Government

However politics is defined, government is undoubtedly central to it. To ‘govern’, in its broadest sense, is to rule or exercise control over others. The activity of government therefore involves the ability to make decisions and to ensure that they are carried out. In that sense, a form of government can be identified within most social institutions. For instance, in the family it is apparent in the control that parents exercise over children; in schools it operates through discipline and rules imposed by teachers; and in the workplace it is maintained by regulations drawn up by managers or employers. Government therefore exists whenever and wherever ordered rule occurs. However, the term ‘government’ is usually understood more narrowly to refer to formal and institutional processes by which rule is exercised at community, national and international levels. As such, government can be identified with a set of established and permanent institutions whose function is to maintain public order and undertake collective action.

The institutions of government are concerned with the making, implementation and interpretation of law, law being a set of enforceable rules that are binding upon society. All systems of government therefore encompass three functions: first, legislation or the making of laws; second, the execution or implementation of laws; and third, the interpretation of law, the adjudication of its meaning. In some systems of government these functions are carried out by separate institutions – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary – but in others they may all come under the responsibility of a single body, such as a ‘ruling’ party, or even a single individual, a dictator. In some cases, however, the executive branch of government alone is referred to as ‘the Government’, making government almost synonymous with ‘the rulers’ or ‘the governors’. Government is thus identified more narrowly with a specific group of ministers or secretaries, operating under the leadership of a chief executive, usually a prime minister or president. This typically occurs in parliamentary systems, where it is common to refer to ‘the Blair Government’, ‘the Schro¨der Government’ or ‘the Howard Government’.

A number of controversial issues, however, surround the concept of government. In the first place, although the need for some kind of government enjoys near-universal acceptance, there are those who argue that government of any kind is both oppressive and unnecessary. More-over, government comes in such bewildering varieties that it is difficult to categorize or classify its different forms. Government, for instance, can be democratic or authoritarian, constitutional or dictatorial, centralized or fragmented and so forth. Finally, government cannot be understood in isolation, separate from the society over which it rules. Governments operate within political systems, networks of relationships usually invol-ving parties, elections, pressure groups and the media, through which government can both respond to popular pressures and exercise political control.

Why have Government?

People in every part of the world recognize the concept of government and would, in the overwhelming majority of cases, be able to identify institutions in their society that constitute government. Furthermore, most people accept without question that government is necessary, assuming that without it orderly and civilized existence would be impossible. Although they may disagree about the organization of government and the role it should play, they are nevertheless convinced of the need for some kind of government. However, the widespread occurrence of government and its almost uncritical acceptance worldwide does not in itself prove that an ordered and just society can only exist through the agency of government. Indeed, one particular school of political thought is dedicated precisely to establishing that government is unnecessary, and to bringing about its abolition. This is anarchism, anarchy literally meaning ‘without rule’.

The classic argument in favour of government is found in social-contract theories, first proposed by seventeenth-century philosophers like Thomas Hobbes (see p. 123) and John Locke (see p. 268). Social-contract theory, in fact, constitutes the basis of modern political thought. In Leviathan ([1651] 1968), Hobbes advanced the view that rational human beings should respect and obey their government because without it society would descend into a civil war ‘of every man against every man’. Social-contract theorists develop their argument with reference to an assumed or hypothetical society without government, a so-called ‘state of nature’. Hobbes graphically described life in the state of nature as being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. In his view, human beings were essentially power-seeking and selfish creatures, who would, if unrestrained by law, seek to advance their own interests at the expense of fellow humans. Even the strongest would never be strong enough to live in security and without fear: the weak would unite against them before turning upon one another. Quite simply, without government to restrain selfish impulses, order and stability would be impossible. Hobbes suggested that, recognizing this, rational individuals would seek to escape from chaos and disorder by entering into an agreement with one another, a ‘social contract’, through which a system of government could be established.

