Classification of Modern Governments

CLASSIFICATION OF MODERN GOVERNMENTS Modern democracies show great variations in their govern mental organization and the following criteria of differentiation have become usual.

Flexible and Rigid States.

States may be classified as "flexible" or "rigid" (as by the late Lord Bryce : see Studies in History and Jurisprudence Essay III.) according as their con stitutions—the forms of their government—can be changed by the ordinary process of legislation or only by a specially dif ficult method of making changes of this kind. Thus in England the successive extensions of the franchise which have changed the basis of government from aristocracy to democracy (and the still more radical change made by the Parliament Act of 1911 in limiting the veto of the House of Lords) have required only the authority of an act of parliament passed by the same procedure as any other measure. In most other countries any change in the constitution requires a special procedure attended with much greater formal difficulty than that of the ordinary mode of legis lation. Thus in the United States of America "the constitution cannot be amended without the consent of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the States" (Wilson, The State p. 524) ; in Australia a constitutional amendment requires an absolute majority of each house of parliament, together with, by a refer endum "in a majority of the States a majority of the electors voting . . . and a majority of all the electors voting"; and it was laid down by the Weimar constitution of Germany that "con stitutional amendments by the Reichstag are only valid if two thirds of the members are present and at least two-thirds of those present are in favour" whilst, in addition, unless the con sent of two-thirds of the Reichsrat was also obtained, that body might demand a referendum to the electorate, of which a ma jority must then support the amendment to secure its passage into law.

The degree of "rigidity" varies considerably in different mod ern States. In France, for example, an absolute majority of the two chambers sitting together as the national assembly is suffi cient to secure amendment of the constitution. It should, how ever, be added that the test of rigidity or flexibility cannot be allowed to rest simply on the provision of formal difficulties in the way of constitutional amendment. The whole balance of a constitution is involved as well as the temper and attitude of both its legislators and citizens.

Unitary and Federal States.

Of much more fundamental importance is the classification of States into unitary and federal.

The unitary State has one legislature, capable of making laws of universal validity for all its citizens and subjects, one execu tive to apply and a unified judicial system to interpret these laws. To this type belong amongst others the British, French, Belgian, Italian Governments. The federal State, on the other hand, is "made up of several individual states, each of which preserves in principle its internal sovereignty, its own laws and government. But the nation as a whole, comprising the total population of the individual States and leaving these States as such out of account, forms a united or federal State which also possesses a complete government and of which the citizens of the individual States are all also citizens" (Esmein, Elements de Droit Constitutionnel Francais et Compare. Vol. I. p. 6 [1927]). The difference be tween a federal and a unitary State may be put in another way by saying that whereas in a unitary state all law-making bodies, other than the central legislature, have their powers of law-making defined for them by the central legislature which gives them jurid ical existence, in a federal State the law-making powers of the central federal government are defined by the constitutional agree ment between the several States of the federal union, by which it was created, whilst all such legislative or executive powers as were not by that act expressly attributed to the federal govern ment are retained by the States themselves. In practice this is the arrangement in the United States and in the Swiss Federa tion and it was followed in the Commonwealth of Australia Act 1900. But in the British North America Act of 1867, which gave Canada its constitution, an attempt was made to define not only the powers of the Federal government but also those of the pro vincial government. The attempt was unfortunate in view of the non-exclusive character of the powers so granted and has resulted in much litigation which might have been avoided.

