Lauren Balser
April 19, 2018
Prof. Dollieslager
Forms of Government
When explaining to someone the different forms of government a few may immediately pop into your head such as; a democracy, a federal republic, and a presidential system. Yet while exploring other systems of government and looking at exactly how they work some may say that the United States draws a similar way of running things. This is not to say that the United States does not fall under these categories previously listed but there has been a change in our government in the last 20 years or so. This leads us to some of the other government’s that the United States may also fall under. A few may be, a particracy, a constitutional democracy, and a democratic republic. These are just a few where the line between our way of governing and the way others have ruled under their government doesn’t seem to far apart.
When examining how the United States rules we have always seemed to be the country that runs things a particular way to label us as only one form of government, a democracy. Yet, in recent years that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. For instance in the most recent election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton they were each a strong republican and a strong democrat. Which is normally how our system is run, we have one candidate from both sides of the different parties but where things turned for the strange was when election day came the candidate with the most amount of votes did not win, he ended with almost 2.86 million votes less than Clinton. Yet when it came down to the Electoral College Trump was able to turn more states in his favor than she was. Inevitably allowing Trump to win the election. Now you may be saying this is not right the person with the majority vote should win, and you are exactly right. Well that is at least how the founding fathers would have wanted it. That is how the country has been run since the very beginning, or so we thought but the same kind of incident where the candidate with the majority vote has not won the election has happened a staggering 5 times; 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. With that being said there is an obvious change in how we have been running our government.
We can see the change in our government enough to where it may be considered things others than just a democracy. Such as, the untied states may also be considered a Particracy, which is when “is a de facto form of government where one or more political parties dominate the political process, rather than citizens and/or individual politicians.” Which is exactly how the United States has been run since the civil war. The only two political parties that have been in office have been the Democrats and the Republicans. That is fine in some ways but also leaves no room for third parties to even have a glimmer of a chance to one day be a head of state or run the country from the oval office. Since we only have one party in as the head of state at a time it also causes a large amount of backfire when trying to get bills and legislation passed. It causes friction with how smoothly the government could be run. Since it has always been contests between the two parties to see who could put more people in higher positions of power the make their respective parties have “more control.” This has caused a large amount of tension, whereas if a third party had been allowed to have a chance it may ease the tension and allow for things to be run a little bit more smoothly.
Another form of government that may be considered in the United States could be a democratic republic, " a form of government embodying democratic principles and where a monarch is not the head of state.” This type of government essentially embodies both the republican and democratic side of things and attempts to rule with both parties in mind. How I could see the United States drawing a similar back ground to this is how the United States government has only ever been run by these two so in a similar way we essentially the head of the political parties would almost have to take each other into consideration, even though this does not happen often. The United States could also be considered a Constitutional democracy. That is when “ a system of government based on popular sovereignty in which the structures, powers, and limits are set forth in a constitution.” This seems all to similar to how the American people have been run since the beginning of America, we had a constitution written to help those in a position of power to have a “base” or “guidelines” on what should be allowed and what should not. Now with that being said there are lots of things that have need tweaking since that was written, and some things that should be taken very lightly but in general it gives us a good understanding of what should be done. So I do believe that the United States could also be considered a Constitutional democracy, because everything we do is based off of our constitution and the rules and guidelines it has mapped out for us.
In conclusion I do believe that the United States can and should be considered more than just a democracy for the simple reason that we do not always follow the guidelines for how a democracy should be run. We have always been a melting pot of cultures and people and beliefs so in reality why couldn’t we be considered a melting pot of governments. Taking different aspects from all different types of governments to describe the very own one we have. To learn from it and grow from it and understand that sometimes it isn’t as easy as describing ourselves as a democratic nation.
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Beaumont, Adrian. “US Election Final Results: How Trump Won.” The Conversation, 13 Apr. 2018, theconversation.com/us-election-final-results-how-trump-won-69356.
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“Constitutional Democracy.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/constitutional-democracy.
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“Democratic Republic.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/democratic-republic.
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“Forms of Government.” Scholastic, www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/forms-government/.
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“Particracy.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particracy.