Chapter 1: Forms of Government
On 17 April 1999, the Lok Sabha — the directly elected House of India’s Parliament — sat through a long debate that had only one question at its centre. Did the government still command a majority in that House?
Weeks earlier, a regional party had withdrawn its support from the ruling coalition. The Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, moved a motion asking the House to express its confidence in his government. Members spoke through the day. Then the House divided, and every member’s vote was counted.
The government lost by a single vote.
Nothing in that room used force. No soldier stood at the door. The Prime Minister went to the President and resigned, because in India a government that loses the confidence of the Lok Sabha cannot continue in office. The Lok Sabha was later dissolved, and fresh elections were held that same year.
Now hold that day beside another possibility. In the United States, a President whose party has just lost control of both Houses of Congress does not resign. He serves out his four-year term. Congress may block his budget and reject his nominees, but it cannot vote him out for losing an argument.
Two democracies. Two written rules about who may remove whom. Neither is an accident. Each was designed, argued over and written down, by people who disagreed about how power should be arranged and what they most feared it would do.
Diagram
Fig. 1.0-1 Caption: In one system the executive survives only while the legislature supports it; in the other, each is elected separately and serves a fixed term. Brief: Two side-by-side vertical chains. Left, labelled ‘Parliamentary — India’: Voters → Lok Sabha → Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister, with a return arrow from Lok Sabha to the Council labelled ‘confidence may be withdrawn’. Right, labelled ‘Presidential — USA’: Voters → two separate arrows, one to Congress and one to President, with a dotted horizontal line between Congress and President labelled ‘checks, but no removal by vote of confidence’. Keep the drawing plain; no flags, no portraits.
1.1 Classifying Forms Of Government
Every state in the world has a government — the set of institutions through which a state makes decisions, enforces them, and settles disputes about them. No two governments are arranged in exactly the same way. There are close to two hundred states, each with its own history, its own document of rules, and its own habits of power.
Studying each one separately would be endless work, and it would teach very little. What a student of politics wants is not two hundred descriptions but a small number of useful categories — a way of grouping governments so that the important differences between them become visible.
That is what a classification does. It asks a single clear question of every government, and sorts governments by the answer.
Why Classification Is Not Neutral
A classification is a tool, and every tool is built for a purpose. The question you choose to ask decides which governments end up beside each other.
Ask ‘how many levels of government are there?’ and India sits beside the United States, because both divide power between a centre and units below it. Ask instead ‘can the legislature remove the executive?’ and India sits beside Britain, while the United States stands apart.
Neither grouping is wrong. They answer different questions. This is why this chapter uses three classifications rather than one, and why a single state appears in all three.
The Three Questions This Chapter Asks
The syllabus takes up three bases of classification. Each rests on one question.
Based on political regime. A regime is the underlying system by which power is acquired and held, and by which it is limited or left unlimited. The question here is: how much of life does the state claim authority over, and is that authority answerable to anyone? This gives three types — totalitarian states, authoritarian states and liberal democratic states.
Based on structural organisation. The question here is: is governing power held at one level, or divided between two levels that each hold power in their own right? This gives two types — unitary states and federal states.
Based on the executive–legislative framework. The question here is: what is the relationship between the branch that makes law and the branch that carries it out? This gives two types — the parliamentary system and the presidential system.
The three bases are referred to in Fig. 1.1-1.
Diagram
Fig. 1.1-1 Caption: The same state can be classified three different ways, depending on the question asked. Brief: A single box at the top labelled ‘A State’. Three arrows branch downward to three labelled columns. Column 1, ‘Political regime’: Totalitarian / Authoritarian / Liberal Democratic. Column 2, ‘Structural organisation’: Unitary / Federal. Column 3, ‘Executive–legislative framework’: Parliamentary / Presidential. Below the columns, one line showing ‘India = Liberal Democratic + Federal + Parliamentary’. Keep it a plain line diagram with no shading or flags.
Where The Categories Blur
Real states rarely sit tidily inside a category. The Spanish political scientist Juan Linz, whose work on this subject shaped how the distinction is now taught, argued that totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are genuinely different types and should not be treated as one. But he also recognised mixed and in-between cases that fit neither description well.
The same is true of the other two classifications. Some states combine features of the unitary and the federal; some combine the parliamentary and the presidential. A category is a starting point for analysis, not a verdict on a country.
Two terms should be pinned down before the chapter goes further. A constitution is the body of fundamental rules that establishes the organs of government, distributes power among them, and sets limits on what each may do. Where those rules are collected in a single enacted document, the constitution is written; where they are scattered across statutes, judicial decisions and long-settled practice, it is unwritten. Both kinds appear in this chapter, and the difference between them turns out to matter a great deal.
1.3 The Liberal Democratic State
The third type in this classification is the one most students of this book live under. It is also the one whose name is claimed by almost everybody. Military rulers, single parties and hereditary monarchs have all described themselves as democratic. The word is therefore of little use until it is pinned down.
What Democracy Means
Democracy comes from two Greek words — demos, meaning the people, and kratia, meaning rule. Rule by the people. The idea is old: in the city-state of Athens, in the fifth century BCE, adult male citizens assembled in person to decide public questions.
The Athenian arrangement is the classic case of direct democracy, in which citizens themselves make the decisions rather than choosing others to make them. It survives today only in small settings. Switzerland retains devices of this kind, including the landsgemeinde, an open-air cantonal assembly at which citizens vote by show of hands. In India, the gram sabha — the assembly of all registered voters of a village — is a working instance of direct democracy at the local level.
For a state of a hundred crore people, direct decision-making is impossible. What exists instead is representative democracy, in which citizens elect a smaller body of people to decide on their behalf, and retain the power to remove them at the next election.
Representation is what makes democracy workable at scale. It is also what creates the central problem of democratic government: the representative is not the citizen, and may not do what the citizen wants. Everything in the rest of this chapter — elections, terms of office, votes of confidence, courts — is in some way an answer to that problem.