Social-contract theorists see government as a necessary defence against evil and barbarity, based as they are upon an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. An alternative tradition however exists, which portrays government as intrinsically benign, as a means of promoting good and not just of avoiding harm. This can be seen in the writings of Aristotle, whose philosophy had a profound effect upon medieval theologians such as St Thomas Aquinas (see p. 158). In ‘The Treatise of Law’, part of Summa Theologiae (1963), begun in 1265, Aquinas portrayed the state as ‘the perfect community’ and argued that the proper effect of law was to make its subjects good. He was clear, for instance, that government and law would be necessary for human beings even in the absence of original sin. This benign view of government as an instrument which enables people to cooperate for mutual benefit has been kept alive in modern politics by the social-democratic tradition.

In the anarchist view, however, government and all forms of political authority are not only evil but also unnecessary. Anarchists advanced this argument by turning social-contract theory on its head and offering a very different portrait of the state of nature. Social-contract theorists assume, to varying degrees, that if human beings are left to their own devices rivalry, competition and open conflict will be the inevitable result. Anarchists, on the other hand, hold a more optimistic conception of human nature, stressing the capacity for rational understanding, compassion and coopera-tion. As William Godwin (see p. 338), whose An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice ([1793] 1976) gave the first clear statement of anarchist principles, declared: ‘Man is perfectible, or in other words susceptible of perpetual improvement’. In the state of nature a ‘natural’ order will therefore prevail, making a ‘political’ order quite unnecessary. Social harmony will spontaneously develop as individuals recognize that the common interests that bind them are stronger than the selfish interests that divide them, and when disagreements do occur they can be resolved peacefully through rational debate and discussion. Indeed, anarchists see government not as a safeguard against disorder, but as the cause of conflict, unrest and violence. By imposing rule from above, government represses freedom, breeding resentment and promoting inequality.

Anarchists have often supported their arguments by the use of historical examples, such as the medieval city-states revered by Peter Kropotkin (see p. 26) or the Russian peasant commune admired by Leo Tolstoy, in which social order was supposedly maintained by rational agreement and mutual sympathy. They have also looked to traditional societies in which order and stability reign despite the absence of what would normally be recognized as government. Clearly, it is impossible to generalize about the nature of traditional societies, some of which are hierarchic and repressive, quite unappealing to anarchists. Nevertheless, sociologists have also identified highly egalitarian societies, such as that of the Bushmen of the Kalahari, where differences appear to be resolved through informal processes and personal contacts, without the need for any formal govern-ment machinery. The value of such examples, however, is that they highlight precisely why, far from dispensing with the need for organized rule, modern societies have become increasingly dependent upon govern-ment.

The difference between traditional communities like that of the Kalahari Bushmen and the urban and industrialized societies in which the world’s population increasingly lives could not be more marked. Traditional societies solve the problem of maintaining order largely through the maintenance of traditions and customs, often rooted in religious belief. Social rituals, for instance, help to entrench a set of common values and pass on rules of conduct from one generation to the next. Tradition therefore serves to ensure consistent and predictable social behaviour and to maintain a clearly defined social structure. Such societies, moreover, are relatively small, enabling social intercourse to be conducted on a personal, face-to-face level. By contrast, modern societies are large, complex and highly differentiated. Industrial societies consist of sprawling urban communities containing many thousands of people and sometimes several million. As a result of the decline of religion, ritual and tradition, modern societies typically lack a unifying set of common values and cultural beliefs. Industrialization has also made economic life more complex and generated an increasingly fragmented social structure. In short, the hallmarks of modern society are size, diversity and conflict. The informal mechanisms that underpin social order among the Kalahari Bushmen either do not exist or could not cope with the strains generated by modern society. It is therefore not surprising that the anarchist dream of abolishing government has been frustrated. The clear trend during most of the twentieth century has in fact been in the opposite direction: government has been seen to be increasingly necessary. Although anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard (see p. 339) have tried to reverse the growth in government by demonstrating that complex economies can be entirely regulated by the market mechanism, few modern societies are not characterized by extensive government intervention in economic and social life.

