Democracy

According to Plato (Flores et al 32), democracy is a political system where there are no laws and people are expected to rule themselves. Whether people are equal or not, they are all given equal rights. However, Plato argues that ordinary people are not in a position to make good judgments and decisions and therefore democracy always result in chaos and anarchy. There are numerous differences as well as similarities between political systems and therefore for one to be able to effectively study political systems, one has to identify the basic institution key arrangements. Democracy criterion of classification of institutional arrangement requires us to distinguish between democratic and the non-democratic political systems. However, using the democratic criterion is not an easy task as it is value labeled and most states regard them as democratic. This paper will, therefore, use the concept of democracy as the central criterion for classifying the political systems.

The constitutional regime is a political system where the leaders obey the laws that have been set by the state and the power of the leaders is effectively limited towards protection of individual rights and liberty as it is defined in the constitution. The government s limited in that it is protected from making arbitrary decisions of a nation (Izquierdo 6). The non-constitutional regime is described by a persistent non-enforcement of the constitution where leaders have unlimited power and have no value for the structured arrangements put in place by the constitution. There is no constitution and people are usually governed by hereditary leaders or other religious leaders that often fails to guarantee the ruled any right (Brooker 60).

Areal distribution of power is an indivisible sovereignty where there is a hierarchical authority and all powers are vested within the central government in a unitary state. However, federation states are where the central government shares power with the regional governments and checks and balances in the constitution are made. These two types of states, however, form the constitutional division of power while the confederation exercises sovereignty through delegation of power to the supernatural central government.

Executive and legislative relations are defined by the relationship between the legislature and the executives. Having a presidential government refers to a government where there is clear distinction between executive and legislative branches. The parliamentary government, on the other hand, refers to the synthesis of executive and legislative functions and structures where people are allowed to elect the legislature (Brooker 60). Hybrid systems, on the other hand, are composed of a prime minister and some of the elected legislature who have the power to enact and implement policies.

Political party systems political systems are divided into two criterions where political parties are classified basing on the number and the relations among the parties and their leading process. In two-party systems, power rotates between the two parties and each one of these parties has a realistic likelihood of establishing a parliamentary governing majority. However, there may be the existence of third parties but they have limited power in influencing the government. In multi-party systems, there are more than two parties in governance and participation from all of the parties is essential in forming the activities of governing (Izquierdo 6). However, in one party system, only one single party in the system and the state does not allow other parties to exist. In states where democracy is not institutionalized, only single parties are allowed to take governance. No party systems involve a type of non-democracy where there are no organized parties while the governmental powers are vested in the hands of the royal families.

Work cited

       Top of Form

Flores, Imer B, and Kenneth E. Himma. Law, Liberty, and the Rule of Law. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. Print.

            Izquierdo. R. A. Rethinking Presidential Constructions of Constitutional Regimes: The Inverse Dynamics of Leadership and Historical Context. Stanford University, 2011. Bottom of Form

 

Brooker P. Non-Democratic Regimes: Second Edition. Macmillan Inernational Higher education, 2009.