The Most Quoted Definition
The best-known formulation belongs to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, who spoke at the dedication of a cemetery at Gettysburg in November 1863, during the American Civil War.
Read closely, the line makes three separate demands. Of the people asks where authority originates — in the people, not in birth or conquest. By the people asks who exercises it — the people themselves or those they choose. For the people asks in whose interest it is exercised. A government can satisfy one and fail the others.
The limit of this source must also be stated. It is a wartime speech at a burial ground, ten sentences long, meant to give meaning to a war. It states an ideal; it does not describe how the United States was in fact governed in 1863, when millions of enslaved people and all women were excluded from the vote. A statement of principle is evidence of what a society said it valued, not of what it had achieved.
The Liberal In Liberal Democracy
Democracy answers the question ‘who decides?’. It does not by itself answer ‘and what may they not do?’.
A government elected by a large majority could still imprison its critics, ban a religion or seize property without cause. The liberal element supplies the missing limit: certain rights of the individual are placed beyond the reach of any majority, and the powers of government are defined and restrained by law.
A liberal democratic state, then, is one in which government is formed by the freely elected representatives of the people, and is at the same time limited by a constitution, by law and by guaranteed rights. Both halves are essential. Democracy without the limits produces majority rule that can crush the individual; the limits without democracy produce a government nobody chose.
Features Of A Liberal Democratic State
Government by elected representatives. The people choose those who govern, and can replace them. Representatives act as a link between government and the governed, and answer for what they do.
Free, fair and periodic elections. Elections are held at fixed intervals, on the basis of universal adult franchise — the right of every adult citizen to vote, regardless of property, income, education, caste, religion or sex — and by secret ballot, so that a vote cannot be traced to the voter.
Constitutional and limited government. The powers of government are conferred, defined and bounded by a constitution. What is not granted is not permitted.
Rule of law. The rule of law means that the law is supreme, that everyone including the government is subject to it, that all are equal before it, and that no one may be punished except for a definite breach of law established in an ordinary court.
Guaranteed rights and civil liberties. Freedom of speech and expression, of association, of movement, of conscience and religion, and freedom from arbitrary arrest are legally protected and enforceable.
Separation of powers with checks and balances. The separation of powers is the principle that the legislative, executive and judicial functions should rest in distinct organs, so that no single body both makes the law and applies it to whomever it chooses. Each organ also holds some check upon the others.
An independent judiciary. Judges decide free of executive control, and stand as guardian of the constitution and of the rights it guarantees.
Political pluralism and legitimate opposition. Rival parties, pressure groups and associations compete openly. The opposition is not treated as an enemy of the state but as a lawful alternative government.
A free press and an active civil society. Newspapers, broadcasters and citizens’ organisations report, criticise and organise without prior permission from the government.
Protection of minorities. Majority decision is the method of a democracy, but the cultural, educational and religious rights of minorities are protected against it.
Secularism. Secularism, in the Indian constitutional sense, means that the state has no religion of its own, does not favour or penalise any faith, and guarantees freedom of conscience to all.
The Case For It, And The Case Against
Supporters of the liberal democratic state make a strong claim for it. Power rests with the people, who can change their rulers without violence. Government is accountable, and must explain itself. Rights are protected by courts. Competition between parties keeps rulers alert. Because grievances have lawful outlets, there is less reason to resort to revolution.
Critics answer that these virtues are purchased at a price. Decision-making is slow, and coalition bargaining can make it slower still. Election cycles reward short-term promises over long-term reform. Formal equality at the ballot box coexists with sharp inequality of wealth, and money can shape which voices are heard. Governments concerned for the next election may postpone hard choices indefinitely.
Both sets of claims are about evidence, not taste. They can be tested — against records of policy, court judgments, election data and the treatment of dissent.
1.4 Unitary And Federal States
The second classification asks a different question altogether. Not ‘how much power does the state claim?’ but ‘at how many levels is governing power held, and by what right?’
Every large country divides its territory for administrative convenience — into provinces, counties, districts, wards. That by itself decides nothing. The real question is where the authority of those lower units comes from. Do they hold power in their own right, guaranteed by the constitution? Or do they hold it because the centre has lent it to them, and may take it back?
The answer separates the unitary state from the federal state.
The two structures are referred to in Fig. 1.4-1.
Diagram
Fig. 1.4-1 Caption: In a unitary state authority flows downward from one centre; in a federal state two levels draw authority directly from the constitution. Brief: Two panels side by side. Left panel, ‘Unitary’: a single box ‘Central Government’ at the top, with solid downward arrows to three smaller boxes labelled ‘Local units — powers delegated’. A note beside the arrows reads ‘may be altered or withdrawn by the centre’. Right panel, ‘Federal’: a box at the top labelled ‘Constitution’, with two separate downward arrows, one to ‘Central Government’ and one to ‘State Governments’, each box drawn the same size. A small box below the Constitution labelled ‘Courts — settle disputes between the two levels’. Plain line diagram, no shading.
1.4.1 The Unitary State: Britain
A unitary state is one in which all governing power is vested in a single central government. Whatever authority local or regional bodies exercise, they exercise because the centre has granted it, and the centre may enlarge, reduce or withdraw that grant.
Sub-units in a unitary state are therefore agents of the centre. They are not partners of it. The central legislature can redraw their boundaries, alter their powers or abolish them altogether by an ordinary law.
General Features Of A Unitary State
Centralisation of powers. All legislative, executive and judicial authority is concentrated in the central government, which is supreme throughout the territory.
Uniformity of law and administration. Because one authority legislates for the whole country, the same law generally applies everywhere, and administration is organised on a single pattern.
Local bodies exist by delegation. Local governments carry out functions handed to them. They are not autonomous, and their existence depends on the centre’s will.
Simplicity and economy. One legislature, one set of central offices and no duplication between levels make the system easier to run and less expensive.
