Fourth Snippet from My New Book, >Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education<: Classification of Government Types Associated with the Twentieth Century (And This Early Stage of the Twenty-First Century)

In this article I provide the fourth snippet from my new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  Please scroll down the blog for the first three, taken from the chapters on World History, Economics, and Psychology.


The snippet provided here is just a small part of the chapter from  Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education on Political Science.  In that chapter I cover the great political theories of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and (Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de) Montesquieu.  I also provide the essentials of a course on United States government, with a review of the most important aspects of the United States Constitution and a discussion of how those constitutional principles inform the actual political life of the nation.  Necessarily, this involves presentation of the three branches of government, their interrelationship, and the most important current figures in the executive branch, the legislative chambers of the United States Congress, and the United States Supreme Court (including the role of the swing-vote justices on a court with an essential split otherwise into liberals and strict constructionists).


The section given here is focused on the major types of government that emerged in the 20th century and appear at this early juncture in the 21st century:




Classification of Government Types Associated with the Twentieth Century (And This Early Stage of the Twenty-First Century)


A. Absolute Monarchy


By the time (late 17th century into the early 18th century) of Louis XIV of France and the Tudor and Stewart dynasties (vied for control from the 12th into the early 18th centuries) of Great Britain, European monarchs had succeeded in centralizing power, building armies that made use of guns and artillery, and cultivating relationships with successful people from the mercantile class. In doing these things, monarchs diminished the power of feudal lords and increased their own power while also abetting the rise of a middle class (bourgeoisie). The latter consisted of professionals (physicians, lawyers, and theologically well-trained pastors), scholars, and business people whose status depended on their level of education, expertise, and wealth.


In the course of the 19th century, the aristocratic class lost much of its prestige; inherited, landed wealth as found in the feudal domains increasingly could not match the commercial riches generated by the mercantile class. In time, the middle class on whose tax base monarchs depended would induce the development of other governmental styles, but during the 17th and 18th centuries (and the early 19th century) absolute monarchies in Europe dominated the political scene.


Sometimes even claiming a divine right to rule, monarchs exercised great power at the central level of governance. This European style of governance had strong correlates in the central administrations of China, Japan, and Korea; and the form also had parallels in Africa and the Americas. Absolute monarchy featured a single hereditary ruler who held paramount authority over executive, legislative, and judicial aspects of governance.


But as early (1215) as King John’s signing of the Magna Carta, other political actors imposed certain restrictions on the power of the monarch. The Glorious Revolution (1688-1689) in Great Britain culminated in the monarchical duo of William and Mary conceding significant additional power to Parliament. By the 19th century those who sought to check the power of monarchs were drawing upon such precedents to produce a monarchical form in which the king or queen had to rule with much greater attention to the viewpoints and legislative initiative of those who sat in lawmaking bodies such as Parliament.


B. Constitutional Monarchy


From the time of the Glorious Revolution forward, Great Britain had a constitutional monarchy. This is the appellation applied to a political system that maintains a monarch possessing limited or merely ceremonial powers but places most governing authority in citizens and their representative institutions. These institutions--- executive, legislative, and judicial--- function according to overriding principles of constitutional law or legal precedent.


Great Britain, although it is the prototypical constitutional monarchy, actually has no formal constitutional document. Legal precedent (acquired via judgments made over the years that form the basis for agreed-upon legal principles), therefore, acts as a surrogate for the constitutional document. Other political systems, influenced by the limited monarchical system of Great Britain but also guided by legal principles featured in documents inspired by the United States Constitution, are more literally constitutional monarchies.


Today, nations operating as constitutional monarchies include Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark). Such systems model their legislative bodies on the British Parliament, headed by a prime minister. The latter is not elected directly but rather emerges as prime minister by virtue of leading the party that garners the most votes in national elections for Parliament.


In Great Britain, there are upper (House of Lords) and lower (House of Commons) chambers in the Parliament. In the course of the 20th century, the House of Commons emerged as the dominant lawmaking chamber. By tradition a chamber reserved for the aristocracy, the House of Lords today has little power; most legislation passes as a consequence of proposals emanating from and voted on by members of the House of Commons. Most other constitutional monarchies are also dominated by a legislative body similar to the House of Commons, or by that body in conjunction with an upper house of the American Senatorial type.


C. Liberal Democratic Republic


In the same way that the British political system is the exemplar of the constitutional monarchy, the political system of the United States serves as the model for the liberal democratic republic.


At the advent of the establishment of the United States of America, advocates for the republican (non-monarchical) form of government prevailed over those who would have preferred the constitutional monarchical system of Great Britain--- the imperialist, colonial power against which those in the fledgling nation had just successfully rebelled.


