A government is the body within a community, political entity or organization An organization is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, controls its own performance, and has a boundary separating it from its environment. The word itself is derived from the Greek word ὄργανον (organon [itself derived from the better-known word ἔργον ergon - work; deed - > ergonomics, etc]) meaning tool which has the authority The word authority derives from the Latin word auctoritas meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence or commands which originate from an auctor indicating that authority originates from a master, leader or author. Essentially authority is imposed by superiors upon inferiors either by force of arms or by force of argument (sapiential authority) to make and enforce rules, laws, and regulations.[citation needed]

Typically, the term "government" refers to a civil government Civil authority is that apparatus of the State other than its military units that enforces law and order. It is also used to distinguish between religious authority (for example Canon law) and secular authority. In a religious context it may be defined "as synonymous with human government, in contradistinction to a government by God, or the or sovereign state A sovereign state, commonly simply referred to as a state, is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. While in abstract terms a sovereign state can exist without being recognised by other sovereign states, which can be either local, national, or international. However, commercial Commerce is a division of trade or production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer. It comprises the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information, or money between two or more entities. Commerce functions as the central mechanism which drives capitalism and certain other, academic, religious A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs, or other formal organizations are also governed by internal bodies. Such bodies may be called boards of directors A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. The body sometimes has a different name, such as board of trustees, board of governors, board of managers, or executive board. It is often simply referred to as "the board.", managers, or governors A governor is a governing official, usually the executive (at least nominally, to different degrees also politically and administratively) of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state. In federations, a governor may be the title of each appointed or elected politician who governs a constituent state or they may be known as the administration (as in schools) or councils of elders (as in churches). The size of governments can vary by region or purpose.

Growth of an organization advances the complexity In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of network theory and network science. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are reflected in this article. In a of its government, therefore small towns or small-to-medium privately-operated enterprises will have fewer officials than typically larger organizations such as multinational corporations which tend to have multiple interlocking, hierarchical A hierarchy (Greek: hierarchia , from hierarches, "leader of sacred rites") is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another and with only one "neighbor" above and below each layers of administration and governance. As complexity increases and the nature of governance becomes more complicated, so does the need for formal policies and procedures.

Contents

Types of governments

The following text needs to be harmonized with text in Form of government A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political institutions by which a government of a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a body politic. Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government". This definition holds even if the government is unsuccessful in exerting its.
A color-coded legend of forms of government. Click on map to see the legend. Main article: Form of government A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political institutions by which a government of a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a body politic. Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government". This definition holds even if the government is unsuccessful in exerting its
For a list of government forms, see List of forms of government This article lists forms of government and political systems, according to a series of different ways of categorising them. The systems listed are of course not mutually exclusive, and often have overlapping definitions
The United States Capitol The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the Federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall. Though not in the geographic center of the District of Columbia, the Capitol is the origin by which the houses the United States Congress The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election, the federal The Federal government of the United States is the central government entity established by the United States Constitution, which shares sovereignty over the United States with the governments of the individual U.S. states. The federal government has three branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. Through a system of separation of powers legislature.

Origin

For many thousands of years when people were hunter-gatherers A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. Hunter-gatherers obtain most from gathering rather than hunting; up to 80% of the food is obtained by gathering. The and small scale farmers, humans lived in small, non-hierarchical Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or otherwise undesirable, and favour instead a stateless society or anarchy. Individual anarchists may have additional criteria for what they conceive to be anarchism, and there is often broad disagreement concerning these and self-sufficient Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy. On a large scale, a totally self-sufficient economy that does not trade with the outside world is called an autarky communities.

The development of agriculture resulted in ever increasing population densities.[7] David Christian explains how this helped result in states with laws and governments:

As farming populations gathered in denser and larger communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, in a striking parallel with star formation, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Like stars, cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field. —David Christian, p. 245 , Maps of Time

The exact moment and place that the erectional phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of very early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared.[7] By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: Sumer Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, Iraq. It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization. The Sumerian civilization spanned over 3000 years and began with the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period (mid 6th millennium BC) through the Uruk period (4th, Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and it developed over the next three millennia. Its history, the Indus Valley Civilization The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization (mature period 2600–1900 BCE) which was centred mostly in the western part of the Indian Subcontinent and which flourished around the Indus river basin.[n 1] Primarily centered along the Indus and the Punjab region, the civilization extended into the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley and the, and the Yellow River Civilization This is a list of Neolithic cultures of China that have been discovered by archaeologists. They are sorted in chronological order from the earliest founding to the latest and are followed by a schematic visualization of these cultures.[8]

States formed as the results of a positive feedback loop where population growth results in increased information exchange which results in innovation which results in increased resources which results in further population growth.[9][10] The role of cities in the feedback loop is important. Cities became the primary conduits for the dramatic increases in information exchange that allowed for large and densely packed populations to form, and because cities concentrated knowledge, they also ended up concentrating power.[11][12] "Increasing population density in farming regions provided the demographic and physical raw materials used to construct the first cities and states, and increasing congestion provided much of the motivation for creating states."[13]