Flexibility. The central legislature can alter the arrangement of government quickly, including in an emergency, without any special procedure.
Single citizenship. A citizen owes allegiance to one government only, wherever in the country they live.
Supremacy of the central legislature. Laws made by the central legislature bind all persons, all regions and all local authorities.
Britain As A Unitary State
A word on names first. Great Britain is the island containing England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom is the state, comprising those three together with Northern Ireland. In political science ‘Britain’ is commonly used for the state as a whole, and is so used here.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. The Monarch is head of state and reigns without ruling. The government is led by the Prime Minister, drawn from and answerable to Parliament. Parliament is bicameral — a legislature of two chambers — consisting of the elected House of Commons and the House of Lords, whose members are not popularly elected.
Its features as a unitary state are these.
One legislature, one executive, one judiciary serve the whole state. There is no second tier holding constitutionally guaranteed powers.
An unwritten constitution. Britain has no single enacted constitutional document. Its constitution is found in statutes, judicial decisions, authoritative writings and long-observed conventions.
Parliamentary sovereignty. Parliamentary sovereignty is the doctrine that Parliament may make or unmake any law whatever, that no other body may set aside its statutes, and that no Parliament can bind its successors. It is the constitutional cornerstone of the British system.
A flexible constitution. Because there is no separate constitutional law, constitutional rules are changed by ordinary statute passed in the ordinary way. No special majority and no external ratification are required.
Local government by delegation. Councils and authorities across the country exercise substantial day-to-day functions, but hold them under Acts of Parliament that Parliament can amend.
Uniform law and administration, with a single civil service under the central government implementing policy across the state.
Devolution, And Why It Does Not Make Britain Federal
Since 1999 the picture has become more complicated. Under legislation passed in 1998, a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh assembly were established and first elected in 1999; a Northern Ireland Assembly was created following the agreement of 1998. The Welsh body was renamed Senedd Cymru — the Welsh Parliament — in May 2020. Each has acquired legislative powers over a range of subjects.
This transfer is called devolution — the grant of powers by a central legislature to a subordinate regional body, without any surrender of the centre’s own authority. That last clause is the whole point. The devolved legislatures exist because Parliament passed Acts creating them, and in law Parliament retains the power to legislate for those regions and to alter what it has granted.
Britain is therefore usually described as a decentralised unitary state, not a federal one. It has moved power outward without dividing sovereignty.
The four parts of the United Kingdom are shown in Map 1.1.
Map
Map 1.1 Caption: The United Kingdom comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, three of which have devolved legislatures. Brief: Outline map of the British Isles. Shade and label England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland separately; mark London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. Show the Republic of Ireland as a separate state, unshaded and labelled. Boundaries as officially recognised by the Government of India. Do not show devolved powers or election data — the map shows territory only.
1.4.2 The Federal State: The USA
A federal state is one in which governing power is divided by the constitution between a central government and the governments of the constituent units, each of which acts directly on the citizen within its own sphere and derives its authority from the constitution rather than from the other level.
The essential idea is that neither level is the creature of the other. A federation is not a centre that has generously lent power downward; it is two orders of government, each with a constitutionally protected field of its own.
Federations arise in two ways. Sometimes separate states come together, surrendering part of their independence to form a common government — as the American states did. Sometimes a single large state is reorganised into units, to accommodate regional, linguistic or cultural diversity within one political system.
General Features Of A Federal State
Dual government. Two sets of government operate over the same territory and the same people — one central, one for each unit — each within a defined sphere.
Division of powers by the constitution. The constitution itself allots subjects to each level. Residuary powers — authority over subjects the constitution has not assigned to anyone — must be placed with one level or the other, and where they lie tells you a great deal about the federation’s balance.
A written constitution. The division cannot rest on convention or memory. It must be set down, so that each level can point to the text when challenged.
A rigid constitution. Amendment requires a special procedure, usually a special majority and the consent of the units, so that the centre cannot rewrite the bargain alone.
Supremacy of the constitution. Both levels derive their powers from it, and every law made by either must conform to it.
An independent judiciary with the power of judicial review. Judicial review is the power of a court to examine a law or executive act and declare it invalid if it conflicts with the constitution. In a federation the courts also serve as umpire between the two levels.
A bicameral legislature at the centre, in which one chamber represents the population and the second represents the units, so that smaller units are not simply outvoted.
The USA As A Federal State
Delegates from the states met at Philadelphia between May and September 1787 to replace the loose arrangement that had joined them since independence. They faced two demands at once: a central government strong enough to act for the whole, and protection for the separate identity of each state. The document they signed on 17 September 1787 was an attempt to satisfy both. It was ratified by the ninth state in June 1788, and government under it began in March 1789.
The United States today is a federation of fifty states with a national government at Washington, D.C. Its federal features are these.
A written constitution of seven Articles, setting out the three organs of government, their powers, and the division of authority between the nation and the states.
Division of powers. Article I lists the powers of Congress — among them defence, the declaration of war, foreign relations and treaties, inter-state and foreign commerce, currency and coinage. It also lists what Congress may not do. Powers not delegated to the national government, and not forbidden to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people; residuary powers thus lie with the states. Certain powers, such as taxation, borrowing and the establishment of courts, are exercised by both.
Dual governance. Each state has its own constitution, its own elected Governor, its own legislature and its own courts, and legislates on such matters as education, police and public health. State constitutions must be republican in form and must conform to the Constitution of the United States.
Supremacy of the Constitution. The Constitution and the laws and treaties made under it are the supreme law of the land, binding judges in every state.
A rigid amendment procedure, requiring action by both the nation and the states, as set out in FC 1.1 below.
An independent judiciary. The Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority. Its power of judicial review is not written into the Constitution; the Court asserted it in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803, and it has been exercised ever since.
A bicameral Congress. The House of Representatives is apportioned among the states by population. In the Senate every state, large or small, has two members — the guarantee that made the federal bargain acceptable to the smaller states.
