Test Your Knowledge of Government Systems and Structures

Government: A Summary

• A government is a system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
• The main types of modern political systems recognized are democracies, totalitarian regimes, authoritarian regimes and monarchical systems.
• Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny.
• The term government is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations.
• The development of agriculture and water control projects were a catalyst for the development of governments.
• Starting at the end of the 17th century, the prevalence of republican forms of government grew.
• In the nineteenth and twentieth century, there was a significant increase in the size and scale of government at the national level.
• In political science, it has long been a goal to create a typology or taxonomy of polities.
• Governments are typically organized into distinct institutions constituting branches of government each with particular powers, functions, duties, and responsibilities.
• Presently, most governments are administered by members of an explicitly constituted political party which coordinates the activities of associated government officials and candidates for office.
• Democracy is the most popular form of government with more than half of the nations in the world being democracies.
• The world is becoming more authoritarian with a quarter of the world's population under democratically backsliding governments.