Introduction
Political science as a discipline has a number of concepts; equality, government, freedom, nature of good life, politics, power, force, authority, structure, system, constitution, democracy, balance of power, separation of power and legitimacy just to name but a few. In my essay I will discuss three concepts; government, democracy and the constitution.
Government
The above refers to the structures or institutions that are responsible primarily for making public policy for an entire nation or society. According to Harold Lasswell it’s a system that determines who gets what, when and how. David Easton defines government as an authority that allocates resources. Karl Deutsch argues that government is the steering mechanism for a given society. Plato on the other hand defines it as the helmsman for the ship of state (Graham 12).
Government normally consists of legislators, administrators and arbitrators.
According to Lijphart (33), government forms vary from state to state across the world. The United States government is a federal republic, while the former Solviet Union was a socialist republic. Every country in the world is ruled by a system of governance that combines at least two of the following attributes. The United States for example is not a true capitalist society. This is because the government provides social services for its citizens (Held 22). Plato discussed five government regimes; Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny. Aristocracy was rule by elite citizens. Geniocracy was rule by the intelligent. Kratocracy was rule by the strong. Meritocracy was rule the meritorious and Timocracy was rule by the educated or technical experts. Governments could also be capitalistic characterized by free market economy.
Communism is where the working class owns the businesses and farms shares. Feudalism on the hand is where all the land is owned by the king (Graham 32). Socialism is where governments own many of the large industries and provide education, health and welfare services to its citizens who are allowed to some economic choices.
According to Lijphart (12), each government has three arms; the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The objective of having the three is separation of power. The legislature is basically mandated with the responsibility of making laws. The judiciary implements the laws while the executive makes laws official.
Democracy
Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. Governments with democratic attributes are most common in the Western world and some countries of the East who have been influenced by the Western society especially after colonization (Graham 24). In a democratic country all the people can vote during elections for representatives or political parties they prefer. They can elect representatives who will sit on Legislatures such as parliament or congress. Democratic government is therefore one supported by the majority. Democracy could further be described into demarchy, direct democracy, liberal democracy, representative democracy, social democracy and totalitarian democracy (Held 27).
Demarchy is a variant of democracy that stands for a government in which the state is governed by randomly selected by a pool of eligible citizens. These groups deliberately make decisions about public policies. Demarchy helps overcome some of the functional problems of conventional representatives which are subject to manipulation by special interests groups and policy makers. According to John Burnheim, random selection of policy makers makes it easy for everyday citizens to meaningfully participate and harder for special interests groups to corrupt the process (Held 32).
Direct democracy describes a government in which the people represent themselves and vote directly for new laws and public policy. Liberal democracy on the other hand describes a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of liberalism. It is characterized by fair, free and competitive elections. Liberal governments usually draw a constitution either formally written or uncodified to delineate the powers of government. Liberal government after the 20th century has become the predominant system in the world.
Representative democracy on the other hand is wherein the people of a country elect representatives to create and implement public policies (Graham 8). This is in place of active participation by the people. Social democracy rejects polarization interpretation of capitalism versus socialism. It claims that fostering a progressive evolution of capitalism will slowly result in the evolution of capitalist economy into socialist economy. Socialism advocates for freedom from discrimination based on; disability, age, sex, race, language and social class. Totalitarian democracy refers to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while given the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision making process of the government.
Constitution
This is a legal document that outlines the basic structures and functions of an organization. It is a set of fundamental principles or precedents according to which a state is governed. Constitutions concern different levels of organization (Graham 18). This ranges from sovereign states to companies. It defines principles within states upon which the state is based, the law making procedure and by whom. The codified constitutions mostly act as limiters of state power by establishing lines which a state’s rulers can’t access.
The constitution of India is the longest written constitution of any sovereign state while that of the United States is the shortest. In most cases the constitution has supremacy over ordinary statutory law. Constitutions could be classified into codified and uncodified. A codified constitution is a single act or document. Uncodified on the other hand is fully written in few documents. In other words constitutions could be written or unwritten (Held 17).
Conclusion
As discussed above it is clear that political science has a variety of concepts that could be discussed. I have tried to discuss government, constitution and democracy partially. Different scholars have tried to define different concepts differently as seen above (Graham 12)
Work Cited
Lijphart, A. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-six Countries. New Haven. Yale University Press. 1999.
Held, D. Models of democracy. California. Stanford University Press. 2006.
Graham, P. Introduction to Political Concepts. Australia. Pearson Education Australia. 2006.