Financial autonomy. Each level levies and collects its own taxes, so that neither is wholly dependent on the other for money.
Dual citizenship. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, a person born or naturalised in the United States is a citizen both of the United States and of the state in which they reside.
The supremacy of the Constitution is stated in the text itself, in the clause set out in Source 1.2.
Two things in that wording repay attention. National law is supreme only when made ‘in Pursuance’ of the Constitution — a law outside the national government’s granted powers gains no supremacy from this clause. And the duty is laid on judges, which is why courts, rather than armies or negotiators, became the ordinary means of settling federal disputes in the United States.
What the clause cannot tell us is equally important. It fixes which law prevails in a conflict. It does not tell us where the boundary between national and state authority actually lies, and it has never stopped that boundary being fought over. The text settles the tie-breaker; two centuries of litigation have settled — and re-settled — the rest.
The amendment procedure is set out in FC 1.1.
Flowchart
FC 1.1 — How The United States Constitution Is Amended Caption: Amendment under Article V requires a proposal at one stage and ratification by the states at the next; both stages offer two routes. Nodes: Proposal stage → either (a) two-thirds of both Houses of Congress approve the amendment, or (b) two-thirds of the state legislatures (34 states) apply to Congress, which must call a convention → if neither route succeeds, the amendment fails here → Ratification stage → either (a) legislatures of three-fourths of the states (38) approve, or (b) conventions in three-fourths of the states approve, whichever route Congress specifies → if fewer than 38 states ratify, the amendment fails → on ratification by the 38th state, the amendment becomes part of the Constitution. The President has no formal role at any stage.
Notice how much of the procedure lies outside the national government’s control. Congress cannot amend the Constitution by itself, and the President cannot veto an amendment. Thirty-eight separate state decisions stand between a proposal and a change. That is rigidity by design, and it is what stops one level of the federation rewriting the bargain against the other.
1.4.3 Comparing Unitary Britain And Federal USA
The two states differ on every structural question, and the differences hang together — each follows from the first.
Levels Of Government
The United States has two sets of government, national and state, each with its own constitutionally protected sphere, its own authority and its own capacity to make and enforce law over the citizen. Britain has one. Local and devolved bodies in Britain exercise real functions, but they hold them by grant from Parliament rather than by right.
Source Of The Constitution
The United States has a single written Constitution of seven Articles, which describes the organs of government, distributes powers between the two levels and marks the limits of each. Britain has no such document. Its constitutional rules are dispersed across statutes, judicial decisions and conventions, and are known rather than enacted.
What Stands Supreme
In the United States the Constitution is supreme; every law made by Congress or by a state legislature must conform to it. In Britain Parliament is supreme; it may make or unmake any law, and no court may strike a statute down for being unconstitutional.
Changing The Rules
American constitutional change is deliberately difficult: proposal by special majority, then ratification by three-fourths of the states. British constitutional change requires no special procedure at all — an ordinary Act of Parliament, passed like any other, will do. The American arrangement protects the states against the centre. The British arrangement lets one generation’s Parliament rearrange what the last one built.
The Role Of The Courts
The Supreme Court of the United States interprets the Constitution, settles disputes between the nation and the states, and may declare a law invalid. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which began work in 2009 as the highest court of appeal, interprets and applies statutes, but works within a system in which Parliament, not a constitutional text, has the last word.
The Second Chamber
Both legislatures are bicameral, but for different reasons. The United States Senate exists to represent the states as units, with equal membership for each — a federal device. The House of Lords is not a chamber of territorial representation at all; its members are not elected by regions, and it exists as a revising chamber within a unitary system.
Citizenship
The United States grants dual citizenship — of the nation and of the state of residence. Britain grants a single citizenship, owed to one government throughout the country.
1.5 Parliamentary And Presidential Forms Of Government
The third classification asks about the relationship between two organs of government: the legislature, which makes law, and the executive, which carries it out.
Two arrangements are possible in principle, and both exist in practice. Either the executive is drawn from the legislature and survives only while the legislature supports it, or the executive is chosen separately, serves a fixed term, and cannot be dismissed by a legislative vote.
The first is the parliamentary system, in which the real executive is a part of the legislature and is collectively responsible to it. The second is the presidential system, in which the executive and the legislature are separately constituted, and neither can remove the other in the ordinary course of politics.
Both arrangements are found in liberal democracies. Both rest on elections, on limited government and on the rule of law. What they disagree about is how a government should be held to account — continuously, or at fixed intervals.
Some states combine elements of both. France has a directly elected President alongside a Prime Minister answerable to the legislature; such arrangements are described as semi-presidential.
1.5.1 The Parliamentary System: India
The Constitution of India establishes three organs at the Union level — the Union Legislature, the Union Executive and the Union Judiciary. The Union Legislature, or Parliament, consists of the President and two Houses: the Lok Sabha, or House of the People, whose members are directly elected by the voters, and the Rajya Sabha, or Council of States, whose members are elected mainly by the elected members of the State Legislative Assemblies.
Note where the President sits in that sentence. The President is head of the executive and is also a constituent part of Parliament. That overlap is not untidiness. It is the defining feature of the system: in a parliamentary government the executive and the legislature are joined, not separated.
Features Of The Parliamentary System In India
A nominal head of state and a real head of government. The President of India is the head of state, in whose name executive action is taken. Real decision-making power lies with the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers. The President is therefore called the nominal or titular executive, and the Council of Ministers the real executive.
A dual executive. The executive thus has two parts — a head of state who holds office for a fixed term and does not ordinarily decide policy, and a head of government who decides policy and holds office only while supported by the Lok Sabha.
The head of state acts on advice. Article 74(1) provides that there shall be a Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at the head to aid and advise the President, who shall act in accordance with that advice. The President may require the Council to reconsider its advice once, but must act in accordance with the advice tendered after reconsideration.
