Talk:List of countries by system of government

Is the supreme leader of Iran democratically elected?

If not it probably can't be called a presidential system. 2A02:A44A:5C96:1:40B:2426:37FF:8A5C (talk) 01:27, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

From this article's lead: "This list does not measure degree of democracy, political corruption, or state capacity of governments." Clyde H. Mapping (talk) 04:34, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

That's not really an answer to the question though, it seems to confuse the office of president with the office of leadership. I see the claim that 'de jure, Iran is a presidential system' repeated several times in several discussions about this, but that does not follow from the Iranian constitution, which states (article 113):

"After the office of Leadership, the President is the highest official in the country. His is the responsibility for implementing the Constitution and acting as the head of the executive, except in matters directly concerned with (the office of) the Leadership."

The question that follows is, what does 'matters directly concerned with (the office of) the Leadership' mean? That's defined in article 110, which gives the leader de jure executive power, which the leader also exercises de facto.

So, following the letter of the Iranian constitution, Iran does not have a popularly elected independently acting head of government. 2A02:A44A:5C96:1:959F:27F7:5B53:86E1 (talk) 09:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

This article says, "In presidential systems a president is the head of government,". So, getting away from the "popularly elected" distinction there, the question seems to be, "Is the Iranian president the head of governeent?" The Head of government article says, "In the executive branch, the head of government is the highest or the second-highest official of a sovereign state, a federated state, or a self-governing colony, autonomous region, or other government who often presides over a cabinet, a group of ministers or secretaries who lead executive departments." The Head of government article also says, "Not to be confused with Head of state." and the Head of state article says, "[I]n presidential systems, the head of state is also the head of government.", though it then goes on about specifics re Communist governments and the communist parties there. it seems that lack of clarity about this extends outside of this article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I have both added that lead and removed it because we clearly classify constitutionally democratic and constitutionally undemocratic systems, even if not explicitly stating so.

While IP user question is relevant, Iran isn't fully governed by presidential system. Guardian Council that is mainly appointed by Supreme Leader (himself indirectly elected but serving life term) can veto legislation. I have moved Iran under "theocratic republic", which was previously suggested. -- Svito3 (talk) 22:54, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

U.S. President is both Head of State and Head of Government

. . . so, I am confused by the description given in the section, "Presidential Republics Without a Prime Minister," as merely representing the President as Head of Government.  In the U.S.A., that is simply not the case.  It would seem this section needs to make further specification and distinction.Mwidunn (talk) 02:18, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
(UTC)

From Federal government of the United States § Executive powers and duties:

The president is both the head of state (performing ceremonial functions) and the head of government (the chief executive).¹⁶

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:22, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Simple map vs detailed map

I don't think parliamentary republic with an executive president should get its own color on the map. It's not especially important detail for purposes of quick overview of systems of government. Similarly we don't distinguish between different semi-presidential systems where functional difference is much more substantial to the system of government than whoever does rituals like state visit. If we can eliminate complexity of the map we should do so, not making it more complicated. I concur there is similarly not big difference between constitutional monarchy and parliamentary republic, but at least one is that and other is other. Svito3 (talk) 22:02, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

GlowstoneUnknown You have ignored this discussion before making your edit. -- Svito3 (talk) 12:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry about language used here "ignore". Proper way was to either not ping that user at all because it's annoying or do revert instead. -- Svito3 (talk) 16:15, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Poland semi-presidential in secondary sources

Poland in secondary sources (preferred by Wikipedia) is semi-presidential republic. Primary sources on which current classification in "parliamentary republic" relies like constitution text itself should be avoided (WP:PRIMARY). -- Svito3 (talk) 23:24, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm... I think you mischaracterize WP:PRIMARY. It does not say that primary sources should be avoided, it says that care must be exercised in using them. In particular, it says that they may be used, "only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge." If Poland's constitution says that its form of government is parliamentary republic, this article should include that info (and, IMO, WP:DUE requires that it do so if other significant reliable sources disagree).

