Forms of Government: A Comprehensive Guide
1. Sovereignty and the State
1.1 What is the main attribute of power?
Answer: Sovereignty.
1.2 What did the Greeks mean by autarchy?
Answer: In Greece, autarchy arose as a form of government where states were not dependent on other states.
1.3 In Rome, how did they conceive the concept of sovereignty?
Answer: Sovereignty is designated as the highest authority, implying that it supersedes any other power or competing force. It is the supreme political power exercised within a community and projected outwards as independence.
1.4 Where is the constitutional principle of sovereignty found in Mexico?
Answer: In Article 39 of the Constitution of the United Mexican States.
1.5 What is the content of Article 39 of the Constitution?
Answer: Article 39. National sovereignty resides essentially and originally in the people. All public power emanates from the people and is instituted for their benefit.
1.6 In what sense is the State sovereign?
Answer: Etymologically, sovereignty belongs to a set of powers that may be held by social groups within the state. The Supreme Power is above all internal social powers. Social Aspect: It refers to its quality as the supreme governing power over the interests of the community.
1.7 What does the submission of the State to law mean?
Answer: All state bodies are subordinate to the Constitution, its laws, systems, regulations, and orders.
1.8 How is the submission of the state to law understood in modern state theory?
Answer: It is essentially the rule of law, where sovereignty is a legitimate power operating under the standards of the rule of law.
2. Organization of the State
2.1 What is the Organization of the State?
Answer: The state is a political concept that refers to a form of social organization, both coercive and sovereign, consisting of a set of involuntary institutions that have the power to regulate life within a given territory.
2.2 What is the content of Article 90 of the Mexican Constitution?
Answer: Article 90. The federal government and parastatal entities will be centralized under the Organic Law enacted by Congress, which will distribute the administrative business of the Federation to be conducted by the secretaries of state and determine the general bases for the creation of parastatals and federal executive intervention in their operation.
2.3 What is the principle of separation of powers?
Answer: According to the theory of the separation of powers by Baron de Montesquieu, developed in his work The Spirit of Laws:
2.4 What is the constitutional basis of the Division of Powers in Mexico?
Answer: It is found in Article 49 of the Constitution of the United Mexican States.
2.5 What does Article 49 of the Federal Constitution establish?
Answer: Article 49. The supreme power of the federation, for its exercise, is divided into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Two or more of these powers may not be united in one person or corporation, nor shall the legislature be deposited in an individual except in the case of extraordinary powers granted to the executive of the union, as provided in Article 29.
2.6 What is the constitutional basis of the federal executive in Mexico?
Answer: It is found in Articles 80 to 89, in addition to the powers and duties established by existing laws and legal systems.
2.7 What is the constitutional basis of the Mexican legislature?
Answer: We find it in Articles 50 and following of the Constitution.
2.8 Where is the constitutional basis of the Judiciary in Mexico?
Answer: It is found in Articles 94 and following.
2.9 What are the regular, special, discretionary, and meta-powers of the President of the Republic in Mexico?
Answer: Article 89 refers to the ordinary constitutional powers. Article 49 establishes the principle of separation of powers in Mexico and also refers to Article 29 and the second paragraph of Article 131, which grant extraordinary powers to the President of the Republic.
2.10 What is Abuse of Power?
Answer: Mistreatment, torture. Abuse is the use of a thing or the exercise of a right in a manner contrary to its nature and for a purpose other than that which is lawful to pursue.
2.11 What does Excess of Power mean?
Answer: Power exercised beyond the limits of the law. It is an excess committed by a body of authority in the performance of its duties. Example: When setting inequitable taxes, there is an excess of taxing power. Provinces in Rome rebelled due to excessive taxation, for example, a 200% penalty on taxes.
2.12 What does Diversion of Power mean?
Answer: Nepotism, enrichment in private business. Misuse of power is a flaw in an administrative act that, while legal in its use of power, is exercised for a purpose other than that for which it was granted, serving purposes beyond its legal possibilities. Example: Using public funds for personal gain.
3. Theories of State Justification
3.1 What is the opinion of Hans Kelsen on the legal theory of justification of the state?
Answer: Kelsen starts from the idea that the state is purely and simply an existing regulatory system. As a subject of acts of State, it is only the personification of the legal order. As power, it is nothing but the validity of this legal order. As the Legal Order: It strips the State of every sociological, political, or evaluative element and comes to regard it only as a creation of law. State equals law (set of legal rules or legal norms).
3.2 How can Hegel’s theory of moral justification of the state be explained?
Answer: Hegel considers the state as the highest degree that the objective spirit reaches in its dialectical evolution and assigns it the value of the moral reality of the idea. This ethical doctrine views the State as the means par excellence to achieve human happiness and has to do with social partnership.
4. Forms of Government
4.1 What are the aims of the state?
Answer: These are general goals or purposes that political evaluation has recognized and incorporated into the overall legal order.
4.2 What is the etymology of the word “Government”?
Answer: It comes from the Greek êõâåñíÜù, meaning driving a boat. In general, it refers to the authorities who manage, supervise, and administer the state institutions, which consists of the exercise of state power.
4.3 How do you define the concept of “Form of Government”?
Answer: It is the system by which the authorities of a state govern its institutions. To classify forms of government, it is necessary to consider the time period, the number of governors, the manner in which power is exercised, and the structure of the organs of government.
4.4 Explain Plato’s concept of government.
Answer: Perfect form: aristocracy or the government of philosophers, the best form of government.
4.5 What did Machiavelli say in relation to government?
Answer: In “The Prince” (1513), he only recognizes two forms: all states are either republics or principalities.
4.6 According to Montesquieu, how should government be understood?
Answer: (The Spirit of Laws, 1748) He modifies the Aristotelian classification with the distinction between monarchy, republic, and despotism, and within the republic, between democracy and aristocracy.
4.7 What is the Republican Government?
Answer: It is one in which the people, either as a whole or just a part of it, exercise sovereign power.
4.8 Explain what the monarchical government is.
Answer: It is one in which a single person rules, but according to fixed and established laws.
4.9 What is the concept of the word Republic?
Answer: It is the organization of a state in which the holders of the executive and legislative branches are elected through voting in a democratic manner, according to constitutional principles and the rules established in electoral laws.
4.10 Define the concept of Autocracy.
Answer: It is characterized by a state where power is held by a single ruler, in opposition to all subjects, who are excluded from active participation.
4.11 What are the traits that distinguish a monarchy?
Answer: In a monarchy, the head of state or the highest office is:
4.12 What is the Parliamentary system?
Answer: The head of the executive body acts as a moderator, depending on the political or parliamentary government, which assumes the political leadership of the state. The parliamentary system is a political organization in which the executive branch is collegial and strictly one-man, although in some cases, diarchies, triumvirates, and tetrarchies have been established.
4.13 How does the Presidential System work?
Answer: It maintains the separation of powers, with public bodies exercising powers independently but with moderate collaboration. In the USA, the problem arises of questioning who or where to place the executive branch.
4.14 What is Anarchism?
Answer: A form of government in which power rests with each individual in the community, where power is held by various free communities.
4.15 What is Totalitarianism?
Answer: It is a form of state, meaning a way of organizing the four components of the state (territory, population, government, power, and also the legal system or law).
4.16 What is the etymological root of the word aristocracy?
Answer: From the Greek aristos, meaning the best, and kratos, meaning government, it defines a form of government in which sovereign power resides in a small number of people, considered the best.
4.17 What is Gerontocracy?
Answer: The government of the elders. Example: The Former Soviet Union.