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Term Description Examples Autocracy: Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power (social and political) is concentrated in the hands of one person or polity, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection).
Anti-Federalists, who were opposed to the new Constitution, were generally local rather than cosmopolitan in perspective, oriented to plantations and farms rather than commerce or finance, and wanted strong state governments and a weak national government. According to political scientist James Wilson, the Anti-Federalists "were much more ...
A disconnect between "the power to set government policy" and political opinions of the general public has been noted by commentators and scholars (such as David Leonhardt). [87] The United States is "far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world," according to Steven Levitsky. [88]
Federalist No. 51 addresses the separation of powers, the federal structure of government and the maintenance of checks and balances by "opposite and rival interests" within the national government. One of Federalist No. 51's most important ideas, an explanation of checks and balances, is the often-quoted phrase, "Ambition must be made to ...
The U.S. Constitution was written as a replacement for the Articles of Confederation, under which the United States was a loose confederation with a weak central government. In contrast, Europe has a greater history of unitary states than North America, thus European "federalism" argues for a weaker central government, relative to a unitary state.
Dual federalism, also known as layer-cake federalism or divided sovereignty, is a political arrangement in which power is divided between the federal and state governments in clearly defined terms, with state governments exercising those powers accorded to them without interference from the federal government.
Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, British political philosopher John Locke was a major influence, [89] expanding on the contract theory of government advanced by Thomas Hobbes, his contemporary. [90] Locke advanced the principle of consent of the governed in his Two Treatises of Government.
The sociological interest in political systems is figuring out who holds power within the relationship between the government and its people and how the government’s power is used. According to Yale professor Juan José Linz , there are three main types of political systems today: democracies , totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these ...