However, though footnote g in the article says, "The Republic of Poland has been defined de jure by its Constitution as a parliamentary republic." and cites the constitution and several other sources in support, I find no support for that in the constitution {[1]} or in some of the other cited sources I checked (I did not check them all). Characterizing Poland's government into one of the categories used in this article requires interpretation, and interpretation needs to rely on reliable secondary sources. In fact, at least one of the sources currently cited (see here) says, "... By this standard he recognizes Duverger's pléiade as semi-presidential regimes, as well as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania (1993: 87)." It looks to me as if the info re Poland in the article needs to be reviewed. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:47, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Introduced here: Special:Diff/1048979774. -- Svito3 (talk) 02:51, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Secondary sources would definitely be regard as better in a case of this nature..... primary sources from Russia calling it a democracy would simply be rejected by our community. Moxy🍁 03:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I am a member of the community, and I would call such a rejection WP:OR and not WP:NPOV. Such a thing could happen, of course, by editorial WP:CONSENSUS following the outside-of-policy but widely-accepted standard WP:IAR; Wikipedia has no firm rules. My understanding is that the proper action in such a case would be to follow the WP:DUE part of the NPOV policy. Do you take issue with my suggestion that, in the case under discussion here, that the info re Poland in the article needs to be reviewed? If not, can we leave this at that? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 06:54, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

GlowstoneUnknown You have ignored this discussion before making your edit. -- Svito3 (talk) 12:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't aware this discussion existed, however, there is no consensus in this discussion for any changes to be made, I was merely reverting it to its previous state. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 12:23, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

So you deliberately ignoring discussions and simply like to vandalize related pages ignoring and not participating in any related discussions. -- Svito3 (talk) 12:31, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

That's a blatant mischaracterisation, it's not vandalism to undo a change made without consensus. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 12:33, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe if you read edit summaries you would see I refer to previous discussions when doing so. -- Svito3 (talk) 12:34, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

As for ignoring consensus you can't bring it up because you don't even care to participate in discussions at all. -- Svito3 (talk) 12:35, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I read it, just missed the bit at the end mentioning "see talk". Regardless, there is no consensus here, it's been not even 2 days. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 12:36, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

"I ignore you and your edits completely and do not care", basically. Good luck with that attitude. I'm out. Svito3 (talk) 12:40, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

You made establishing consensus significantly harder by simply reverting and not participating in the discussion. If you disagree with my opinion and others here why are you even reverting with completely different reasoning?

If you can provide edit summary you should be able to argue for it here. Instead you chose to make edit and proceed to ignore this discussion.

If you want to make procedural revert make procedural revert, not opinionated revert and then ignore. Otherwise I think it's totally fine to revert your revert because of incorrect reasoning. -- Svito3 (talk) 16:22, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

For illustration it goes like this: I ask opinion in talk because I notice problem with Poland's characterisation contradicted by sources, some people respond agreeing that there no such thing in sources and other sources contratict Poland being parliamentary republic. I do all the work finding all previous discussion on the matter, where edit comes from and where else it might have been discussed, read all the sources, and make conclusive edit based on information I gathered. Then comes you who admits having not seen the talk page, also ignores information in edit summary of my edit and dismissing it as "wrong edit" altogether by reverting it. Then you admit it on talk page you didn't actually follow any discussion, nor read edit summaries.

Then you also think your edit should stay because I didn't wait 2 days and didn't establish consensus (whatever that may mean, I personally see this as insulting work me and other editors have done here), while you again neither provide any disagreement with arguments presented here on the page, nor present argument from your revert itself.

What should I do here? I only can give up and cease editing wikipedia whatsoever. Because there no remedy for people who don't read discussion and edit summaries and don't provide their blocking opinion when asked to, yet demand consensus. I prefer you would be rude and call me an idiot asshole instead of hiding behind administration rules and claiming it's I who makes everything worse. -- Svito3 (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

You're right that I should have checked the discussion page before reverting any edits, however, the discussion had not concluded nor come to a consensus, so my reversion is valid. What you should do is wait for long enough for a conclusive WP:CONSENSUS to be reached before making any changes. I'm sorry you feel like your work wasn't valued, but per WP:BOLD, Do not get upset if your bold edits get reverted, it wasn't wrong of you to make the edit, but it was equally correct for me to revert it. We're all passionate about our work editing this encyclopædia, and I respect the work that you did, but I don't appreciate your incivility in the way you defended it and your assumption of bad faith in my edits. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 02:40, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

You misrepresent WP:CONSENSUS terribly. New consensus is immediately established with an edit provided nobody disagrees with it on the talk page before or after. If you don't have time to respond on substance of your edit on the talk page and don't know what consensus even is (you clearly don't because you didn't check talk page) you shouldn't revert. And when you do mistakenly revert with incorrect reasoning, which you did, you shouldn't claim there still isn't consensus. Unless you are willing to break consensus by having creating a dispute and present your argument about it on this page which you still didn't do.