The executive is drawn from the legislature. Every minister must be a member of one of the two Houses. A person who is not a member when appointed must become one within six consecutive months, failing which they cease to be a minister. The Prime Minister is usually a member of the Lok Sabha, though not necessarily — Dr Manmohan Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha throughout his term as Prime Minister.
Majority support is the basis of office. The President appoints as Prime Minister the person able to command the confidence of a majority in the Lok Sabha, and appoints the other ministers on the Prime Minister’s advice. Where no single party has a majority, several parties may combine to form a coalition government — a government formed by two or more parties which together command a majority that none commands alone.
Individual responsibility. Each minister is answerable to Parliament for the working of the department they hold. Ministers hold office during the pleasure of the President, which in practice means that the Prime Minister may have a minister dropped.
Collective responsibility. The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha. Ministers stand or fall together: whatever their private disagreements, they defend the government’s decisions in public, and if the House withdraws its confidence they resign as a body.
Continuous legislative control of the executive. Parliament checks the executive daily — through the Question Hour, in which ministers answer questions on the working of their departments; through calling-attention motions on matters of urgent public importance; through censure motions, which record the House’s disapproval of a minister or of the Council; through cut motions on demands for grants; and, decisively, through a motion of no confidence.
No fixed tenure for the real executive. The Council of Ministers has no guaranteed term. Its maximum life is that of the Lok Sabha, which continues for five years from its first sitting unless dissolved sooner. That period may be extended by one year at a time while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation.
Dissolution of the lower House. The President may dissolve the Lok Sabha before its term expires, on the advice of the Prime Minister, so that the government may seek a fresh mandate. The Rajya Sabha is a permanent House and is not subject to dissolution; one-third of its members retire every second year.
Political homogeneity and secrecy. Ministers are normally drawn from one party or from parties allied in a coalition, which gives the government a common programme. Cabinet discussions are confidential, and ministers take an oath of secrecy.
A bicameral legislature, with a directly elected Lok Sabha and an indirectly elected Rajya Sabha representing the States.
The Structure Of The Council Of Ministers
The Council of Ministers is not a single flat body. It is layered, and the layers matter, because they decide who is in the room when a decision is taken. Its structure is shown in Fig. 1.5-1.
At the centre stands the Prime Minister. Around the Prime Minister sit the senior ministers holding the most important portfolios, such as defence, home, finance and external affairs. Beyond them sit the other Cabinet ministers holding major departments. Outside the Cabinet are Ministers of State, who hold charge of smaller departments or assist a Cabinet minister, and Deputy Ministers, who assist but hold no independent charge. Ministers of State and Deputy Ministers do not ordinarily attend Cabinet meetings, though they may be called.
Diagram
Fig. 1.5-1 Caption: The Council of Ministers is arranged in concentric layers, with the Prime Minister at the centre. Brief: Four concentric circles. Innermost labelled ‘Prime Minister’; next ring ‘Senior Cabinet colleagues — key portfolios’; next ring ‘Other Cabinet Ministers’; outer ring ‘Ministers of State and Deputy Ministers’. Label the whole figure ‘Council of Ministers’. Plain line drawing, no photographs or names.
How A Government Falls
The sharpest expression of collective responsibility is the motion of no confidence. It is a motion, moved in the Lok Sabha alone, stating simply that the House has no confidence in the Council of Ministers. It requires the support of at least fifty members to be admitted, and unlike a censure motion it need give no reasons.
The first such motion in India was moved in 1963 by Acharya J. B. Kripalani, in the aftermath of the conflict with China of the previous year. It was defeated, but it established the practice: even a government with a large majority must come to the floor of the House and be counted.
The procedure is set out in FC 1.2.
Flowchart
FC 1.2 — A Motion Of No Confidence In The Lok Sabha Caption: The procedure by which the Lok Sabha may remove the entire Council of Ministers from office. Nodes: A member gives notice of a motion of no confidence in the Council of Ministers → the Speaker asks whether at least fifty members support the motion → if fewer than fifty rise, leave is refused and the motion is not taken up → if fifty or more rise, the Speaker allots a day for discussion → the House debates the motion → the House divides and the votes are counted → if the motion is defeated, the Council of Ministers continues in office → if the motion is carried, the Prime Minister and the entire Council of Ministers resign → the President invites the person able to command a majority to form a government, or, if none can, the Lok Sabha may be dissolved and fresh elections held.
Two points follow from that chain. First, an individual minister cannot be removed this way; the motion is against the Council as a whole. Second, the fifty-member threshold exists to stop the House being paralysed by motions no one supports — a small procedural rule doing large institutional work.
1.5.2 The Presidential System: The USA
In a presidential system the executive is not responsible to the legislature. The President is elected separately, holds office for a fixed term, and cannot be turned out because the legislature dislikes a policy.
Features Of The Presidential System In The USA
A single unified executive. The President is both head of state and head of government. There is no separate ceremonial head, and no Prime Minister. Ceremonial duties and executive decisions belong to the same person.
Separation of powers. The President and the Cabinet form the executive; Congress, comprising the Senate and the House of Representatives, is the legislature; the Supreme Court and the federal courts are the judiciary. The three are separately constituted and separately staffed.
No overlap of membership. A member of Congress may not simultaneously hold executive office. A legislator appointed to the Cabinet must give up the seat in Congress. Members of the executive do not sit in the legislature, and do not answer questions on its floor.
Fixed terms for both branches. The President is elected for four years, through an Electoral College in which each state casts votes, and since 1951 may be elected to that office no more than twice. Members of the House serve two-year terms and Senators six-year terms, with one-third of the Senate elected every two years. Neither branch can shorten the other’s life: the President cannot dissolve Congress, and Congress cannot vote the President out of office.
Removal only by impeachment. Impeachment is a formal legal-political process for removing a holder of high office for specified grave offences. The House of Representatives brings the charge; the Senate tries it, and conviction requires a two-thirds majority. It is a judgment on conduct, not on policy, and is deliberately difficult.