Fundamental purpose

According to supporters of government,the fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order Social order is a concept used in sociology, history and other social sciences. It refers to a set of linked social structures, social institutions and social practices which conserve, maintain and enforce "normal" ways of relating and behaving.[14] The philosopher Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory figured that people were rational animals and thus saw submission to a government dominated by a sovereign as preferable to anarchy The tumult of the English Civil War led to the term to be taken up in political philosophy. Anarchy was one of the issues at the Putney Debates of 1647:.[15][16] According to Hobbes, people in a community create and submit to government for the purpose of establishing for themselves, safety and public order.[16][17][18][19]

Early examples

These are examples of some of the earliest known states:

Expanded roles

Military defens

The fundamental purpose of government is to maintain social order and protect property. “Security of person and property, and equal justice between individuals, are the first needs of society, and the primary ends of government: if these things can be left to any responsibility below the highest, there is nothing, except war and treaties, which requires a general government at all.” [22]

Militaries are created to deal with the highly complex task of confronting large numbers of enemies.

Once governments came onto the scene, they began to form and use armies for conflicts with neighboring states, and for conquest of new lands. Governments seek to maintain monopolies on the use of force,[23] and to that end, they usually suppress the development of private armies within their borders.

Social security

Social security is related to economic security. Throughout most of human history, parents prepared for their old age by producing enough children to ensure that some of them would survive long enough to take care of the parents in their old age.[24] In modern, relatively high-income societies, a mixed approach is taken where the government shares a substantial responsibility of taking care of the elderly.[24]

This is not the case everywhere since there are still many countries where social security through having many children is the norm. Although social security is a relatively recent phenomenon, prevalent mostly in developed countries, it deserves mention because the existence of social security substantially changes reproductive behavior in a society, and it has an impact on reducing the cycle of poverty.[24] By reducing the cycle of poverty, government creates a self-reinforcing cycle where people see the government as friend both because of the financial support they receive late in their lives, but also because of the overall reduction in national poverty due to the government's social security policies—which then adds to public support for social security.[25]

Aspects of government

The Parliament of the United Kingdom, the 'Mother of all Parliaments'

Governments vary greatly, as do the relationships of citizens of a state to its government.

Abuse of power

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The leaders of governments are human beings, and given human nature, what constitutes good governance has been a subject written about since the earliest books known. In the western tradition Plato wrote extensively on the question, most notably in The Republic. He (in the voice of Socrates) asked if the purpose of government was to help ones friends and hurt ones enemies, for example. Aristotle, Plato's student picked up the subject in his treatise on Politics. Many centuries later, John Locke addressed the question of abuse of power by writing on the importance of checks and balances [26] to prevent or at least constrain abuse. It is believed that Thomas Jefferson was influenced by John Locke.[27]

Legitimacy

The concept of legitimacy is central to the study of governments. Statists have attempted to formalize ways to legitimize government or state authority.

Social contract theorists, such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rosseau, believe that governments reduce people's freedom/rights in exchange for protecting them, and maintaining order. Many people question, however, whether this is an actual exchange (where people voluntarily give up their freedoms), or whether they are taken by threat of force by the ruling party.

Other statist theorists, like David Hume, reject social contract theory on the grounds that, in reality, consent is not involved in state-individual relationships and instead offer different definitions of legitimacy based on practicality and usefulness.

Anarchists, on the other hand, claim that legitimacy for an authority must be consensual and reject the concept of states altogether; For them, authority must be earned not self-legitimated. For example, a police officer does not earn his authority as a doctor does since the authority is voluntarily transferred to the doctor while the police officer just takes it.

Criticised aspects

War

In the most basic sense, people of one nation will see the government of another nation as the enemy when the two nations are at war.[original research?] For example, the people of Carthage saw the Roman government as the enemy during the Punic wars.[28]

Enslavement

In early human history, the outcome of war for the defeated was often enslavement. The enslaved people would not find it easy to see the conquering government as a friend.

Religious opposition

People with religious views opposed to the official state religion will have a greater tendency to view that government as their enemy. A good example would be the condition of Roman Catholicism in England before the Catholic Emancipation. Protestants—who were politically dominant in England—used political, economic and social means to reduce the size and strength of Catholicism in England over the 16th to 18th centuries, and as a result, Catholics in England felt that their religion was being oppressed.[29]

Class oppression

Whereas capitalists in a capitalist country may tend to see that nation's government positively, a class-conscious group of industrial workers—a proletariat—may see things very differently.[original research?] If the proletariat wishes to take control of the nation's productive resources, and they are blocked in their endeavors by continuing adjustments in the law made by capitalists in the government,[30] then the proletariat will come to see the government as their enemy—especially if the conflicts become violent.