I will be perpetually upset with you because you still have holier-than-thou attitude here and throw around rules to shut discussion, not to actually have one. It's offensive and lowly behavior.

"I'm sorry you feel like your work wasn't valued" -- You are not actually sorry because you still continue non-participation on the issues I opened talks about and you done reverts about. I don't need your non-apology apology.

"I don't appreciate your incivility in the way you defended it and your assumption of bad faith in my edits" -- I am only more convinced how right I was about you generally even if I didn't use correct words. Again you still didn't present any argument on any talk on this page on any of the issues yet you demand consensus which you youself have broken by creating a dispute. Where is your arguments on any of the reverts on related talk pages? There are none. Svito3 (talk) 02:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

It didn't even take long for you to do it again and ignore ongoing discussion Commons:File talk:Forms of government.svg#Tunisia with another revert while discussion still ongoing: Special:Diff/1241050705.

Again I'm being dismissed as an idiot who doesn't know shit and my opinon CLEARLY doesn't matter for establishment of consensus. -- Svito3 (talk) 02:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry about language used by me in this discussions. Proper way was not to respond at all rather than becoming emotional and/or openly describing behavior of other contributor in a free manner. -- Svito3 (talk) 16:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Now that this discussion has calmed down and I've had a chance to read the sources (and of course now the civility issues have been solved), I would no longer oppose this edit. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 04:14, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, does this mean Austria might also be reclassified? Said country has the opposite situation of Poland: the constitution makes it a semi-presidential republic, but the President is de facto ceremonial with the Chancellor holding the real power, which is emblematic of parliamentary governance.

I have not extensively read the Austrian constitution and my knowledge is second-hand, so please take this with a grain of salt. LVDP01 (talk) 15:38, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

My reasoning for supporting Poland's reclassification is largely because upon reading the (albeit translated) constitution, the word "executive" is explicitly used to describe the President's role, matching the definition of semi-presidential systems. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 15:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Would you consider going over to the wiki page for Poland to discuss changing it from parliamentary to semi-presidential? The mismatch between the two will certainly cause confusion. ICommandeth (talk) 02:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm a little bit busy at the mo', would you mind opening the discussion over there and I'll join in and outline my reasons after work? – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 03:10, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I just did so. ICommandeth (talk) 09:02, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. There is a similar {{contradict other}} situation with the Politics of Poland article -- you might place a notice about that discussion on the talk page there. I was holding off mentioning both of those here because I'm not very knowledgeable about either political science in general or about Poland. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:20, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Half of the references predate the current Constitution and the other half come from 20 years ago, before the political system around the current Constitution stabilized. Through Poland's Constitutional Tribunal it has been clarified that the president does NOT shape either foreign or domestic policy. Putting Poland in the same box as Ukraine is wrong 83.6.206.183 (talk) 18:43, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

As discussed in Talk:Poland, president of Poland still has significant power. There other countries that have system that falls into this category, not just specific to Ukraine. What matters is whether president is directly elected and has significant executive powers. And that includes power of veto that isn't just stopgap to passing legislation, e.g. it can't be passed with regular and same majority. That's definition we are using on this page that is based on most conclusive analysys of semi-presidential systems we have as of yet. What you're saying that we should just redefine specifically Poland because you don't like it's classified same as Ukraine and don't consider veto to be meaningful personally. -- Svito3 (talk) 19:55, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

CONSTITUTION OF POLAND

Chapter VI

THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS AND GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION

Article 146

1. The Council of Ministers shall conduct the internal affairs and foreign policy of the Republic of Poland.

2. The Council of Ministers shall conduct the affairs of State not reserved to other State organs or local self-government.

3. The Council of Ministers shall manage the government administration.

Furthermore-

CONSTITUTION OF POLAND

Chapter V

THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND

Article 133

3. The President of the Republic shall cooperate with the Prime Minister and the appropriate minister in respect of foreign policy. 83.6.206.183 (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

References

The Table

Why the table was removed? Please bring it back! 2001:4479:1F04:C300:7926:3F11:3B6E:6BB4 (talk) 00:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Which table? – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 14:28, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Is the Vatican a theocracy?

