Chapter 6

KINDS OF GOVERNMENT

Forms of governments are more numerous than forms of states, for the reason
that the criteria for classifying governments are more numerous than that of states.
Basically, governments are classified according to the following 1) number of
rulers and their kind of rulership, 2) degree of citizen participation in decision
making regarding public affairs, 3) relation between the executive and the
legislature, and 4) territorial distribution of governmental powers. In accordance
with the first criterion, governments will be classified and discussed in this
chapter.

Monarchy, Aristocracy, Polity and their Opposites. It was Aristotle who

first classified states or governments. In doing so, he used the first criterion – the
number of rulers and the kind of their rulerships – on the basis of which six forms
of government were discovered by him. As illustrated below, they are: 1)
monarchy if one man rules for the good of all the people, the opposite or
perversion of which is tyranny; 2) aristocracy if few persons rule for the god of all,
the opposite of which is oligarchy; and 3) polity if many persons rule for the good
of all, the opposites likewise of which is democracy.

ARISTOTLE’S CLASSIFICATION OF GOVERNMENTS

Rulers rule in the interest of:

No. of Rulers All Themselves

One man Monarchy Tyranny
Few persons Aristocracy Oligarchy
Many persons Polity Democracy

Let it be explained here why Aristotle classified democracy as a bad or

perverted form of government. It might be that Aristotle had a jaundiced view of
the Athenian democracy because of his “fear that the rule of the “Many” would
typically lead to the tyranny of the poor and propertyless majority over the middle
classes. Or that Aristotle committed and error in his classification, because when
he discussed democracy, he introduced another criterion – property ownership –
which was not used by him with the other kinds of government. Consequently ,
commented one writer, Aristotle muddled his original classification scheme.
 For quite a long period of time Aristotle’s classification was widely accepted.
This time, however, modern students of political science are monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy as the good type of governments; and into tyranny,
oligarchy, mobocracy as the perverted or bad forms of government. This modern
scheme of classification is illustrated below.

MODERN VERSION OF ARISTOTLE’S CLASSIFICATION

Rulers rule in the interest of:

No. of Rulers All Themselves

One man Monarchy Tyranny
Few persons Aristocracy Oligarchy
Many persons Democracy Mobocracy

As the above illustration indicates, monarchy is the rule of one man for the
good of all the people; whereas tyranny is the rule of one man for his own good
only. Aristocracy is the rule of few persons for the good of all, while oligarchy is
the rule of few persons for their self-interest only. That democracy is the rule of
the many for their own good only. All these forms of governments will be more
discussed below.

Rule of One:

A. Monarchy. Monarchy is a form of government which vests political

authority in a king or equivalent regal potentate. The power of the kingship is
either limited or unlimited and succession to the office is either hereditary elective.
Monarchy is absolute or unlimited when the monarch is unrestrained by law in the
exercise of the powers of his office, that is, he governs according to his own free
will. Absolutism is best typified by the oriental regimes of the ancient, like
Japan’s emperorship’s of the 1880’s and by the European kingdoms prior to the
great revolutions the 17th-19th centuries, especially Russia’s tsarist regime before
1917 and Germany’s totalitarian rule before the Weimar constitutional
government of 1919.

Monarchy is limited when the Monarch chooses to exercise the powers of

government in accordance with laws and in conjunction with the regularly
established organs of government, such as the German and Austro-Hungarian
government before 1981, whereby each Emperor was flanked by an elected
Parliament which exercised the powers of law making while he, the Emperor,
retained his executive powers.

B. Tyranny. Tyranny is one-man rule which is unrestricted by law or custom.

It is exemplified by the governments of the absolute Kings of Europe and the
despotic Emperors of Asia during the ancient times who carried on wars of
expansion for their own self-interest.

Monarchy and tyranny are similar in, at least, one respect; that is, they are both
one man relership. However, they are different in many respects: first, the
monarch rules for the general welfare, while the tyrant rules for his own good;
second, while the power of the monarch may be either limited or unlimited, that of
the tyrant is always absolute and unlimited; and third, while the monarch may
have acquired his office by inheritance or election, the tyrant may have acquired
such office by means or, a combination of any two or more of these.

The Rule of the Few:

A. Aristocracy. Aristocracy is a form of government in which political power

is exercised by a relatively small and especially qualified class. It is sometimes
call “government by the best,” due to the fact that access to the ruling aristocratic
class is based not only on birth and wealth, but also upon physical, intellectual and
moral qualities. Strictly speaking, there were very few of such kind of
government in history and practically none at present. Perhaps, Plato’s ideal state
in his book, Republic, is the idealization of this government by the best.

B. Oligarchy. Oligarchy is defined as a government whereby authority is

vested upon few individuals of families. This small coterie of individuals include
those who, because of economic or other power, influence government policies for
their own benefits even though they lack formal authority. It is difficult to cite an
example of oligarchy because in every case those who govern under it would of
course argue that their regime is for the good of all the people. But where under
any particular form of rulership it appears that only the rich derive benefits or
advantages, the government is oligarchy. It is from this context that President
Marcos classified the Philippine society before Martial Law as oligarchy. He said:
“Ours tends to be an oligarchic society. This simply means that the economic gap
between the rich and the poor provides the wealthy few the opportunity to exercise
undue influence on the political authority….. When I speak of oligarchy, I refer to
the few who would promote their selfish interest through indirect or irresponsible
exercise of public and private power.”

Aristocracy and oligarchy are the same in one aspect, that is, both are
government of the few. However, the two manifest several dissimilarities first,
aristocracy is a rule of the few for the good of all the people, which is oligarchy is
rule of the few for such group’s own good only; second, aristocracy is a direct rule
of the aristocratic class, while oligarchy either direct of indirect rule or both of the
rich class; third, while political power is gained in aristocracy by reason of birth
and special qualities, in oligarchy it is gained by reason of wealth or property.

The Rule of the Many:

A. Democracy. Professor Dahl defines democracy as “a political system in

which the opportunity to participate in decisions is widely shared among all adult
citizens.”

Viewed from historical perspective, democracy has been either direct or

indirect. Democracy is direct or pure when the people themselves discharge the
three powers of government. In other words, the people are the rulers and the
ruled, or the governors and the governed at the same time. And democracy is
indirect (representative democracy) when the people govern themselves through
elected public officials. Pure democracy, however, is mostly applicable to
societies with small populations and agrarian economies, for the reason that the
people could easily gather themselves together to transact public affairs, as in the
cases of the Greek city-states of pre-history and the New England towns of the
United States during the initial period of American history. Conversely,
representative democracy is best suited to complex societies, such as modern
states, with large populations and industrial economist that make impracticable
and impossible for he people to meet and assemble at the same time in one place
to discharge the powers and functions of the government.

B. Mobocracy. Mobocracy has not yet been concretely defined by text-

writers. The reason probably is the nothing of this kind of government has ever
been tried in practice. But literally speaking, mobocracy denotes authority of the
mob, or just simply “mob rule” as Willoughby calls it, because the root-words
“cracy” refer to “mob” and “authority” respectively. In other words, mobocracy
resembles tyranny of the majority because the many (the mob) govern for their
own good only by ignoring the minority.