The existence of a prestigious if not very powerful king or queen lends a different tone to the political system in constitutional monarchies, but in most ways liberal democratic republics function similarly. Many liberal democratic republics do, though, follow the United States in elevating the position of President to the apex of national government. The president is elected in her or his own person, rather than as the leader of a party that emerges dominant in the parliamentary style.


In the United States, there is a popular vote that determines the presidential winner in each state, each of which has a number of electors in an Electoral College who cast the official votes for president; the number of electors assigned to each state consists of that state’s total number of members in the United States House of Representatives, together with the two members each state has in the United States Senate. Whether direct or indirect, most liberal democratic republics have some such vote of the citizenry for a president who possesses actual governing power.


Liberal democratic republics are strongly associated with capitalist economic institutions. The latter is true, too, of constitutional monarchies. In this sense, the politico-economic institutions prevailing in both constitutional monarchies and liberal democratic republics feature free elections and free enterprise; these in turn define the liberal society, as distinguished, for example, from fascist, communist, radical socialist, or dictatorial(authoritarian) socioeconomic formulations. When one reads, therefore, of “liberal democracy,” the reader should understand that the nomenclature pertains to democratic systems of both the constitutional monarchical and the liberal democratic republican type.




D. Radical Socialism and Communist Dictatorship


As capitalist economic systems in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States became ever more efficient in the production of marketable goods, the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx became convinced that the financial success of these systems lay in the ability of the bourgeoisie (owners and managers) to exploit the labor of the proletariat (factory workers).


In a theory that I explore in a succeeding section of the Political Science chapter from which this snippet is taken, Marx predicted that there would be a proletarian revolution in which the expropriated class (proletariat) overthrew the expropriating class (bourgeoisie) and in so doing reverse the direction of the expropriation. The proletariat would rise to power, with governance being exercised by leaders in a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Such a style of governance is properly labelled, “radical socialism.”


Marx predicted that the dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually wither away as society become ever more cooperative, replacing the competitive spirit that drives capitalism. According to Marxist theory, as the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat waned and the state withered away, a new type of person and an ideal society would appear: An ethically evolved human being possessing a compelling instinct to cooperate with one’s fellows would form a society that operated according to the principle of communal sharing, or “communism.”


Two major efforts were made in the 20th century to establish the radical socialist state as a stage in route to pure communism:


The first such effort culminated in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). Vladimir Lenin led the new government into the early 1920s. Josef Stalin outmaneuvered rivals such as Leon Trotsky to emerge as the paramount leader by the 1930s and would rule until his death in 1953. In part inspired by and in part compelled by the USSR to form similar states, most nations of Eastern Europe also became radical socialist states governed by communist parties in the aftermath of World War II.


The second major effort resulted in the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China with Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) as revolutionary strategist and paramount leader until his death in 1976. The Maoist revolution proved inspirational to some leaders in Africa, and in the course of the 1950s and succeeding decades communist revolutions succeeded in parts of Latin America.


Most famously (though his revolution began as a guerrilla movement not avowedly communist), Fidel Castro eventually established a communist government; although his revolution was propelled by peasant energies reminiscent of the Chinese case, Castro responded eagerly when leaders in the Soviet Union offered economic assistance, and it was the Soviet-Cuban relationship that proved so troubling to the United States between the years 1959-1991.


The communist system came to an end in Russia in 1991, two years after the crumbling of communist regimes in such Eastern European nations as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and East Germany in 1989. Cuba still officially features a communist government, as does China and the Asian nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.


But all currently existing communist regimes have moved to incorporate features of capitalist economy--- officially at odds with Marxist ideology. Karl Marx identified major incongruities in the capitalist system and promulgated a compelling theory of proletarian revolution. But at least three historical circumstances have thus far forestalled the establishment of an enduring communist regime: 


First, the revolutions in Russia and China both took place in countries in which industrial development was nascent and the proletariat was very small; Marx had predicted proletarian, not peasant revolution.


Second, in both major cases of communist dictatorship, the regimes proved far more authoritarian and less benevolent to the masses than Marx had envisioned for the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”


Third, liberal capitalist democracies borrowed certain features from socialist paradigms, with central government management of the Keynesian sort far exceeding anything that Adam Smith had foreseen; this socialist strain, along with the formation of labor unions, paradoxically forestalled proletarian, radical socialist revolution. Only time will tell if more fully developed industrial and postindustrial economies will produce anything like radical socialist or communist revolutions or institutions. Efforts to do so in the first act on the historical stage are either moribund or on the wane.


E. Democratic Socialism


But socialist institutions may be implemented in contexts that do not describe the Marxist ideal. Leaders and citizens in a number of nations have opted for a political system that takes Keynesian economics beyond the level of application apparent during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and in the ongoing entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) of the United States. These nations include the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; Germany; and Canada.


