Philosodata: Political Systems

This is an informal list of how to manage vast groups of people based on geography.

While every political system is heavily influenced by its regional culture, there are some broad patterns of how the leadership will run things.

It’s worth noting that these classifications aren’t clear-cut because of politicized image distortion and trends, so countries often represent multiple groups at once. They also can be left or right, since this simply has to do with balancing control, but not on what direction to guide it.

Features/divisions

In a large government, there are multiple organizational elements:

  1. A head of state who makes decisions (supposedly) on behalf of the people and engages diplomatically with other nations
  2. A head of government who manages the people inside the government
  3. A cabinet of various departmental heads that oversee various bureaucratic elements (e.g., investigation bureau, environmental regulations)
  4. A legislature made of people who make laws

These four elements can mix-and-match depending on how the government is framed. Often, the public has no control over anything except (possibly) electing their legislature, though more free societies will have elections for their heads of state and government.

In all reality, though, the amount of power at play means there’s plenty of image distortion about these roles and their actual power. Most governments that last more than about 1-2 decades become horrifically bad systems, but they stay around because they’ve cornered the market on killing people.

Socio-economic ideologies

Most governments naturally form their philosophies by social/cultural and economic factors that emphasize certain aspects of living well:

  • Anarchism/stateless societies – emphasizes self-governance and voluntary institutions
  • Capitalism – individuals can “capitalize” on what they own (i.e., “private property”)
    • Distributism – the ability to produce things (“means of production”) are spread out as far as possible to avoid being controlled by any central authority
    • Minarchism/night-watchman state – the state provides a very small set of services to enforce laws that protect from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud (i.e., only military, police, and courts)
  • Colonialism – take advantage of a weaker group to use something they have
  • Communism – nobody owns anything and everything is “communal”, so people use things only if they’re useful to them
    • Socialism – workers own the ability to produce things, often expressed as the stepping-stone to full communism
  • Despotism – one person has complete control
    • Tribalism – a chief has centralized power
  • Feudalism – a hierarchical system where a king gives land to lords/nobles, who gave some of that land (manors) to vassals, who used that land (fiefs) by doing duties for the nobles
  • Totalitarianism – one group has complete control

Power philosophy

The framing of a country’s constitution has a huge effect on how that country will handle itself:

  • Who controls the military? Themselves, or civilians?
  • Does a plain majority vote count, or should we separate out powers to different groups to protect minority opinions?
  • Should we honor the spirit of the law, or the letter of it?
  • How much and which religious doctrine should mix with the constitution?
  • Should we lean more into a central authority to regulate/control everything (and risk tyranny), or more into individual choice (and risk chaos)?

Naturally, some people represent the identity of the nation more than others.

Monarchy – a ruling group defines the nation’s identity, which classifies by their control and ascension:

  • Absolute monarchy – traditional style where the monarch controls pretty much everything
  • Constitutional monarchy – a law or formal constitution limits a monarch’s power
  • Elective monarchy – the monarch is elected to represent the nation (though it may be an oligarchical election)
  • Crowned republic – a monarch is simply a ceremonial feature, with no actual power

Republic/commonwealth – elected individuals define the national identity, which classifies by elected officials’ power versus other institutions:

  • Democratic republic – the popular vote determines all the laws
  • Presidential republic – the head of state is also the head of government, but is elected
  • People’s republic – the people are legally recognized as ruling
  • Federal republic – there’s a central (federal) law that’s immutable, but each region can make their own laws that are unrelated to federal law
  • Parliamentary republic – a hybrid where the head of state isn’t affected by elected officials
  • Constitutional republic – the power of anyone is limited by a formal constitution or law
    • Islamic republic – the power of everything is bound by Islamic law

Who should get power?

Autocracy – one person/group has complete, absolute power

Autocracies only come in two forms:

  • Civilian dictatorship – one person or group runs everything
  • Military dictatorship – a military enforces their power, which often means control through fear

Pros:

  • Easy to set up, since it’s basically how every small group starts.
  • Easy to control people directly, assuming they don’t rebel.

Cons:

  • Extremely limited civil liberties, depending on the dictator.
  • Since it’s a small group running everything, it’s difficult to scale.
    • If the leader is benevolent it becomes a chaotic mess, since everyone else will start to make their own decisions that are completely inconsistent with the dictator’s purposes.
    • If the leader is strict it becomes tyrannical, since everyone else will have better ideas for their situation that the leader will have to suppress to maintain order.
  • Without clearly communicating the rules to everyone, the line-of-succession for the next dictator gets complicated.
  • If overthrown, anyone else can make a new autocracy in its place (i.e., no lasting legacy and often destroying any legitimate progress).

Oligarchy – a small group controls everything

Oligarchy is the same as an autocracy, but with more people involved.

Oligarchy can be classified by which social class run things:

Pros:

  • Less rigid than autocracy.
  • Generally can be scaled up as needed.
  • Disagreements in the ruling class only spill into affecting the rest of society for a minority of circumstances.

