List of forms of government

This article lists forms of government and political systems, which are not mutually exclusive, and often have much overlap.

According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there are three main types of political systems today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with hybrid regimes. Another modern classification system includes monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three. Scholars generally refer to a dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato discusses in the Republic five types of regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The question raised by Plato in the Republic: What kind of state is best? Generational changes informed by new political and cultural beliefs, technological progress, values and morality over millenniums have resulted in considerable shifts in the belief about the origination of political authority, who may participate in matters of state, how people might participate, the determination of what is just, and so forth.

Basic forms of governments
Index of Forms of Government. • Anarchy

• Aristocracy

• Authoritarianism

• Bureaucracy

• Capitalism

• Confederation

• Colonialism

• Communism

• Corporatocracy

• Democracy

• Electocracy

• Ergatocracy

• Fascism

• Federalism

• Feudalism

• Geniocracy

• Imperialism

• Kakistocracy

• Kleptocracy

• Logocracy

• Meritocracy

• Military Dictatorship

• Monarchy

• Oligarchy

• Plutocracy

• Republicanism

• Socialism

• Statism

• Technocracy

• Theocracy

• Totalitarianism

• Tribalism

Types of oligarchy
Oligarchies are societies controlled and organised by a small class of privileged people, with no intervention from the most part of society; this small elite is defined as sharing some common trait.

De jure democratic governments with a de facto oligarchy are ruled by a small group of segregated, powerful or influential people who usually share similar interests or family relations. These people may spread power and elect candidates equally or not equally. An oligarchy is different from a true democracy because very few people are given the chance to change things. An oligarchy does not have to be hereditary or monarchic. An oligarchy does not have one clear ruler but several rulers. (Ancient Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía) literally meant rule by few")

Some historical examples of oligarchy include the Roman Republic, in which only males of the nobility could run for office and only wealthy males could vote, and the Athenian democracy, which used sortition to elect candidates, almost always male, Greek, educated citizens holding a minimum of land, wealth and status. Some critics of capitalism and/or representative democracy think of the United States and the United Kingdom as oligarchies.

These categories are not exclusive.

Types of autocracy
Autocracies are ruled by a single entity with absolute power, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regular mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for implicit threat). That entity may be an individual, as in a dictatorship or it may be a group, as in a one-party state. The word despotism means to "rule in the fashion of despots" and is often used to describe autocracy.

Historical examples of autocracy include the Roman Empire, North Korea, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Eritrea and Nazi Germany.

Pejorative attributes
Regardless of the form of government, the actual governance may be influenced by sectors with political power which are not part of the formal government. These are terms that highlight certain actions of the governors, such as corruption, demagoguery, or fear mongering that may disrupt the intended way of working of the government if they are widespread enough.

Types of monarchy
Countries with monarchy attributes are those where a family or group of families (rarely another type of group), called the royalty, represents national identity, with power traditionally assigned to one of its individuals, called the monarch, who mostly rule kingdoms. The actual role of the monarch and other members of royalty varies from purely symbolical (crowned republic) to partial and restricted (constitutional monarchy) to completely despotic (absolute monarchy). Traditionally and in most cases, the post of the monarch is inherited, but there are also elective monarchies where the monarch is elected.

Types of republic
Rule by a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. A common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch. Montesquieu included both democracies, where all the people have a share in rule, and aristocracies or oligarchies, where only some of the people rule, as republican forms of government.

These categories are not exclusive.

By socio-economic attributes
Many political systems can be described as socioeconomic ideologies. Experience with those movements in power and the strong ties they may have to particular forms of government can cause them to be considered as forms of government in themselves.

These categories are not exclusive.

Types of government by geo-cultural attributes
Governments can also be categorized based on their size and scope of influence:

By significant constitutional attributes
Certain major characteristics are defining of certain types; others are historically associated with certain types of government.
 * Civilian control of the military vs. stratocracy
 * Majority rule or parliamentary sovereignty vs. bill of rights or arbitrary rules with separation of powers and supermajority rules to prevent tyranny of the majority and protect minority rights
 * Rule according to higher law (unwritten ethical principles) vs. written constitutionalism
 * Separation of church and state or free church vs. state religion
 * Totalitarianism or authoritarianism vs. libertarianism

By approach to regional autonomy
This list focuses on differing approaches that political systems take to the distribution of sovereignty, and the autonomy of regions within the state.
 * Sovereignty located exclusively at the centre of political jurisdiction
 * Empire
 * Sovereignty located at the centre and in peripheral areas
 * Federal monarchy
 * Hegemony
 * Diverging degrees of sovereignty
 * Alliance
 * Asymmetrical federalism
 * Chartered company
 * Client state
 * Associated state
 * Dependent territory
 * Protectorate
 * Puppet state
 * Satellite state
 * Vassal state
 * Colony
 * Crown colony
 * Commonwealth
 * Corpus separatum
 * Decentralisation and devolution (powers redistributed from central to regional or local governments)
 * Federacy
 * Junta
 * Mandate
 * Military frontier
 * Neutral zone
 * Non-self-governing territories
 * Occupied territory
 * Provisional government
 * Thalassocracy
 * Unrecognized state
 * Government in exile
 * Micronation
 * Separatist movement
 * States with limited recognition

Theoretical and speculative attributes
These have no conclusive historical or current examples outside of speculation and scholarly debate.