Читать книгу Keeping the Republic - Christine Barbour - Страница 53

Economic systems vary according to how much control government has over the economy; political systems vary in how much control government has over individuals’ lives and the social order. They range from totalitarian governments (14), where an authoritarian government (14) might make substantive decisions about how lives are to be lived and the social order arranged, to anarchy (15), where there is no control over those things at all. Short of anarchy is democracy (15), based on popular sovereignty (15), where individuals have considerable individual freedom and the social order provides fair processes rather than specified outcomes. Various economic-political systems include authoritarian capitalism (14) and advanced industrial democracy (16), as well as communist democracy (16), a theoretical possibility with no real-world examples.

An authoritarian government might be a monarchy, a theocracy, a fascist government, or an oligarchy. People who live in such systems are subjects (16), unable to claim rights against the government. Theories of democracy—elite democracy (15), pluralist democracy (15), and participatory democracy (15)—vary in how much power they believe individuals do or should have, but all individuals who live under democratic systems are citizens (16) because they have fundamental rights that government must protect. The idea that government exists to protect the rights of citizens originated with the idea of a social contract (18) between rulers and ruled. The idea that people have individual rights over the power of the state is a hallmark of classical liberalism (18).