Governments and Governance

Although all governments have the objective of ensuring orderly rule, they do so in very different ways and have assumed a wide variety of institutional and political forms. Absolute monarchies of old are, for instance, often distinguished from modern forms of constitutional and democratic government. Similarly, during the cold war period it was common for regimes to be classified as belonging to the First World, the Second World or the Third World. Political thinkers have attempted to establish such classifications with one of two purposes in mind. In the case of political philosophers, they have been anxious to evaluate forms of government on normative grounds in the hope of identifying the ‘ideal’ constitution. Modern political scientists, however, have attempted to develop a ‘science of government’ in order to study the activities of government in different countries without making value judgements about them. Ideological considerations, nevertheless, tend to intrude. An example of this is the use of the term ‘democratic’ to describe a particular system of government, a term that indicates general approval by suggesting that in such societies government is carried out both by and for the people.

One of the earliest attempts to classify forms of government was undertaken by Aristotle. In his view, governments can be categorized on the basis of ‘Who rules?’ and ‘Who benefits from rule?’. Government can be placed in the hands of a single individual, a small group or the many. In each case, however, government can be conducted either in the selfish interests of the rulers or for the benefit of the entire community. As a result, Aristotle identified six forms of government. Tyranny, oligarchy and democracy are all, he suggested, debased or perverted forms of rule in which, respectively, a single person, a small group and the masses govern in their own interests and therefore at the expense of others. By contrast, monarchy, aristocracy and polity are to be preferred because the single individual, small group or the masses govern in the interests of all. Aristotle declared that tyranny is clearly the worst of all possible constitutions since it reduces all citizens to the status of slaves. Monarchy and aristocracy are, on the other hand, impractical because they are based upon a god-like willingness to place the good of the community before one’s own interests. Aristotle accepted that polity, rule by the many in the interests of all, is the most practicable of constitutions, but feared that the masses might resent the wealth of the few and too easily come under the sway of a demagogue. He therefore advocated a ‘mixed’ constitution which would leave government in the hands of the ‘middle classes’, those who are neither rich nor poor.

Modern government, however, is far too complex to be classified simply on an Aristotelian basis. Moreover, the simplistic classification of regimes as First World, Second World and Third World has become impossible to sustain in the light of the political, ideological and economic changes that have occurred since the collapse of communism in the revolutions of 1989–91. What used to be called first world regimes are better categorised as ‘liberal democracies’. Their heartland was the industrialized West – North America, Europe and Australasia – but they now exist in most parts of the world as a result of the ‘waves of democratization’ that occurred in the post-1945 and post-1989 periods.

Such systems of government are ‘liberal’ in the sense that they respect the principle of limited government; individual rights and liberties enjoy some form of protection from government. Limited government is typi-cally upheld in three ways. In the first place, liberal democratic govern-ment is constitutional. A constitution defines the duties, responsibilities and functions of the various institutions of government and establishes the relationship between government and the individual. Second, government is limited by the fact that power is fragmented and dispersed throughout a number of institutions, creating internal tensions or ‘checks and balances’. Third, government is limited by the existence of a vigorous and indepen-dent civil society, consisting of autonomous groups such as businesses, trade unions, pressure groups and so forth. Liberal democracies are ‘democratic’ in the sense that government rests upon the consent of the governed. This implies a form of representative democracy in which the right to exercise government power is gained by success in regular and competitive elections. Typically, such systems possess universal adult suffrage and secret-ballot elections, and respect a range of democratic rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of movement. The cornerstone of liberal democratic government is political pluralism, the existence of a variety of political creeds, ideologies or philosophies and of open competition for power amongst a number of parties. 

There is, however, a number of differences among liberal democratic systems of government. Some of them, like the USA and France, are republics, whose heads of state are elected, while countries such as the UK and the Netherlands are constitutional monarchies. Most liberal democ-racies have a parliamentary system of government in which legislative and executive power is fused. In countries such as the UK, Germany, India and Australia, the government is both drawn from the legislature and accoun-table to it, in the sense that it can be removed by an adverse vote. The USA, on the other hand, is the classic example of a presidential system of government, based as it is upon a strict separation of powers between the legislature and the executive. President and Congress are separately elected and each possesses a range of constitutional powers, enabling it to check the other. Some liberal democracies possess majoritarian governments. These occur when a single party, either because of its electoral support or the nature of the electoral system, is able to form a government on its own. Typically, majoritarian democracies possess two-party systems in which power alternates between two major parties, as has traditionally occurred, for instance, in the USA, the UK and New Zealand. In continental Europe, on the other hand, coalition government has been the norm, the focal point of which is a continual process of bargaining among the parties that share government power and the interests they represent.