It follows from the existence of such a division of legislative power that the question must arise whether the federal or a state government has acted ultra vires in a given instance. One char acteristic of federal government, therefore, is the lack of finality in the legislation of either the federal or a State government. All legislation is subject to the terms of the constitution, itself a result of the fact that the federal structure arises from an agree ment between hitherto sovereign States, and the interpretation of the constitution belongs by its terms usually to the courts. Thus in the United States the supreme court, in Australia the high court, and in the case of Canada the judicial committee of the privy council, is constituted the interpreter of the constitution with the ultimate right to pass upon the validity of the legislation either of the federal government or of a State or province. In Switzerland alone amongst federations has this question been re served for the decision of the federal legislature itself, thus expos ing it to the charge of being a judge in its own cause. But even here the use of the referendum provides another, though a differ ent, court of appeal. (See also FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.) The Parliamentary Executive.—Still another mode of classifying modern democratic governments, which cuts across that last discussed, is to divide them into those with a parlia mentary and those with a non-parliamentary executive. England is the home and the source of the parliamentary executive, by which is meant that the body of ministers of State, in charge of the executive offices, is chosen from and is responsible to the members of the legislature. This choice of the executive from the members of the legislature is not, however, a formal act of the legislature itself. It is the result of the growth of a party system as a consequence of which the popularly elected house was always divided into a majority and a minority, with the result that the party enjoying a majority for the time being selected a leader who, on the victory of his party at the polls, became prime minis ter and himself selected his colleagues and offered them the vacant ministerial posts. The responsibility of this body of min isters to the elected house is, in effect, a responsibility primarily to the party majority of which they are themselves members, and their continuance in power depends upon their ability to command the votes of this majority for their policy. Further, in the Eng lish system, the body of ministers, or cabinet, are regarded as having a joint responsibility to each other as well as to the House of Commons as a whole. All important matters of policy are con sidered by the cabinet as a body, and a vote of censure upon any one minister on a matter of importance is in ordinary cases a vote of censure upon the government and would be followed by its resignation. (See also CABINET.) The advantages claimed for this system of government are those of close co-operation between executive, legislature and people and the co-ordination of policy in all the great departments of State. Further the cabinet and its supporters in the House are under day to day criticism from the opposition—a criticism which is rendered both more responsible and more effective by the con sideration that defeat of the government in the House, followed by success at the polls will place upon the critics the duty of carry ing on the government and of giving legislative effect to the policy on which their criticisms of their opponents are based.

In its broad lines this English system of the parliamentary executive has been adopted not only in the self-governing do minions of the British empire but also in a majority of modern democratic states, including now both France and Germany.

The Non-parliamentary Executive.

In sharp contrast with the system of a parliamentary executive is that of the United States of America. Here the supreme executive, the president, is elected by a different procedure and for a different term from the legislature in either branch. He chooses his own ministers, with the consent of the Senate—a consent very rarely refused— and these must not be members of either branch of Congress. The president is not responsible to Congress in the sense that an ad verse vote in either or both Houses will either cause his resigna tion or even lead to a change in the policy of his administration. His ministers are in no other sense responsible to the legislature than that they are, like the president, impeachable. They are re sponsible to the president himself whose right it is to dismiss them at his pleasure. Nor do the president and his ministers form a "cabinet" in the English sense, though the word is current in the United States. There is no joint responsibility for policy: each minister is responsible directly to the president for the conduct of his own department, and in the last resort the president is responsible alone for at least all acts of the administration authorized by himself. "In America," wrote Lord Bryce in The American Commonwealth, "the administration does not work as a whole. It is not a whole. It is a group of persons, each individually dependent on and answerable to the president, but with no joint policy, no collective responsibility." (Vol. I. p. 91.) There can be little doubt that the adherence of the framers of the United States constitution to the principle of the "separa tion of powers" enunciated by Montesquieu has not made the process of government as efficient, as smooth-working, or as free from corruption as it might have been. Congress, divorced from the practical problems of administration—at least in the House of Representatives, for the Senate has a definite re sponsibility in foreign policy—tends to become a talking-house and to fall too much under the control of party and financial interests which engage it in the task of "log-rolling" with an eye to the next election or to the furtherance of sectional economic ends. It is hardly too much to say with Professor Laski (Grammar of Politics p. 344) that "the American system maximises all the difficulties of law-making," and, it may be added, taking into con sideration the presidential veto and the control exercised by the senate in foreign affairs and by Congress as a whole over finance, the difficulties of carrying on the executive government as well.

Switzerland.

The Swiss system is intermediate between the English and the American types. The executive (federal council) is parliamentary in that it is elected by and its members are re sponsible to the legislature. But it is non-party in character, it has no collective responsibility, its members do not resign as individuals—still less do they resign as a body—if their policy is not approved by the legislature. Each executive minister is responsible to the legislature for the conduct of his department but "policy. . . belongs to the assembly" and the minister stands to it somewhat in the relation of a permanent under-secretary to his political chief in England. At the same time ministers may and do address either house of the federal assembly in explanation of their administrative actions or of legislation which affects their departments. Members of the federal council, though only elected for the term of each new assembly, are almost invariably re elected and in this continuity of tenure again approach to the position of permanent under-secretaries in the English system.

