Each student was given a two sided sheet. For the information on BOTH sides of the sheet circle new voabularly words.
After reading the side "Types of Governments", answer these two questions: Do any of the forms of government described seem to be more prone to failure or to problems? Do any of the forms of government seem to be more effective and reliable?
The readings are pasted below:
Types of Government
Aristotle,
a Greek political philosopher of the 4th century B.C., distinguished three
principal kinds of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and polity (a
kind of enlightened democracy). The differences among them chiefly
concerned whether power were held by one, by a few, or by many.
Aristotle thought that the selfish abuse of power caused each type to
become perverted, respectively, into tyranny, oligarchy, and a lower form
of democracy characterized by mob rule. Monarchy tended to become tyrannical
because it vested authority in a single ruler. Aristocracy,
a government based on birth and privilege, in which the rulers
governed for the good of the whole society, tended to become oligarchy as a
consequence of restricting political power to a special social and
economic class; only a few members of the class would have enough drive and
ability to acquire the power to govern. The polity, likewise, would
deteriorate into ochlocracy, or mob rule, if the citizens pursued only their
selfish interests.
Aristotle's
classifications suited the societies of ancient times, but they do not
correspond to the power structure of later societies. Modern writers
have developed a variety of schemes for classifying governments, based on the
nature of the ruling class, the economic system, the government's political
institutions, the principles of authority, the acquisition and exercise
of power, and other factors. Some influential writers
on government include Thomas Hobbes, Baron de Montesquieu, Jean
Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Gaetano Mosca,
Vilfredo Pareto, and the sociologist Max Weber.
Monarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy)
The
most common form of government from ancient times to the early part
of the 20th century was monarchy, or rule by a hereditary king or queen.
Monarchy passed through three basic stages, varying according to the nation and
the political and economic climate. The first stage was that of the absolute
monarch. In the Christian part of the world during the Middle Ages, a conflict
developed between the pope and the kings who recognized his spiritual
authority. The pope wanted to expand the power of the church beyond
spiritual matters to include the temporal realm. But some kings proclaimed that
God had given them the right to rule, and by proclaiming this divine
right they were able to give legitimacy to their reigns and limit the
pope's power. (See church and state; investiture controversy.)
Limited
monarchy was the second stage. Kings depended on the support of the most powerful
members of the nobility to retain their thrones. In England and some other
Western European countries, the nobility placed limits on
the power of the ruler to govern. This was done in England, for
example, through the Magna Carta. Threatened with the loss of political
and financial support, even the strongest kings and emperors had to accept a
system of laws that protected the rights and privileges of powerful social and
economic classes.
The
third stage in the evolution of monarchy was the constitutional monarchy.
Present-day monarchs are nearly all symbolic rather than actual rulers of their
countries. (A few exceptions can be found in Africa and Asia.) In such
monarchies as Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain,
governing power is now in the hands of the national parliaments.
Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic)
A republic is a form of government in which power resides in the people,[1] and
the government is ruled by elected leaders run according to law (from Latin: res publica), rather than inherited or
appointed (such as through inheritance or divine
mandate). In modern times the
definition of a republic is also commonly limited to a government which
excludes a monarch.[1][2] Currently, 135 of the world's 206 sovereign
states use the word
"republic" as part of their official names.
Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their ideology and
composition. In the classical and medieval period of Europe many states were fashioned on the Roman Republic, which referred to the governance of the city of Rome
between it having kings, and emperors. The Italian medieval and Renaissance political tradition today referred to as "civic humanism", in America, is sometimes considered to derive
directly from Roman republicans such as Sallust and Tacitus. However, Greek-influenced Roman authors, such as Polybius[clarification
needed] and Cicero, sometimes also used the term as a translation for
the Greek politeia which could mean regime generally, but could also be
applied to certain specific types of regime which did not exactly correspond to
that of the Roman Republic. Republics were not equated with classical
democracies such as Athens, but had a democratic aspect.
Republics became more common in the Western world starting in the
early 19th century, eventually displacing absolute monarchy as the most common form of government. In modern
republics the executive is legitimized both by a constitution and by popular suffrage. Montesquieu included both democracies, where all the people have a share in rule, and aristocracies or oligarchies, where only some of the people rule, as republican
forms of government.[3]
Most often a republic is a sovereign state, but there are also sub-sovereign state entities that
are referred to as republics, or which have governments that are described as
'republican' in nature. For instance, Article IV of the United States
Constitution
"guarantee[s] to every State in this Union a Republican form of
Government".[4] Similarly, the Soviet Union was constitutionally described as a "unitary, federal multinational
state", composed of 15 republics, two of which – Ukraine and Belarus – had their own seats at the United Nations.
Dictatorship
As a form
of government, dictatorship is principally a 20th-century
phenomenon. The dictator, often a military leader, concentrates
political power in himself and his clique. There is no effective rule
of law. The regime may or may not have a distinctive
political ideology and may or may not allow token opposition. The
main function of a dictatorship is to maintain control of all governmental
operations. There have been some cases—Indira Gandhi in India and
several military dictatorships in Latin America—in which authoritarian rulers
have relaxed their control and have even allowed open elections. In certain
Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe dictators were forced
from power in bloodless coups or voluntarily relinquished their
authority to popularly elected officials as Soviet power declined.
The totalitarian
dictatorship, as in Nazi Germany, Communist China, and the former USSR, is much
more thoroughgoing. It seeks to control all aspects of national life, including
the beliefs and attitudes of its people. It has a set of ideas that everyone is
expected to embrace, such as revolutionary Marxism or
counterrevolutionary fascism. At its most extreme, as during the
leadership of Joseph Stalin in the USSR, the power of the
dictator may become more absolute than in any of the earlier forms of tyranny.
Such gross power in the hands of one person results inevitably in the
development of what has been called a cult of personality. The leader is
credited with almost infallible wisdom, because to admit that he or she may be
wrong would deprive the regime of its authority. In some Communist countries
the cult of personality appears to have given way to the dominance of a group
of party leaders—a ruling oligarchy. The administrative complexities of
managing a modern industrial state are too great to be monopolized by an
individual leader such as Stalin or Mao Zedong(Mao Tse-tung). The successor
regime in China, for example, continues to claim infallibility for its policies
and doctrines but not for the leaders. Examples of 20th-century dictators in
addition to those already mentioned include Idi Amin Dada(Uganda),
Kemal Atatürk (Turkey), Fulgencio Batista and
Fidel Castro (Cuba), Francisco Franco (Spain),
Saddam Hussein(Iraq), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines),
Benito Mussolini (Italy), Juan Peron (Argentina), and
António Salazar (Portugal).
Athenian Democracy / “True
Democracy” (modified from Wikipedia)
Athens a city-state including an area around the city called Attica
in the area now called Greece, developed its democracy around the sixth century
BC. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up
democracies, most following the Athenian model, but none are as well-documented
as Athens.
It was a system of direct democracy, in which participating citizens voted directly on
legislation and executive bills. Participation was not open to all residents:
to vote one had to be an adult, male citizen, and the number of these
"varied between 30,000 and 50,000 out of a total population of around
250,000 to 300,000."[1] At times, the opinion of voters
could be strongly influenced by the political satire of the comic poets at the theatres.[2]
