Chapter 6 Kinds of Government

Chapter 6 KINDS OF GOVERNMENT

Forms of governments are more numerous than forms of states, for the reason that the criteria for classifying governments are more numerous than that of states. Basically, governments are classified according to the following 1) number of rulers and their kind of rulership, 2) degree of citizen participation in decision making regarding public affairs, 3) relation between the executive and the legislature, and 4) territorial distribution of governmental powers. In accordance with the first criterion, governments will be classified and discussed in this chapter. Monarchy, Aristocracy, Polity and their Opposites. It was Aristotle who first classified states or governments. In doing so, he used the first criterion – the number of rulers and the kind of their rulerships – on the basis of which six forms of government were discovered by him. As illustrated below, they are: 1) monarchy if one man rules for the good of all the people, the opposite or perversion of which is tyranny; 2) aristocracy if few persons rule for the god of all, the opposite of which is oligarchy; and 3) polity if many persons rule for the good of all, the opposites likewise of which is democracy. ARISTOTLE’S CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS Rulers rule in the interest of: No. of Rulers One man Few persons Many persons

All Monarchy Aristocracy Polity

Themselves Tyranny Oligarchy Democracy

Let it be explained here why Aristotle classified democracy as a bad or perverted form of government. It might be that Aristotle had a jaundiced view of the Athenian democracy because of his “fear that the rule of the “Many” would typically lead to the tyranny of the poor and propertyless majority over the middle classes. Or that Aristotle committed and error in his classification, because when he discussed democracy, he introduced another criterion – property ownership – which was not used by him with the other kinds of government. Consequently , commented one writer, Aristotle muddled his original classification scheme.

For quite a long period of time Aristotle’s classification was widely accepted. This time, however, modern students of political science are monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy as the good type of governments; and into tyranny, oligarchy, mobocracy as the perverted or bad forms of government. This modern scheme of classification is illustrated below. MODERN VERSION OF ARISTOTLE’S CLASSIFICATION Rulers rule in the interest of: No. of Rulers One man Few persons Many persons

All Monarchy Aristocracy Democracy

Themselves Tyranny Oligarchy Mobocracy

As the above illustration indicates, monarchy is the rule of one man for the good of all the people; whereas tyranny is the rule of one man for his own good only. Aristocracy is the rule of few persons for the good of all, while oligarchy is the rule of few persons for their self-interest only. That democracy is the rule of the many for their own good only. All these forms of governments will be more discussed below. Rule of One: A. Monarchy. Monarchy is a form of government which vests political authority in a king or equivalent regal potentate. The power of the kingship is either limited or unlimited and succession to the office is either hereditary elective. Monarchy is absolute or unlimited when the monarch is unrestrained by law in the exercise of the powers of his office, that is, he governs according to his own free will. Absolutism is best typified by the oriental regimes of the ancient, like Japan’s emperorship’s of the 1880’s and by the European kingdoms prior to the great revolutions the 17th-19th centuries, especially Russia’s tsarist regime before 1917 and Germany’s totalitarian rule before the Weimar constitutional government of 1919. Monarchy is limited when the Monarch chooses to exercise the powers of government in accordance with laws and in conjunction with the regularly established organs of government, such as the German and Austro-Hungarian government before 1981, whereby each Emperor was flanked by an elected Parliament which exercised the powers of law making while he, the Emperor, retained his executive powers. B. Tyranny. Tyranny is one-man rule which is unrestricted by law or custom.

It is exemplified by the governments of the absolute Kings of Europe and the despotic Emperors of Asia during the ancient times who carried on wars of expansion for their own self-interest. Monarchy and tyranny are similar in, at least, one respect; that is, they are both one man relership. However, they are different in many respects: first, the monarch rules for the general welfare, while the tyrant rules for his own good; second, while the power of the monarch may be either limited or unlimited, that of the tyrant is always absolute and unlimited; and third, while the monarch may have acquired his office by inheritance or election, the tyrant may have acquired such office by means or, a combination of any two or more of these. The Rule of the Few: A. Aristocracy. Aristocracy is a form of government in which political power is exercised by a relatively small and especially qualified class. It is sometimes call “government by the best,” due to the fact that access to the ruling aristocratic class is based not only on birth and wealth, but also upon physical, intellectual and moral qualities. Strictly speaking, there were very few of such kind of government in history and practically none at present. Perhaps, Plato’s ideal state in his book, Republic, is the idealization of this government by the best. B. Oligarchy. Oligarchy is defined as a government whereby authority is vested upon few individuals of families. This small coterie of individuals include those who, because of economic or other power, influence government policies for their own benefits even though they lack formal authority. It is difficult to cite an example of oligarchy because in every case those who govern under it would of course argue that their regime is for the good of all the people. But where under any particular form of rulership it appears that only the rich derive benefits or advantages, the government is oligarchy. It is from this context that President Marcos classified the Philippine society before Martial Law as oligarchy. He said: “Ours tends to be an oligarchic society. This simply means that the economic gap between the rich and the poor provides the wealthy few the opportunity to exercise undue influence on the political authority….. When I speak of oligarchy, I refer to the few who would promote their selfish interest through indirect or irresponsible exercise of public and private power.”

Aristocracy and oligarchy are the same in one aspect, that is, both are government of the few. However, the two manifest several dissimilarities first, aristocracy is a rule of the few for the good of all the people, which is oligarchy is rule of the few for such group’s own good only; second, aristocracy is a direct rule of the aristocratic class, while oligarchy either direct of indirect rule or both of the

rich class; third, while political power is gained in aristocracy by reason of birth and special qualities, in oligarchy it is gained by reason of wealth or property. The Rule of the Many: A. Democracy. Professor Dahl defines democracy as “a political system in

which the opportunity to participate in decisions is widely shared among all adult citizens.” Viewed from historical perspective, democracy has been either direct or indirect. Democracy is direct or pure when the people themselves discharge the three powers of government. In other words, the people are the rulers and the ruled, or the governors and the governed at the same time. And democracy is indirect (representative democracy) when the people govern themselves through elected public officials. Pure democracy, however, is mostly applicable to societies with small populations and agrarian economies, for the reason that the people could easily gather themselves together to transact public affairs, as in the cases of the Greek city-states of pre-history and the New England towns of the United States during the initial period of American history. Conversely, representative democracy is best suited to complex societies, such as modern states, with large populations and industrial economist that make impracticable and impossible for he people to meet and assemble at the same time in one place to discharge the powers and functions of the government. B. Mobocracy. Mobocracy has not yet been concretely defined by textwriters. The reason probably is the nothing of this kind of government has ever been tried in practice. But literally speaking, mobocracy denotes authority of the mob, or just simply “mob rule” as Willoughby calls it, because the root-words “cracy” refer to “mob” and “authority” respectively. In other words, mobocracy resembles tyranny of the majority because the many (the mob) govern for their own good only by ignoring the minority.