Two Advantages And Disadvantages And Different Forms Of Government

Comparisons between different forms of government and their respective advantages and disadvantages have been made throughout history, and will continue to be relevant. Aristotle famously compared forms of government based on two main criteria: how many people hold power, and who’s interests are they serving (Wikipedia, 2018).
Monarchy in Ancient Greece was a form of government where the king, or monarch, held absolute power over his subjects. The monarch’s claim to power was based on inheritance, or belonging to the royal family. As a form of government it can be argued that it is the most successful, as it survived all over the world from ancient times to present day. Non-ruling individuals belonging to the royal family were part of the
Citizens voted for all legal and executive decisions. The best known and most radical democracy in antiquity was the Athenian democracy. In practice, due to the economic restrictions to political participation, ancient democracies resembled oligarchies in the sense that only the richest citizens, the aristocracy, were able to run for the highest political offices, and they were secretive and controlling of what they presented to be decided by vote in the general assembly. All modern democracies were based on the Athenian democracy, but they differ from it. Modern democracies are representative democracies in which the general public elects a number of political representatives to vote on most political issues, and the general public votes on a limited number of issues presented for vote by their elected representatives. The difference between this and oligarchy, and it is a significant difference, is that the political representatives cannot veto the direct vote of the general public. Otherwise, modern representative democracies can end-up resembling oligarchies very closely, and in some instances even aristocracies. Diverging from Aristotle’s views on the subject, many argue that democracy stands in direct opposition to tyranny, because democracy is the rule of the many by the many for the many, and tyranny is the rule of the many by one for the one.
These four main systems of government have existed since antiquity, and they continue to exist in varied forms even today. While some have tried to devise other forms of government, democracy seems to be the best system we have so far. However, it is an imperfect system of governance, and given the many changes technology is bringing to other areas in our lives, it is inevitable that technology will eventually impact our political structures as