The Cabinet is only an advisory body. Cabinet Secretaries head the executive departments. They are chosen by the President, subject to confirmation by the Senate, often for expertise rather than political standing. They advise; the President decides, and the decision is the President’s alone.
The Cabinet is responsible to the President, not to the legislature. A Secretary may be dismissed by the President at will. Congress does not vote them out, though it scrutinises their departments through its committees.
Political homogeneity is not required. Secretaries need not belong to the President’s party, and the Cabinet has no collective responsibility of the Indian kind. There is no doctrine that they stand or fall together.
Checks and balances between the branches. Separation does not mean isolation. The President may veto — refuse assent to — a bill passed by Congress, and Congress may override that veto by a two-thirds majority in both Houses. Senior appointments and treaties require the consent of the Senate. Congress controls money. The courts may declare an act of either branch unconstitutional.
A stable executive. Because the President’s tenure does not depend on legislative support, the executive is stable and decision-making is quick. The same feature means a President who has lost the confidence of Congress, and much of the country, still holds office until the term ends.
1.5.3 Comparing The Parliamentary And Presidential Systems
The two systems differ on one thing first, and everything else follows from it: whether the executive owes its continued existence to the legislature.
In India the executive is fused with the legislature. Ministers are members of Parliament, sit in it, answer in it, and leave office when it withdraws confidence. In the United States the two are separated. The President is elected apart from Congress, sits outside it, and stays for four years whatever Congress thinks of the administration.
From that single difference flow the others. Because the Indian executive can be removed at any time, it must keep a majority together every day, and it may in turn advise the dissolution of the Lok Sabha and force an election. Because the American executive cannot be removed for its policies, it needs no continuous majority — but it also cannot dissolve Congress and appeal to the voters when Congress blocks it. Each system gives the executive a weapon and denies it another.
The main contrasts are set out in Table 1.2.
Neither arrangement is simply better. Each was adopted to solve the problem its framers most feared. The Americans, having just fought a war against a distant executive they could not control, built a government whose parts would check one another. The Constituent Assembly of India, choosing between the two, preferred an executive that must answer to the elected House every day it governs.
1.6 Summary
Governments are classified so that the important differences between them become visible. A classification is a question asked of every government, and the question chosen decides which governments end up beside each other.
This chapter uses three classifications. By political regime, states are totalitarian, authoritarian or liberal democratic. By structural organisation, they are unitary or federal. By the executive–legislative framework, they are parliamentary or presidential. One state appears in all three; India is liberal democratic, federal and parliamentary.
A totalitarian state claims authority over the whole of life and recognises nothing as private. Its features are total centralisation, one compulsory ideology, a single mass party under one leader, no line between public and private life, a monopoly of information and propaganda, terror through a secret police, a monopoly of arms, a directed economy and compulsory mass mobilisation.
Totalitarian rule is a twentieth-century form, arising in Europe after the First World War. Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union under Stalin and Nazi Germany are its standard cases. They held rival ideologies; what made them comparable was the completeness of the claim each made on the individual.
An authoritarian state concentrates unaccountable power in one person or a small group, but claims obedience in politics only. Its features are limited pluralism, a mentality of order or tradition rather than a full ideology, low political mobilisation, managed competition, controlled press and courts, and leadership change by coup rather than by election. Its common types are absolute monarchies, military regimes and one-party regimes.
Both are non-democratic, but they are different types rather than degrees of one thing. They differ in the extent of the state’s claim, in the instruments used — ideology and terror against ordinary coercion — and in what is asked of the citizen, active enthusiasm against permitted passivity.
Democracy means rule by the people. Direct democracy, in which citizens decide themselves, survives only in small settings such as the landsgemeinde and the gram sabha. Large states use representative democracy, which makes popular rule workable and at the same time creates the problem of controlling the representative.
A liberal democratic state joins two things: government formed by freely elected representatives, and limits placed on what any government may do. Democracy answers ‘who decides?’; the liberal element answers ‘and what may they not do?’. Without the limits, a majority may crush the individual; without democracy, the limits belong to a government nobody chose.
Its features are elected representatives; free, fair and periodic elections on universal adult franchise by secret ballot; constitutional and limited government; the rule of law; guaranteed rights and civil liberties; separation of powers with checks and balances; an independent judiciary; political pluralism and a lawful opposition; a free press and civil society; protection of minorities; and secularism.
A unitary state vests all governing power in one central government; sub-units hold only what the centre has delegated and may withdraw. Its features are centralisation, uniform law and administration, delegated local bodies, economy, flexibility, single citizenship and a supreme central legislature.
Britain is the standard unitary case: one legislature, executive and judiciary for the whole state; an unwritten and flexible constitution; and parliamentary sovereignty, under which Parliament may make or unmake any law and no court may strike a statute down. Devolution since 1999 has moved power outward to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but those legislatures were created by Acts of Parliament, so Britain remains a decentralised unitary state rather than a federal one.
A federal state divides power by the constitution between a centre and units, each acting directly on the citizen within its own sphere and deriving authority from the constitution rather than from the other level. Its features are dual government, a constitutional division of powers, a written and rigid constitution, supremacy of the constitution, an independent judiciary with judicial review, and a bicameral central legislature in which the second chamber represents the units.
The USA is the standard federal case: a written Constitution of seven Articles; enumerated powers for Congress with residuary powers reserved to the states; dual governance with state constitutions, governors, legislatures and courts; the Supremacy Clause; a rigid amendment procedure requiring ratification by three-fourths of the states; judicial review asserted in Marbury v. Madison (1803); equal representation of every state in the Senate; financial autonomy at each level; and dual citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Britain and the USA differ on every structural question, and the differences follow from the first: one level of government against two, an unwritten against a written constitution, parliamentary sovereignty against constitutional supremacy, a flexible against a rigid amending process, courts that apply statutes against courts that police a federal boundary, a revising second chamber against a chamber of the states, and single against dual citizenship.