Cons:

  • It’s hard to measure most qualities for ruling society, so there’s a higher chance of corruption.
  • Other people can still rebel and overthrow the system, though it’s often more difficult.
  • Same civil liberties problem as with autocracy, though it can be more complicated.
  • Any well-designed oligarchy can devolve into a corrupt leadership at any time:
    • Anocracy – elite groups are constantly competing with each other for power.
    • Bankocracy – run by financial authorities like banks
    • Corporatocracy – run by corporations
    • Kakistocracy – run by the least-qualified citizens
    • Kleptocracy – run by thieves
      • Banana republic – economically run through a multi-organization plutocracy exporting a scarce resource
    • Nepotocracy – run by family members of existing leadership
    • Ochlocracy – run by mob rule via intimidation of authorities
  • Oligarchies can become far more complex as well, where the leadership is utterly obscured:
    • Algocracy – computer algorithms run everything (i.e., programmers have complete rule)
    • Cyberocracy – computers runs everything (i.e. computer users have complete rule)
    • Nomocracy – the laws themselves run everything (i.e., lawyers have complete rule)

Democracy – everyone controls everything

Democracy sits on a spectrum of citizens’ direct versus indirect control:

  • Demarchy – citizens are picked completely at random to run things and make decisions
  • Isocracy – everyone has completely equal political power (often implied for leftist political aspirations)
  • Direct democracy – people vote directly on new laws and public policy
  • Liquid democracy – people can choose to represent themselves or delegate their vote to someone they trust
  • Consensus democracy/electocracy/representative democracy/liberal democracy/social democracy – citizens can vote for their representatives, but the government leadership still decides laws and policies
  • Soviet democracy – representatives are bound by specific rules, and can be removed at any time
  • Totalitarian democracy/electoral autocracy – individuals can vote, but those votes don’t legitimately matter

Pros:

  • When done right, gives the most civil liberties to everyone.
  • All the extra creativity from the populace make it the most adaptive form of government.

Cons:

  • Extremely volatile, changes with the purposes of the majority.
  • It’s very easy to corrupt and destabilize democracy without a free press:
    • It’s easy to influence and mislead the public about who they should vote for.
    • The leadership can disregard citizens’ votes, which eventually makes it an oligarchy.
    • With enough money and manpower, anyone can easily buy an election.
    • If the voters are satisfied, they’ll become very unaware of the political system and invite severe corruption.
  • Even when a democracy doesn’t devolve into an oligarchy, it can become a bad system:
    • Adhocracy – the government is relatively disorganized
    • Bureaucracy – the government is overly organized to the point of being redundant or ineffective

Anarchy – no laws or central government

Pros:

  • Anything goes and the only law is power.
  • No risks of a central authority violating civil liberties.

Cons:

  • Anything goes and the only law is power.
  • Severe risks of localized tyranny violating civil liberties.
  • Never lasts long because people generally feel too unsafe without someone devoted to protecting them.

How should power divide across regions?

When a government gets particularly large (i.e., surpassing thousands of people, or over enough distance where technology creates communication limits), people should understand beforehand who decides (i.e., “sovereignty”).

There are a few regional groupings for governments:

  • Commune – a small group of people living together
  • City-state – a city-sized sovereign state
  • Nation-state/national government – a large geographical region who has at least some control of everything in that area
  • Intergovernmental organizations – people groups who work in between various governments
  • Corporations – people groups who often work across multiple countries
  • World government – a concept of the entire world having one singular central authority

Unitary state – a central government has total control, then hands out authority

Unitary states are the oldest form of large government:

  • Empire – sovereignty is exclusively controlled by a central power
  • Federal monarchy and hegemony – sovereignty is controlled by a central power, with other “hubs” that also have central power

Pros:

  • Very easy for the central government to manage what they want.

Cons:

  • Each region can only do what it’s told, so limited freedoms on cultural differences or situations as they arise.
  • Rigidity toward most “unapproved” changes, since the central authority has dominant power.

Federation – union of partially self-governed states

Federations are the most reliable and frequent forms of centralized government:

  • Assymetric federalism – not all states are given equal power
  • Chartered company – a corporation is contracted to perform for a government
  • Client state/associated state/dependent territory/colony/satellite state/vassal state – a state is subordinate to another authority
    • Protectorate – a state is protected by another state
    • Puppet state – while a state is independent on paper (de jure) it’s controlled by another state (de facto)
  • Staatenverbund – a hybrid of multi-level governance, where states work more closely together than a confederation but unlike a federal state retain their own sovereignty

Pros:

  • A hybrid of a unitary state and confederation, so plenty of freedom to adapt.

Cons:

  • Depending on how the power balances between regions and central authority, can have back-and-forth power struggles between the two extremes.

Confederation – loosely associated union of sovereign states

Often, confederations form out of a meeting of shared values or goals more than any need for centralized control:

  • Alliance – multiple states agree on specific terms to assist each other

Pros:

  • Low expectations on the central government.
  • Easy to recruit multiple countries.

Cons:

  • Not much central control.
  • Difficult to get everyone on the same page about a big thing (i.e., tragedy of the commons on a group level).

Unrecognized states

Not all governments want to acknowledge the existence of other governments:

  • Cartel – an group of organizations that share a common illegal purpose
  • Separatism – a large conflict that formed into a politically separate group of people
  • Government in exile – a political group that claims to be a country’s legitimate government, but can’t exercise legal power
  • Micronation – a government that claims to belong to a sovereign state, but the world’s governments don’t recognize it

Further, many times there’s simply an unpleasant reason for why a government exists in the first place:

  • Neutral zone – a region has been demarcated as owned by nobody, usually to prevent a regional conflict
  • Non-self-governing territories – a region that doesn’t have its own centrally-controlled government, usually because it was once a colony of some sort
  • Occupied territory – a region that a military has “temporarily” moved into
  • Provisional/interim/emergency government – a (hopefully) temporary government to (supposedly) resolve a problem
  • Thalassocracy/thalattocracy – a seaborne empire, which is much more likely as technology keeps improving