In the aftermath of the collapse of communism, and with the steady emergence of competitive and electoral processes at least in the newly industrialized states of the developing world, ‘end of ideology’ theorists such as Francis Fukuyama (1992) proclaimed that government throughout the world was being irresistibly remodelled on liberal-democratic lines. However, despite the advance of democratization since the 1980s, a number of alternatives to the Western liberal model of government can be identified. These include postcommunist government, East Asian government, Islamic government and military government. Postcommunist government has generally assumed an outwardly liberal-democratic form, with the adoption of multi-party elections and the introduction of market-based economic reforms. Nevertheless, to varying degrees, government in postcommunist states is distinguished by factors such as the absence or weakness of a civic culture that emphasizes participation, bargaining and consensus; instabilities arising from the transition from central planning to some form of market capitalism; and the general weakness of state power, particularly reflected in the re-emergence of ethnic and nationalist tensions or the rise of organized crime.

Government forms in East Asia, notably in Japan and the so-called ‘tiger’ economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, have tended to be characterized by the priority given to boosting growth and delivering prosperity, over considerations such as individual freedom in the Western sense of civil liberty. They often exhibit broad support for ‘strong’ government, sometimes exercised through powerful leaders or ‘ruling’ parties, underpinned by widely respected Confucian principles such as loyalty, discipline and duty. Islamic government contains both fundamentalist and pluralist forms. The fundamentalist version of political Islam is most commonly associated with Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban, where theocracies have been constructed in which political and other affairs have been structured according to ‘higher’ religious principles and political office has been closely linked to religious status. By contrast, in states such as Malaysia, Islam has the status of an official state religion but operates alongside a form of ‘guided’ democracy. Despite a general trend towards civilian government and some form of electoral democracy, military government continues to be important in Africa, the Middle East and parts of South-East Asia and Latin America. The classical form of military government is the junta, a clique of senior officers that seizes power through a revolution or coup d’e´tat. Other forms of military government include military-backed personalized dictatorships and regimes in which military leaders content themselves with ‘pulling the strings’ behind the scenes.

In the modern period, political analysts have often shifted their attention from the structures of government to the broader activities and processes of governing. This has been reflected in wider interest in the phenomenon of governance. Although it still has no settled or agreed definition, governance refers, in its widest sense, to the various ways in which social life is coordinated. Government can therefore be seen as merely one of the institutions involved in governance; it is possible to have ‘governance without government’ (Rhodes, 1996). From this perspective, a number of modes of governance can be identified, each of which helps to coordinate social life in its own way. Hierarchies, markets and networks (informal relationships and associations) offer alternative means of making collective decisions. The growing emphasis upon governance has resulted from two important shifts in modern government and, indeed, the larger society. In the first place, the boundaries between the state and civil society have become increasingly blurred through, for example, the growth of public/ private partnerships, the wider use within public bodies and state institu-tions of private-sector management techniques, and the increasing im-portance of so-called policy networks. Second, in the process of managing complex modern societies, government itself has become increasingly complex, leading to the idea of multi-level governance. Not only do supranational and subnational bodies now vie with national institutions, but government must deal with a growing array of non-state actors, ranging from the mass media to the institutions of global economic governance such as the WTO. The traditional image of government as a command and control system has thus been displaced by one which emphasizes instead bargaining, consultation and partnership.