In a parliamentary system the real executive is drawn from the legislature and survives only while the legislature supports it. In India the President is the nominal head of state acting on ministerial advice, while the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers form the real executive, are members of Parliament, are individually and collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha, hold no fixed term, and may advise the dissolution of that House.
Parliament controls the executive continuously — through the Question Hour, calling-attention motions, censure motions and cut motions, and decisively through a motion of no confidence, which requires the support of fifty members, is moved in the Lok Sabha alone, and if carried compels the entire Council of Ministers to resign.
In a presidential system the executive is separately constituted and not responsible to the legislature. The US President is head of state and head of government, is elected through the Electoral College for a fixed four-year term, may not serve more than two terms, and can be removed only by impeachment. Cabinet Secretaries advise but do not decide, are responsible to the President alone, and sit outside Congress.
Separation is not isolation. The two branches check each other through the presidential veto and the two-thirds congressional override, Senate consent to appointments and treaties, congressional control of money, and judicial review.
The central difference between the two systems is whether the executive owes its continued existence to the legislature. Everything else follows: continuous accountability and the power of dissolution on one side, fixed tenure and stability without dissolution on the other.
The Arguments In One Place
The chapter’s central claim is that forms of government are designed answers to political problems, not accidents of national character. Federalism, rigid constitutions, votes of confidence and fixed terms all exist because someone identified a danger and built a rule against it.
The strongest argument for the parliamentary form is responsibility: a government that must retain the confidence of the elected House can never drift far from the majority that put it there. The strongest argument against it is instability, and the difficulty of taking unpopular long-term decisions between elections.
The strongest argument for the presidential form is stability: an executive with a fixed term can decide, plan and absorb unpopularity. The strongest argument against it is that a government the legislature has ceased to trust still governs, and deadlock between the branches has no political remedy until the term ends.
The chapter does not settle the choice. It shows what each design buys, and what each design costs.
1.7 Key Terms
Authoritarianism — A system of rule in which power is concentrated in one person or a small group who are not constitutionally accountable to the people, but who do not attempt to control every area of life.
Coalition government — A government formed by two or more parties which together command a majority in the legislature that none of them commands alone.
Collective responsibility — The principle that the Council of Ministers stands or falls together before the Lok Sabha, defending government decisions in public and resigning as a body if confidence is withdrawn.
Constitution — The body of fundamental rules that establishes the organs of government, distributes power among them and sets limits on what each may do; written where collected in a single enacted document, unwritten where scattered across statutes, decisions and conventions.
Democracy — Rule by the people, from the Greek demos (people) and kratia (rule).
Devolution — The grant of powers by a central legislature to a subordinate regional body, without any surrender of the centre’s own legal authority.
Direct democracy — A system in which citizens themselves take public decisions rather than choosing others to take them.
Federal state — A state in which power is divided by the constitution between a central government and the governments of the units, each acting directly on the citizen within its own sphere and drawing authority from the constitution.
Government — The set of institutions through which a state makes decisions, enforces them and settles disputes about them.
Ideology — An organised set of beliefs about how society should be arranged and where history is going.
Impeachment — A formal legal-political process for removing a holder of high office for specified grave offences.
Judicial review — The power of a court to examine a law or executive act and declare it invalid if it conflicts with the constitution.
Parliamentary sovereignty — The British doctrine that Parliament may make or unmake any law, that no other body may set its statutes aside, and that no Parliament can bind its successors.
Parliamentary system — A system in which the real executive is drawn from the legislature and is collectively responsible to it, holding office only while it retains the legislature’s confidence.
Political pluralism — The open coexistence of rival parties, associations and opinions within a state.
Presidential system — A system in which the executive and the legislature are separately constituted, the executive holds a fixed term, and neither can remove the other in the ordinary course of politics.
Propaganda — Information selected and shaped to produce a desired belief rather than to inform.
Regime — The underlying system by which power is acquired and held, and by which it is limited or left unlimited.
Representative democracy — A system in which citizens elect a smaller body of people to take decisions on their behalf, and may remove them at the next election.
Residuary powers — Authority over subjects that the constitution has not assigned to either level of government, which must therefore be placed with one of them.
Rule of law — The principle that law is supreme, that everyone including the government is subject to it, that all are equal before it, and that no one may be punished except for a definite breach of law established in an ordinary court.
Secularism — In the Indian constitutional sense, the principle that the state has no religion of its own, does not favour or penalise any faith, and guarantees freedom of conscience to all.
Separation of powers — The principle that the legislative, executive and judicial functions should rest in distinct organs, so that no single body both makes the law and applies it at will.
Totalitarianism — A system of rule in which a single party or leader claims authority over the whole of life — political, economic, social and personal — and recognises no sphere as private.
Unitary state — A state in which all governing power is vested in a single central government, from which sub-units derive whatever authority they exercise.
Universal adult franchise — The right of every adult citizen to vote, regardless of property, income, education, caste, religion or sex.
Veto — The power of an executive to refuse assent to a bill passed by the legislature.
1.8 Points to Ponder
If a totalitarian state requires its citizens to march, cheer and vote, while an authoritarian state is content that they stay quiet, which of the two is telling us more about the limits of its own power?
Britain limits its government largely without a written constitution, and the United States largely by means of one. What does the comparison suggest about where the real protection of a citizen lies — in a text, or in the habits of those who hold office?
A federation makes its constitution hard to amend so that no generation can quietly rewrite the bargain. In what sense, then, are the living governed by rules made by people who are no longer alive to defend them?
A parliamentary government can be removed in an afternoon; a presidential one cannot be removed for four years. Which risk should a country fear more — an executive that cannot act, or an executive that cannot be stopped?
Elections are the feature every kind of state now claims to possess. If holding elections no longer distinguishes a liberal democracy from other regimes, what does?