This system, which works well in Switzerland, has some clear advantages over the English type of parliamentary government. It secures expert and continuous administration of the depart ments of State : it eliminates much of the atmosphere of personal combat which is inevitable in the English system and therefore directs attention more to "measures" and less to "men." It is, moreover, compatible with the existence of more than two parties in the State. This last consideration is of the first importance to all States which possess a parliamentary executive in view of the challenge to the whole basis of that system made by the appearance of more than two political parties. In France the parliamentary executive has been hampered partly by the fact that the executive has not the right of dissolution, still more by the existence of numerous groups within the Chamber of Deputies. In recent years the second difficulty has been to some extent over come by the formation of the Bloc National and the Bloc des Gauches. But in England the situation in which no party can command a solid majority in the House of Commons has already occurred once in recent years (1924). Should this become a frequent situation the conventions of parliamentary government, in the English sense, must be viewed in the light of new facts.

Italy, Germany and Russia.

A new and seemingly revolu tionary form of government has since the war appeared in Italy, Germany, and Russia. It should perhaps be classed under the Aristotelian heads of aristocracy or oligarchy, though political prejudice is likely to be at present the deciding factor in the de cision between these alternatives. At any rate both Fascism and Bolshevism exhibit certain common characteristics. Both explicitly repudiate the claim of right made for the rule of a majority ob tained by the ordinary method of party organization. "It is our proud prophecy" writes Signor Mussolini in a preface to J. S. Barnes' Universal Aspects of Fascism "that Fascism will come to fill the present century with itself even as Liberalism filled the 19th century." And in The State and Revolution Lenin wrote "To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and oppress the people through parliament—this is the real essence of middle-class parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary and constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics." In place of Liberalism and parliamentary representation both doctrines propose and have put into practice the dictatorship of a minority—in Italy the Fascist, in Russia the Bolshevik Party. This characteristic of minority rule is, however, regarded in both cases as accidental. The Bolshevik looks to see the whole mass of the proletariat, easily outnumbering all other classes combined, converted to the theory of communism : the Fascist equally hopes to convert to his doctrine of national functionalism the main body of the Italian people. Whilst, there fore, both doctrines justify the dictatorship of a minority as a necessary stage in effecting the revolution against parliamentary liberalism they cannot justly be accused of an admiration for oligarchy per se.

The more essential similarity between the two systems is in their attempt to organise government on the basis of integral relationship between the social function of the individual and his political representation. In this sense both are "syndicalist," and the industrial unit which from the beginning of the Soviet regime has been the basis of its governmental hierarchy is at present being worked into the fabric of the Italian state which will become the "corporative State" when, in the judgment of its present leaders, the revolutionary stage has been passed.

It must be added that there is a profound difference between the Russian and Italian solutions in one respect. The Com munist functional organization of the State on an occupational basis has definitely aimed at eliminating the individual capitalist employer, who has in fact been largely replaced by the State it self. The Fascist Corporative State (cf. La Carta del Lavoro, 1927) whilst clearly placing the interest of the State above those of the individual employer or employee ("the whole body of production must be considered as a united effort from the national point of view") proposes to recognise professional associations of employers alongside the similar associations of and, it should be added, restricts membership of both to ad herents of Fascism.

These two experiments, whether they prove lasting or ephemeral, are at least of great importance as attempts to solve the funda mental difficulty of representative government, i.e., how one man can adequately "represent" the views, desires, opinions, interests, of an electorate numbering anything up to 50,000, divided into different social strata, and of whom under the party systems of parliamentary democracy it may be possible for actually more than half to be opposed to him in politics. The German economic council set up under the republican constitution was, though it would be regarded with derision for its powerlessness by either Fascists or Bolsheviks, a concession to the same current of opinion, and even in England after the war a National Council of Employers and Employed was convened to consider the prob lems of industry, for the solution of which the organisation and available time of parliament were felt to be inadequate. More over, radical reconstruction of our parliamentary system on "functional" lines has been advocated by the Guild Socialists (see G. D. H. Cole Guild Socialism Re-stated) and to a less complete degree by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in their Constitution for a Socialist Commonwealth (see also FASCISM ; COMMUNISM ;