Political Systems

Classifications of government are clearly linked to what are called ‘political systems’. However, the notion that politics is a ‘system’ is relatively new, only emerging in the 1950s, influenced by the development of systems theory and its application in works like Talcott Parsons’s The Social System (1951). It has, nevertheless, brought about a significant shift in the understanding of governmental processes. Traditional approaches to government focused upon the machinery of the state and examined the constitutional rules and institutional structure of a particular system of government. Systems analysis has, however, broadened the understanding of government by highlighting the complex interaction between it and the larger society. A ‘system’ is an organized or complex whole, a set of interrelated and interdependent parts that form a collective entity. Systems analysis therefore rejects a piecemeal approach to politics in favour of an overall approach: the whole is more important than its individual parts. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of relationships, implying that each part only has meaning in terms of its function within the whole. A political system therefore extends far beyond the institutions of govern-ment themselves and encompasses all those processes, relationships and institutions through which government is linked to the governed.

The seminal work in this area was David Easton’s The Political System ([1953] 1981). In defining politics as ‘the authoritative allocation of values’, Easton drew attention to all those processes which shape the making of binding decisions. A political system consists of a linkage between what Easton called ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’. Inputs into the political system consist of both demands and supports. Demands can take the form of the desire for higher living standards, improved employment prospects or welfare benefits, greater participation in politics, protection for minority and individual rights and so forth. Supports, on the other hand, are the ways in which the public contributes to the political system by paying taxes, offering compliance and being willing to participate in public life. Outputs consist of the decisions and actions of government, including the making of policy, the passing of laws, the imposition of taxes and the allocation of public funds. Clearly, these outputs generate ‘feedback’ which in turn will shape further demands and supports. As Easton conceived it, the political system is thus a dynamic process, within which stability is achieved only if outputs bear some relationship to inputs. In other words, if policy outputs do not satisfy popular demands these will progressively increase until the point when ‘systemic breakdown’ will occur. The capacity to achieve such stability is based upon how the flow of inputs into the political system is regulated by ‘gatekeepers’, such as interest groups and political parties, and the success of government itself in converting inputs into outputs.

Some political systems will be far more successful in achieving stability than others. It is sometimes argued that this explains the survival and spread of liberal-democratic forms of government. Liberal democracies contain a number of institutional mechanisms which force government to pay heed to popular demands, creating channels of communication between government and the governed. For instance, the existence of competitive party systems means that government power is gained by that set of politicians whose policies most closely correspond to the preferences of the general public. Even if politicians are self-seeking careerists, they must respond to electoral pressures to have any chance of winning office. Demands that are not expressed by parties or articulated at election time can be championed by interest groups or other lobbyists. Further, the institutional fragmentation typically found in liberal democracies offers competing interests a number of points of access to government.

On the other hand, stress can also build up within liberal-democratic systems. Electoral democracy, for example, may degenerate into a tyranny of the majority, depriving economic, ethnic or religious minorities of an effective voice. Similarly, parties and interest groups may be far more successful in advancing the demands of the wealthy, the educated and the articulate than they are in representing the poor and disadvantaged. Nevertheless, by comparison with liberal democracies, communist regimes operated within political systems that were clearly less stable. In the absence of party competition and independent pressure groups, the dominant party-state apparatus simply lacked mechanisms through which demands could be articulated, so preventing policy outputs from coming into line with inputs. Tensions built up in these systems, first expressed in dissent and later in open protest, fuelled by the emergence of better educated and more sophisticated urban populations and by the material affluence and political liberty apparently enjoyed in Western liberal democracies.

The analysis of government as a systemic process is, however, not without its critics. Although systems analysis is portrayed as a neutral and scientific approach to government, normative and ideological biases undoubtedly operate within it. Easton’s work, for example, reflects an essential liberal conception of politics. In the first place, it is based upon a consensus model of society that suggests that any conflicts or tensions that occur can be reconciled through the political process. This implies that an underlying social harmony exists within liberal capitalist societies. Further-more, Easton’s model assumes that a fundamental bias operates within the political system in favour of stability and balance. Systems are self-regulating mechanisms which seek to perpetuate their own existence, and the political system is no exception. Once again, this reflects the liberal theory that government institutions are neutral in the sense that they are willing and able to respond to all interests and groups in society. Such beliefs are linked not only to a particular conception of society but also to a distinctive view of the nature of state power.