Classifications place India, Britain and the United States in different boxes on two of the three bases used in this chapter, and in the same box on the third. Does that tell us these countries are fundamentally alike, or that our categories are catching only part of what matters?
1.9 Objective Questions
- A state in which all governing power is vested in a single central government, from which sub-units derive whatever authority they hold, is called a:
- federal state
- unitary state
- confederal state
- totalitarian state [1 mark]
- Which one of the following is NOT a feature of a totalitarian state?
- A single official ideology
- State control over the press and education
- Limited pluralism, with some associations tolerated
- Compulsory participation of citizens in political life [1 mark]
- In the United States, a proposed amendment to the Constitution becomes part of it only when it is ratified by:
- a simple majority of the states
- two-thirds of the states
- three-fourths of the states
- all the states [1 mark]
- The principle that Parliament may make or unmake any law whatever, and that no other body may set aside an Act of Parliament as invalid, is known as:
- judicial review
- parliamentary sovereignty
- collective responsibility
- the rule of law [1 mark]
- A veto exercised by the President of the United States can be overridden by:
- a simple majority in the House of Representatives
- a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress
- a ruling of the Supreme Court
- the consent of three-fourths of the states [1 mark]
- Match each term in Column A with its correct description in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Devolution | i. Powers not assigned to the centre, left with the states |
| b. Residuary powers | ii. Transfer of specified powers to regional bodies by ordinary law |
| c. Impeachment | iii. Information shaped to produce a desired belief |
| d. Propaganda | iv. A formal charge of grave misconduct against a holder of office |
Fill in the blank: The Ninety-first Amendment Act, 2003 provides that the total number of Ministers, including the Prime Minister, shall not exceed ______ per cent of the total membership of the Lok Sabha. [1 mark]
State whether the following statement is true or false: In the presidential system of the United States, a member of the Cabinet must also be a member of Congress. [1 mark]
State whether the following statement is true or false: The Rajya Sabha is a permanent House and is not subject to dissolution. [1 mark]
Assertion (A): A federal state must have a written and rigid constitution. Reason (R): In a federation, power is divided between two levels of government, and the boundary between their spheres must be recorded and protected from easy alteration.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
Assertion (A): Devolution has converted the United Kingdom into a federal state. Reason (R): The Scottish Parliament, the Senedd Cymru and the Northern Ireland Assembly exercise wide legislative powers.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
Assertion (A): In India the Council of Ministers must resign as a body when the Lok Sabha passes a motion of no confidence. Reason (R): The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the House of the People.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
1.10 Check Your Concepts
Define a regime, and state the three types into which states are classified on the basis of political regime. [2 marks]
State any two features of an authoritarian state. [2 marks]
What is meant by universal adult franchise? Give one reason why it is regarded as a feature of a liberal democratic state. [2 marks]
Differentiate between a written constitution and an unwritten constitution, giving one example of each from this chapter. [3 marks]
Give three reasons why the constitution of a federal state is normally made rigid. [3 marks]
Distinguish between a censure motion and a motion of no confidence in the Lok Sabha. [3 marks]
Explain, with an example, what is meant by the statement that in India the executive is drawn from the legislature. [4 marks]
Explain the position of the Cabinet in the presidential system of the United States, and state how it differs from the Council of Ministers in India. [4 marks]
Evaluate the claim that a state which holds regular elections is necessarily a liberal democratic state. [4 marks]
Describe the features of a totalitarian state. In what respects does it differ from an authoritarian state? [6 marks]
Compare Britain as a unitary state with the United States as a federal state, with reference to the division of powers, the form of the constitution, the method of amendment and the role of the judiciary. [6 marks]
‘The parliamentary system secures responsibility; the presidential system secures stability.’ Discuss this statement with reference to India and the United States, and state the cost each system pays for what it secures. [6 marks]
1.11 Source & Passage-Based Questions
- Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.
A country’s constitution provides that its regional assemblies were created by an ordinary law of the national legislature, and that the national legislature may by a later ordinary law alter or withdraw the powers it has given them. The regional assemblies presently legislate on health, education and transport, and no such power has ever been withdrawn.
a. Identify the form of state described, and give one reason for your answer. [2 marks]
b. Why does the extent of the powers actually exercised by the regional assemblies not settle the classification? [2 marks]
c. State one thing this description cannot tell you about how power really works in that country. [2 marks]- Read the situation and answer the questions that follow.
In a parliamentary democracy, a party that had supported the ruling alliance withdraws its support. The Prime Minister moves a motion in the lower House asking it to express confidence in the government. After a full day’s debate the House divides, and the motion is defeated by a narrow margin.
a. State what the Prime Minister is constitutionally required to do next, and why. [2 marks]
b. Which feature of the parliamentary system does this episode illustrate? Explain it. [3 marks]
c. Would the outcome have been the same for a chief executive in a presidential system? Give a reason. [2 marks]- Study the described cartoon and answer the questions that follow.
A cartoon shows an enormous figure labelled ‘The Party’ standing over a country. In one hand it holds a printing press, in the other a school bell; a radio set, a factory and a family dining table are drawn inside the outline of its coat. A small figure at its feet holds a placard reading ‘my own opinion’, and is looking about for somewhere to stand.
a. Which form of state is the cartoonist depicting? Identify two features shown in the drawing that support your answer. [3 marks]
b. What is the exaggeration in the cartoon doing, and what claim is the cartoonist making? [2 marks]
c. State one thing a cartoon of this kind cannot establish about the state it depicts. [1 mark]- Read the extract and answer the questions that follow.
“government of the people, by the people, for the people”
a. Which of the three phrases describes who holds power, and which describes the purpose for which it is held? [2 marks]
b. Explain, with reference to the features of a liberal democratic state, why the third phrase alone is not enough to make a state liberal democratic. [3 marks]
c. State one limitation of using a public speech as evidence of how a political system actually worked. [2 marks]