The same situation can occur among peasants. The peasants in a country, e.g. Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great, may revolt against their landlords, only to find that their revolution is put down by government.[original research?]

Critical views and alternatives

The relative merits of various forms of government have long been debated by philosophers, politicians and others. However, in recent times, the traditional conceptions of government and the role of government have also attracted increasing criticism from a range of sources. Some argue that the traditional conception of government, which is heavily influenced by the zero-sum perceptions of state actors and focuses on obtaining security and prosperity at a national level through primarily unilateral action, is no longer appropriate or effective in a modern world that is increasingly connected and interdependent.

Human security

One such school of thought is human security, which advocates for a more people-based (as opposed to state-based) conception of security, focusing on protection and empowerment of individuals. Human security calls upon governments to recognise that insecurity and instability in one region affects all and to look beyond national borders in defining their interests and formulating policies for security and development. Human security also demands that governments engage in a far greater level of cooperation and coordination with not only domestic organisations, but also a range of international actors such as foreign governments, intergovernmental organisations and non-government organisations.

Whilst human security attempts to provide a more holistic and comprehensive approach to world problems, its implementation still relies to a large extent on the will and ability of governments to adopt the agenda and appropriate policies. In this sense, human security provides a critique of traditional conceptions of the role of government, but also attempts to work within the current system of state-based international relations. Of course, the unique characteristics of different countries and resources available are some constraints for governments in utilising a human security framework.

Anarchism

Anarchists are those who disagree with using government violence as a means to solve complex social issues—or, in other words, they say that no entity can be self-legitimated to use force and explicit consent is necessary for legitimacy within a collective group or government. There are many forms of anarchist theories but under anarchy, these many different groups and individuals would seemingly need to deal with each other in the same way that people deal with their neighbors in the real world. Some anarchists, such as anarcho-syndicalists or anarcho-primitivists, advocate egalitarianism and non-hierarchical societies while others, such as anarcho-capitalists, advocate free markets, individual sovereignty and freedom.

See also: anarchy in international relations

See also

Levels of civil government:

Notes

  1. ^ Fotopoulos, Takis, The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy. (Athens: Gordios, 2005).(English translation of the book with the same title published in Greek).
  2. ^ "Victorian Electronic Democracy : Glossary". July 28, 2005. http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/SARC/E-Democracy/Final_Report/Glossary.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
  3. ^ American 503
  4. ^ American 1134
  5. ^ American 1225
  6. ^ American 1793
  7. ^ a b Christian 245
  8. ^ a b c d e Christian 294
  9. ^ Christian 253
  10. ^ Most of this sentence is in the present tense because the process is still ongoing.
  11. ^ Christian 271
  12. ^ The concept of the city itself became a self-reinforcing cycle. "The creation of such large and dense communities required new forms of power", and since cities concentrate power, the new (sovereign) rulers had incentives to build and expand cities to further increase their power.(Christian 271,321)
  13. ^ Christian 248
  14. ^ Schulze 81
  15. ^ Dietz 68
  16. ^ a b Social Contract Theory
  17. ^ Dietz 65-66
  18. ^ Hobbes idea of the necessity of the formation of government is known as the social contract theory.
  19. ^ The field of study and thought about the necessity of governments and governments' relationships with people is known as political philosophy.
  20. ^ Higham, "Indus Valley Civilization"
  21. ^ Haas, Jonathan; Winifred Creamer, Alvaro Ruiz (23 December 2004). "Dating the Late Archaic occupation of the Norte Chico region in Peru". Nature 432: 1020–1023. doi:10.1038/nature03146.
  22. ^ John Stuart Mill in Representative Government, 1861
  23. ^ Adler 80-81
  24. ^ a b c Nebel 165-166
  25. ^ Bruce Bartlett. Social Security Then and Now. COMMENTARY. March 2005, Vol. 119, No. 3, pp. 52-56. In the online version on paragraph 13 it suggests that, During the Great Depression, Roosevelt wanted to suppress revolutionary tendencies by tying workers to the state—hence a state-run social security system. Also read the paragraphs above where it talks about populist demagogues and socialist revolutions in other countries. Tying workers to the state through social security was a politically strategic move designed to preserve the United States of America and its democracy.
  26. ^ Thefreemanonline.org
  27. ^ Stanford.edu
  28. ^ E.L. Skip Knox. "The Punic Wars". Department of History, Boise State University. http://history.boisestate.edu/WESTCIV/punicwar/. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
  29. ^ "Catholic Encyclopedia: England (Since the Reformation)". www.newadvent.org. 1913. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05445a.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
  30. ^ Christian 358

References

  • Kenoyer, J. M. Ancient Cities of the Indus Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998
  • Possehl, Gregory L. Harappan Civilization: A Recent Perspective. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993
  • Indus Age: The Writing System. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996
  • “Revolution in the Urban Revolution: The Emergence of Indus Urbanisation,” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990): 261–282.

External links

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