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| Anarchism | Any of a variety of ideologies sharing the fundamental belief that the state and all similar forms of governmental authority are unjustified and oppressive and illegitimate and therefore ought to be abolished, with future social and economic cooperation to be carried out only by means of voluntary relationships and consensual agreements under conditions of perfect legal equality. |
| Aristocracy | A privileged social class whose members possess disproportionately large shares of a society's wealth, social prestige, educational attainment and political influence, with these advantages having been acquired principally through gift or inheritance from a long line of similarly privileged and cultivated ancestors. The term also refers to a form of government in which the members of this class effectively control the state. |
| Autocracy | A system of government in which supreme political power to direct all the activities of the state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of coup d'etat or mass insurrection). |
| Bureaucracy | In ordinary usage, “bureaucracy” refers to a complex, specialized organization (especially a governmental organization) composed of non-elected, highly trained professional administrators and clerks hired on a full-time basis to perform administrative services and tasks. Bureaucratic organizations are broken up into specialized departments or ministries, to each of which is assigned responsibility for pursuing a limited number of the government's many official goals and policies — those falling within a single relatively narrow functional domain. |
| Capitalism | A form of economic order characterized by private ownership of the means of production and the freedom of private owners to use, buy and sell their property or services on the market at voluntarily agreed prices and terms, with only minimal interference with such transactions by the state or other authoritative third parties. |
| Communism | - Any ideology based on the communal ownership of all property and a classless social structure, with economic production and distribution to be directed and regulated by means of an authoritative economic plan that supposedly embodies the interests of the community as a whole.
- The specifically Marxist-Leninist variant of socialism which emphasizes that a truly communist society can be achieved only through the violent overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that is to prepare the way for the future idealized society of communism under the authoritarian guidance of a hierarchical and disciplined Communist Party.
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| Coup d'etat | A quick and decisive extra-legal seizure of governmental power by a relatively small but highly organized group of political or military leaders, typically by means of the unexpected arrest or assassination of the incumbent chief executive and his principal supporters within the government. For the coup to be successful, the rank and file of the police and military have to be willing to take orders from the new government leaders once the coup is accomplished, so typically the organizers of successful coups have previously recruited important military and police commanders to their cause prior to going ahead with it. |
| Democracy | A system of government in which effective political power is vested in the people. In older usage (for example, in the writings of the classical Greek and Roman philosophers or in the Federalist Papers), the term was reserved exclusively for governmental systems in which the populace exercised this power directly through general assemblies or referenda to decide the most important questions of law or policy. In more contemporary usage, the term has been broadened to include also what the American Founding Fathers called a republic -- a governmental system in which the power of the people is normally exercised only indirectly, through freely elected representatives who are supposed to make government decisions according to the popular will, or at least according to the supposed values and interests of the population. |
| Dictatorship | Government by a single person (or group) whose discretion in using the powers and resources of the state is unrestrained by any fixed legal or constitutional rules and who is (are) in no effective way held responsible to the general population or their elected representatives. |
| Fascism | A class of political ideologies (and historical political regimes) that takes its name from the movement led by Benito Mussolini that took power in Italy in 1922. The different "fascist" movements and regimes have varied considerably in their specific goals and practices, but they are usually said to be characterized by several common features: - Militant nationalism
- The adulation of a single charismatic national leader
- Emphasis on the absolute necessity of complete national unity
- Strict regulation and control of the economy by the regime
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| Monarchy | A form of rule in which there is a single head of state, a monarch, with the title of King (or Queen) or its equivalent; in which the monarch holds his or her office for life; in which the position of monarch normally descends by rules of heredity only to members of a specific royal family; and where the monarch is popularly believed to be possessed of a religious or similar symbolic significance for the state and its institutions that legitimate his or her privileges. |
| Oligarchy | Any system of government in which virtually all political power is held by a very small number of wealthy but otherwise unmeritorious people who shape public policy primarily to benefit themselves financially through direct subsidies to their agricultural estates or business firms, lucrative government contracts, and protectionist measures aimed at damaging their economic competitors — while displaying little or no concern for the broader interests of the rest of the citizenry. |
| Republic | Originally, any form of government not headed by an hereditary monarch. In modern American usage, the term usually refers more specifically to a form of government (a.k.a. “representative democracy”) in which ultimate political power is theoretically vested in the people but in which popular control is exercised only intermittently and indirectly through the popular election of government officials and/or delegates to a legislative assembly rather than directly through frequent mass assemblies or legislation by referendum |
| Socialism | A class of ideologies favoring an economic system in which all or most productive resources are the property of the government, in which the production and distribution of goods and services are administered primarily by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which any remaining private production and distribution (socialists differ on how much of this is tolerable) is heavily regulated by the government rather than by market processes. |
| Theocracy | A form of government in which the clergy exercise or bestow all legitimate political authority and in which religious law is dominant over civil law and enforced by state agencies. |
