Systems of Government

A system of government refers to the basic rules and values that determine how politics works in a country. These rules and values are related to the following questions:

• Who should have power in society?
• How equally should power be distributed?
• How should this power be used?
• What limits should there be on the power of leaders?

The most basic difference that we can talk about in systems of government is democracy vs. authoritarianism. However, there is no such thing as a “pure” democracy and there are very few authoritarian systems that do not have some democratic features. The descriptions given here are meant to describe extremes. Most states have some democratic and some authoritarian features and are somewhere in between these two extremes.