actually translated into their civilian law, but they still have elections and
representatives, not a dictatorship or any type. But so just know that theocracy is that's
where you have the infusion of religion and civilian life in government. Unlike in the United
States, we have a clear separation of church and state, which is debatable, which we'll get
through later in the year.

But for the most part, the United States separates church and state, meaning separates
religion from government. Some countries do not. Of course, very similar to a state of
nature is anarchy.

No government, no control, no one's in charge, complete chaos. There are no rules, no laws.
Anarchy is just that.

And if any of you watch that show, Sons of Anarchy, it's about a motorcycle gang that kind
of goes around. So we do see the term now and then. And as far as a country having
anarchy as a government, it doesn't exist.

Because remember, one of the four parts of a sovereign state is a government. So if there is
no government, anarchy doesn't actually qualify as a sovereign state. The only time that you
get anarchy is when a state literally breaks down.

Like sometimes throughout the last 20 years, parts of Somalia have had no government
control. It's been basically anarchy in parts of northern Iraq and Syria. Once the Syrian
regime fell, there's been anarchy in those places.

And that's where groups such as ISIS and different al-Qaeda cells have been able to establish
controls because there was no government functioning in those regions. If you take a look at
this chart here, who rules? This is pretty helpful just in the sense of organizing. How can we
organize government and what are the different forms? So if you just take a look at this
across, we just went through these various forms.

But I think this is helpful in a visual sense where you may have no one ruling. All the way
along the spectrum to many people get to participate. Certainly the United States, we would
fall onto the right side of that spectrum with a representative democracy and some
components of direct democracy here and there.

One thing to note is that the type of government that we left out there was that theocracy.
And that's because theocracy could apply to any of these except for anarchy. But we could
have a theocracy that has one fewer all.

But just know that these are the main types of government that we see throughout the
world today.
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