A government regime is, in general terms, the way a government behaves in power, which can be democratic, authoritarian or totalitarian. In this text, we will see how to define, in a more profound way, a government regime and what are the concepts and meanings that are behind each type or regime of government.
Government x State
To understand the types of government regime that exist, it is necessary to understand the notion of government and the distinction between government and state . State is an institution created to define the sovereignty and the set of rules of a defined territory, while the government is the manager of a State. We tend to think, to facilitate understanding, that the state is fixed (or at least more durable), while the government is ephemeral .
In this sense, we have states governed by more flexible governments, which find sovereignty in the people; less flexible governments, which remove the sovereignty of the people through the suspension and revocation of rights; and governments that want to control the total life of the population, both in the political and legal spheres and in the personal sphere. In the first case, we can say that it is a regime of democratic government ; in the second, an authoritarian regime and, in the third, a totalitarian regime .
Benito Mussolini (left) and Adolf Hitler (right) were leaders of totalitarian regimes in Europe, namely: fascism and Nazism, respectively.
What are government regimes?
When we talk about government regime , we tend to get confused with other concepts that inhabit the spectrum of political science. In general, government regime is confused with form of government and political system. The forms of government can be the classic ones, described by Aristotle as monarchy, aristocracy and democracy (these are the legitimate ones), in addition to the illegitimate ones, such as tyranny, oligarchy and demagogy . In addition to these old classifications, there are also modern and contemporary classifications, such as the republic (included by Machiavelli with the principality).
When we talk about political systems , we are talking about systems by which political power is organized and power is exercised, such as parliamentarism and presidentialism. When talking about a government regime, we are only saying how power is distributed among the elements of the same State, which can be authoritarian, democratic and totalitarian.
Don’t stop now … There’s more after the publicity;)
It is through the government regime that we identify how a government’s sovereignty relates to its other elements: governing and governed. Throughout history, we have seen the same government regimes repeatedly applied in different ways.
Our confusion between government regimes and forms of government makes us think, for example, that a republic is always democratic, while a monarchy is always authoritarian. The error lies in the conceptual confusion, as a monarchy is a form of government that can present itself as a democratic regime, guided by a Constitution and with an elected Parliament, which creates laws, like the parliamentary monarchies that began to emerge in the XIX century. The England is an example of this type of monarchy. Thinking of a parliamentary monarchy is not contradictory, since a monarchy is a form of government, while parliamentarism is a political system.
In the same way, there are republics that, in theory, are democratic, but that governors use subterfuge to remain in power, creating authoritarian regimes. An example is North Korea , where there are periodic elections, which do not respect the parameters established by international bodies to regulate such elections.
Praça dos Três Poderes, in Brasília, is a symbol of the Brazilian Republic for bringing together the triad of powers in our country: Executive, Legislative and Judiciary.
Other examples are those of dictatorships, such as the Brazilian Military Dictatorship , which occurred between 1964 and 1985. The military government was authoritarian, having closed the National Congress, revoked mandates from opposing parliamentarians, prohibited political parties and suspended constitutional rights, creating a state exception. Despite the military government, the Brazilian National State has never ceased to be a republic .
Also read: What is a coup?
Difference between form of government and government regime
The forms of government are widely discussed in political science and has its first classification in the treaty policy, of Aristotle in ancient Greece. Aristotle identified six types of government form, three legitimate and three illegitimate.
The legitimate:
- Monarchy;
- Aristocracy;
- Democracy.
The illegitimate:
- Tyranny;
- Oligarchy;
In addition to the forms described by Aristotle , we have modern philosophical treatises such as The Prince of Machiavelli , which postulates the existence of only two ways: the republic and the principality . In any case, forms of government guide political action. We can say that forms of government are based on philosophical systems that say how a government should behave and organize itself to fit that form.
Government regimes , on the other hand, are simpler and concern only the way in which a government or a governor acts, exercising its power over the governed. In this sense, we have governments that exercise power more concisely, disregarding popular participation, and governments open to popular participation, which can be divided between democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes (the latter is the greatest expression of authoritarianism possible). To learn more about forms of government, we recommend reading this text: Forms of government – what are, examples, in Brazil .
Types of government regime
We can choose three central types of government regime. These three types condense the ways of governing into categories, concerning the way in which governors, power and governed are related. Are they:
- Democratic government regimes: here, there is the recognition that sovereignty is popular, that is, that the people hold power and must exercise it. In this spectrum, we have democracies, both representative and participatory, in which the people vote, elect representatives, can participate in the creation of laws and political organization in general. For a political regime to be democratic, it is necessary to establish a Constitution to guarantee rights and delegate duties, in addition to mechanisms that guarantee the participation of all citizens in the political system, access to information, transparency and fairness in political systems.
- Authoritarian government regimes: when a person or a political group arbitrarily controls the political system and the state, maintaining privileges and depriving a section of the population from accessing sovereignty, we have an authoritarian government regime. We usually call this type of regime a dictatorship , in which political rules and laws are dictated by a class that dominates politics, curtailing the idea of citizenship and restricting political rights. In this case, there is the taking of the State by the government, which does not recognize, in most people, citizenship.
- Totalitarian government regimes: there is an elevation of authoritarianism to the maximum. Totalitarian regimes take full ownership of the state, inflating it to the maximum, creating new state rules and imposing these rules on all aspects of people’s lives (both public and political as well as personal life). The totalitarian state controls everything, the limits of people’s political power, what they can talk, do, consume, work, what they do at leisure, etc. The only complete and concrete examples of totalitarianism that we could observe in the contemporary world occurred in Nazi Germany , in the Stalinist Soviet Union , in fascist Italy and in Portugal and Spain (these had totalitarian regimes inspired by Italian fascism).
