Abstract
Attempts to produce a classification of political institutions can be dated back to the beginnings of the study of political science. Aristotle made one of the earliest attempts to classify government structures. He distinguished between states ruled by one person, by the few and the many — monarchy, aristocracy and mixed government. His intention was not only to describe but to evaluate and thus he extended his classification scheme to their ‘perverted’ forms, which he labelled tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. He realised, however, that these types did not exist in their pure forms, thus noting that classification in political science is a search for ‘ideal’ types.1
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References
The Politics of Aristotle, trans. with an introduction by Ernest Barker (Oxford, 1946) particularly bk iv.
See J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1957) ch. 8.
Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. T. Nugent (London, 1966) bk ii:, ch. 1, p. 8.
Ibid., bk ii, ch. iii, p. 15.
Ibid., bk viii, ch. xix, p. 122.
Ibid., bk viii, ch. xvi, p. 120.
See chapter 1.
R. A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964) p. 30.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (London, 1968) i, 345.
See especially S. M. Lipset, The First New Nation (London, 1963).
Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (London, 1967).
See G. A. Almond and G. B. Powell, Comparative Politics, System, Process and Policy, 2nd ed. (Boston, Mass., 1978).
B. Crick, In Defence of Politics (London, 1964) p. 56.
There are many examples of différent typologies: see Maurice Duverger’s distinction between pluralist systems and monolithic systems, The Idea of Politics (London, 1966) pp. 92–5; See also S. E. Finer, Comparative Government (London, 1970), and B. Crick, Basic Forms of Government: A Sketch and a Model (London, 1973).
J. Blondel (ed.), Comparative Government (London, 1969) p. xxxviii.
C. Friedrich and Z. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 2nd ed. (Massachusetts, 1965) p. 22.
For wide ranging discussion of the usefulness of the concept of ‘totalitarianism’, see, inter alia, C. J. Friedrich, B. R. Barber, and M. Curtis, Totalitarianism in Perspective: Three Views (London, 1969); L. Schapiro, Totalitarianism (London, 1972); R. Burrowes, ‘Totalitarianism: the Revised Standard Edition’, World Politics, vol. 21, no 2 (Jan. 1969) pp. 272–89; R. Cornell (ed.), The Soviet Political System (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1970).
For a discussion of the problem of classifying radical military regimes see J. Markakis and M. Waller (eds.), ‘Military Marxist Regimes in Africa’, The Journal of Communist Studies, Vol. 1, Nos 3 and 4, Sept/Dec, 1985.
For a discussion of aspects of federalism, see K. C. Wheare, Federal Government, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1963), and W. H. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Massachusetts, 1964); also, Ivo Duchacek, Comparative Federalism (New York, 1970).
For an examination of Soviet federalism, see E. Goldhagen (ed.), Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union (Praeger, NY, 1968).
For the impeachment process in the United States, see R. Berger, Impeachment. The Constitutional Problems (New York, 1974).
See the essays by R. Neustadt in The British Prime Minister, ed. A. King (London, 1969).
Archives Européennes de Sociologie, i, 1 (1960).
P. Avril, Politics in France (London, 1969) p. 18.
See particularly the categories used by S. E. Finer, Comparative Government (London, 1970).
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© 1988 Alan R. Ball
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Ball, A.R. (1988). Classification of Governments. In: Modern Politics and Government. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19347-9_3
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