Western European nations in general--- including France, the Netherlands, and Belgium--- feature governments that provide more generous social welfare programs than is the case in the United States. Democratic socialist nations (also known as the socialist democracies) have elections and political institutions in much the manner of the United States and other Liberal Democratic societies. They also have a large capitalist component to their economies.  But democratic socialist systems feature central governments that control and manage programs for inexpensive universal health care, nation-wide transportation services (airlines, railroads, ocean-liners), and daycare; and they tend to maintain ownership and managerial control over key industries such as iron, coal, petroleum, auto-making, shipbuilding, and the like.


Most of these facets of the economy are left to the private sector in the United States, where similar initiatives such as the Affordable Health Care Act (which comes far short of establishing the single-payer health care system common in the socialist democracies) generate great political controversy. In the United States, liberal Democrats favoring such programs must contend with conservative Republicans who, objecting to the higher taxes and government intervention that accompany democratic socialism (and entitlement programs), prefer a more purely free enterprise approach.


Political scientists describe the United States as a center-right nation that leans heavily toward private enterprise as the provider of goods and services; versus the Western European center-left socialist democracies that also function substantially according to private enterprise but manifest considerably more enthusiasm for social welfare programs and socialized industry managed by the central government.




F. Fascist Dictatorship


By the 1920s in Europe, politico-economic conditions in three nations presented an opportunity for leaders seeking to attract public support for a political message that was different from that descriptive of Marxist radical socialism, democratic socialism, or liberal democracy. Following their loss in World War I (1918), the German people felt humiliated, especially in view of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919). This treaty blamed German aggression for the war; assessed heavy reparations (payment for destruction caused); and forced demilitarization (large-scale reduction of personnel and weaponry in the armed services) on Germany.


There was an attempt to establish liberal democracy in the form of the Weimar Republic. But the October 1929 stock market crash in the United States and the succeeding Great Depression of the 1930s caused international economic dislocations that fell hard on an already challenged German economy. The public tended to blame policies of Weimar Republic leaders and to give enthusiastic reception to the fiery oratory of Adolf Hitler.


Hitler castigated the Western democracies for their punitive actions against Germany in the aftermath of World War I. He accused the Jews of selfishly manipulating the German capitalist system for their own purposes, to the disadvantage of the German people. He touted the superiority of the Aryan race, his conception of the majority German population as ideally blonde, blue-eyed, and physically robust, possessing an intellectual acumen that made them destined to rule the world. He advocated greater control of the German economy by his Nazi (National Socialist) Party, not for establishing democratic socialism, and certainly not for instituting Marxist socialism with its emphasis on international proletarian solidarity. Rather, Hitler touted “national socialism,” entailing a particular blend of government control with private capitalism for the advancement of German economic might, military strength, and German power across the globe.


Under the Nazis, German society was subject to a totalitarian system in which secret police (the S. S. guards) conducted raids in the middle of the night, rounding up Jews and others considered offensive by the Nazi leadership; paramilitary S. A.forces (“Brown Shirts”) patrolled the streets in intimidating fashion; propaganda was fiercely disseminated via a variety of media; and every aspect of the lives of the people were monitored.


The regimes of Benito Mussolini (Italy) and Francisco Franco (Spain) did not establish such thoroughgoing totalitarian control, but they shared numerous features of fascism: supra-nationalism, glorifying the state and exalting patriotic fervor; the assertion of a classless society, with all citizens united in support of the state; “state capitalist” economies in which the central government favored those industries and firms deemed most useful to the state; heavy propaganda meant to ensure ideological uniformity; and the use of paramilitary forces highly effective in weeding out opponents.


Many of these features could be seen, too, in the Japanese government and society led by Tojo Hideki during this same period of the 1930s and 1940s in which fascist regimes held power in Europe; thus, the regimes that dominated the Axis coalition (opposed by the Allies) during World War II were all effective in espousing a chauvinist (supra-nationalist) ideology capable of motivating the unified, officially classless masses to seek personal identity in support of expansionist military efforts for glorification of the state--- and, therefore, the self.


The regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo ended with defeat in World War II; Franco, who warily had kept Spain on the fringe of the Axis coalition, held power until his death in the 1970s. Leaders in a number of Latin American and African regimes established rightist governments with fascist characteristics during the decades succeeding World War II; for many decades, governments in Taiwan and in South Korea also maintained institutions and operated from ideologies at the right end of the political continuum, opposite from radical socialism and communism on the far left.


But in the course of the 1990s, rightist regimes tended to meet the same fate as their leftist counterparts, as democracies of variously liberal republican, constitutional monarchical, or democratic socialist types seemed destined to lead most of the world’s population into the 21st century.