The true explanation of how government began is to be found by applying to the study of political science the methods of biology. We do not know exactly where or when the first government came into existence, but we do know that all political institutions are the result of a gradual evolution or development.
We have already seen that the earliest social unit is the family—a small group of individuals bound together by intimate ties. But the family was but one unit in a larger group, the clan, made up of families assumed to be descended from a common ancestor. The various clans united to form the tribe which, as an organization, rested upon a common race, language, and religion. These tribes, although at first roving bodies, wandering from place to place, at length acquired some definite territory and settled permanently there. The beginnings of a state were then at hand and with the state, or even before it, came government. In all probability that is the process through which the earliest governments came into being,—a process extending through many generations. The tribal chiefs became kings and passed on the kingship to their sons. As time went on the kings gathered greater power until despotism became the customary form of government in most countries of the world. It was not until near the end of the eighteenth century that the world began to shake off the despotic authority of kings and to establish governments based upon the consent of the people.
Aristotle’s classification.
The Classification of Governments.—During this long evolution from the early tribal organizations down to the complex governments of the present day many forms of rule have been tried in various countries. Even in ancient Greece the philosopher Aristotle was able to divide states into six classes, three of which he called normal types and three perverted. Where political power was lodged in the hands of a single individual, he called the state a monarchy; where it was lodged with a few men he called it an aristocracy; and where it was vested in many hands he called it a democracy. Each of these normal types had its corresponding perversion or travesty. A perverted monarchy he termed despotism; a perverted aristocracy he termed oligarchy; and a perverted democracy he called a demagogism or state ruled by mob methods. This method of classifying states is of little value today and would be in many ways misleading.
Monarchies and republics.
Modern states are more commonly classed as monarchies and republics. The former includes those in which the chief executive officer of the state—be he king, emperor, or other potentate—holds his position by hereditary right; the latter includes those in which he is selected in some other way. But even this classification is not very enlightening. It does not tell us anything definite about the degree of actual control which the people of a state exercise over their government. In some monarchies like Great Britain the power of the people, exercised through their representatives, is very great; in some republics, in China for example, this power is very slight. The term republic is nowadays far from being synonymous with democracy; nor is the term monarchy incompatible with it. Various so-termed republics of Central and South America have been in fact little more than military despotisms.
National and federal states.
Another classification, much more useful, is that which separates national from federal states. By the former term we mean a unified state with a single government which reaches down directly to the citizen. Great Britain is a national state with a monarchical form of government; France is also a national state with a republican form of government. A federal state, on the other hand, is an agglomeration of smaller states, each of which retains its own government but with a central government possessing certain powers over them all. The German empire, a few years ago, was an example of a federal state under a monarchical form of government, while the United States affords an illustration of federalism with republican institutions. This classification is worth while, for it tells us something tangible about the states so classified. When we say that a state is of the federal type we imply that it has two spheres of government within it; that is has a written constitution defining these spheres; that the upper house of its parliament or legislature in some way represents the component units of the federation and that it has, in all probability, some powerful arbiter such as a supreme court to decide conflicts of authority between the nation and its component parts. Practically all federal states, at any rate, have these political characteristics. One cannot imagine a successful federal state without a written constitution, without division of political powers, without some existing authority to decide between the respective claims of the whole and its parts.
True and false democracies.
But the most important thing that a student of government ought to know about any state is whether it merely possesses the forms of democracy or whether the people in fact control the government. Nearly all present-day states have the external forms of democracy, that is to say, they have representative legislatures or parliaments which bulk large in the general scheme of government. But as to the actualities of democracy, the extent to which these representative bodies really direct and control the affairs of state, there is a considerable difference among the nations. A classification of states from this point of view can be made only after a careful study of their actual governments. It is not the form of government which makes a democracy, but the way in which popular control of public affairs is actually secured and sustained.