Government
From RationalWiki
| “ | Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty. | ” |
| —Barnhill, John Basil (1914). | ||
A government is a system designed to make sure the citizens of a nation play nicely with its other citizens. Several different types of government have been implemented in attempts to accomplish that goal, with widely varying results. Some people are okay with their current form of government, but others express their displeasure through acts of civil disobedience or revolution.
Governments are generally held responsible for the form and nature of the domestic economic system employed by a country, and also for the level of personal freedom enjoyed by its citizens. It is a tenet of the structure of the liberal theory of international relations that all governments are responsible to some fraction of the citizenry, and that understanding this can lead to better understanding the choices governments make.[1] This goes against the unitary actor model, beloved by realists, that states that the actual structure of governments does not matter for policy decisions.
In international affairs, the government acts on behalf of its people, negotiating treaties, starting, ending, or avoiding wars, and managing how foreign trade is conducted.
Sometimes, we see what might be called "hybrid government" systems, where some tenets of different systems are fused together, such as a dictatorship that is still up for (real) periodic elections.[2]
Government is considered by many to be a necessary evil.
[edit] See also
- Anarchy
- Aristocracy
- Democracy
- Dictatorship
- Mobocracy
- Monarchy
- Oligarchy
- Provisional Imperial Government
- Republic