I don't know what the standard is for setting Iran as a theocracy and the Vatican as not. Kalbome22 (talk) 16:13, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Iran is specifically a theocratic republic, while the Vatican is a monarchy. That's why the latter isn't included in the section ICommandeth (talk) 17:20, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Theocracy ≠ Theocratic Republic, Iran is a Republic with a popularly elected President, however the country still uses elements of Islamic theocracy in its system of government. Vatican City is an elective monarchy that is also a Christian theocracy, but they have no popularly elected head of government. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 07:27, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

One-party state classification may lack worthwhile use

This isn't to debate whether any specific country should receive the classification, it is to debate its general use.

The countries given this title may have their powers constitutionally connected to one party, but the better part of them still have some form of democracy entitled to them by their constitution, effectively having zero-party democracies with limited ideological expression.

The classification still teaches something, but it may be a hinderance by not providing any other insight to the countries' democratic processes, especially since the term is often used synonymously with dictatorship in colloquial speech.

While I definately do not find every one of these countries to be de facto democratic, this map is intended to be de jure, and 'one-party state' is too often used to dismiss the governmental systems of certain countries and encourage bias against them, which we should avoid regardless of our thoughts on these governments.

This is not necessarily the only ambiguosity here, and I would like to encourage further deliberation of terminology. 199.188.175.10 (talk) 00:01, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

This is a good point. Do you have any ideas about what to replace it with and how it'd work? – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 04:17, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, all of them as far as I know/remember would otherwise be categorised as 'parliamentary republics with executive presidents'. If the constitutional importance of the party is really worth indicating, perhaps cross shading or something else could be used, but I see little reason to include it anyway.

I don't suppose there are any written criteria for the categories, but it seems as if the used criteria are whether the constitution is particularly protected and the executive branch's relation to itself and to the legislature. If there is no constitutional government, it is provisional; if the constitution is inapplicable, it's a junta; if the constitution does not separate its powers, it's an absolute monarchy; and if the powers are only partially separated or the executive branch exists independent of the people, it's semi-constitutional.

Once we get to separated democratic governments, the map shows how the heads of state and of government (if separate) are chosen and dismissed; with assumptions that single heads can be elected or chosen by legislature, that heads of state can be elected or unelected, and that heads of government can be chosen by legislature or by heads of state. The map is unclear on dismissal, the standard map bases it off whether votes of no confidence are effective while the colourblind version also includes dismissal by the head of state (which I prefer for the record but do not wish to focus on).

There are also ambiguities that I find personally due to my inability to read and remember every state constitution in the world, such as whether there are any assembly-independent republics with separate heads of state and government or how one would categorise systems with heads of state elected through parliament (which could be a problem with China, but I don't plan on rereading the articles on Chinese political organisation, my apologies). What I fully understand is that Iranian political organisation is weird and I have no extreme dislike of the current categorisation.

Returning to the main point, however, I can't find any reason that party politics has to be included, especially since it sometimes differs wildly within the existing categories, and because the category puts a maroon blanket on any hope of people understanding these countries. Indicating there actual system along with this shared feature would seem nice, but it would require a doubling of all the democratic categories were a different one-party state to arise.

China may be worth further thought, as the national legislature is elected by the legislatures of the provinces, which is elected by those of the municipalities, which is elected by those of the communes. China has many peculiarities to the others, which might warrant a special category. However, indirect parliamentary elections are also present in Somalia, so do with that what you will.

Regardless, I see no use for this as a single, differentiated, category. These countries are about as different to their counterparts as Westminster systems are from other parliamentary monarchies, and only cover about as much systemic diversity as the Westminster systems do. At the very least, on a map that doesn't even give the full breadth of more useful information, like whether a semi-presidential system's president can recall the prime minister or not; the information the category provides is less valuable than the information it hides. 159.2.250.177 (talk) 20:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it would be worthwhile to, instead of differentiating it as its own category, have it be listed as a subcategory of whichever system the countries are designated, i.e.

Parliamentary Republic

[description of the system and list of countries that fit]

Single-Party parliamentary republic

[description of the system and how it's differentiated from multi-party versions of the system + list of countries that fit]

I'm thinking of the way the page already lists "Semi-presidential" as a category whilst "Premier-presidential" and "President-parliamentary" are subcategories of the previous system.

What do you think? – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 04:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Colors of the map

A suggestion: colors should follow a consisten logic. Right now they don't. For example, parliamentary systems should have a different degree of the same color. Barjimoa (talk)