Managing a Large Sized Organisation: a Government
Understand what is government?
Govern is
- to exercise continuous sovereign authority over
- to control and direct the making and administration of policy in
- to control the speed of (as a machine) especially by automatic means
- to control, direct, or strongly influence the actions and conduct of
- to exert a determining or guiding influence in or over
- to prevail or have decisive influence
- to exercise authority
The definition of Government
A government is the organization that is the governing authority of a political unit, the ruling power in a political society, and the apparatus through which a governing body functions and exercises authority. Government, with the authority to make laws, to adjudicate disputes, and to issue administrative decisions, and with a monopoly of authorized force where it fails to persuade, is an indispensable means, proximately, to the peace of communal life. We should maintain that the necessity of government derives from the fact that the people need to live in communities, yet personal autonomy must be constrained in these communities. A state of sufficient size and complexity will have different layers or levels of government: national, regional and local.
Types of government
Democracy - Rule by a government where the people as a whole hold the power. It may be exercised by them (direct democracy), or through representatives chosen by them (representative democracy).
Monarchy - Rule by an individual who has inherited the role and expects to bequeath it to their heir.
Despotism - Rule by a single leader, all his or her subjects are considered his or her slaves.
Dictatorship - Rule by an individual who has full power over the country.
Oligarchy - Rule by a small group of people who share similar interests or family relations.
Plutocracy - A government composed of the wealthy class.
Theocracy - Rule by a religious elite. Anarchy - Absence, or lack of government.
Fundamental purpose of government
The fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order. Without government, individuals cannot attempt to find happiness. Individuals, or more accurate The People, live in this world, act rationally, saw submission to a government dominated by a sovereign as preferable to anarchy. People in a community create and submit to government for the purpose of establishing for themselves, safety and public order.
Managing an effective Government
Important of Law and Government in maintaining public order
For many thousands of years, humans lived in small and self-sufficient communities. Overtime, knowledge and technology allowed humans to become more effective at agriculture, and thus allowed for increasing population and densities. This has resulted in the development of township and cities. And the development in states with laws and governments.
As farming populations gathered in larger and denser communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field.
The exact moment and place that the phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of very early governments-The Chin Dynasty of China (before that were Shang and Zhou). About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared. By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas such as the Chin Dynasty: States formed as the results of a positive feedback loop where population growth results in increased information exchange which results in innovation which results in increased resources which results in further population growth. The role of cities are important. Cities became the primary conduits for the dramatic increases in information exchange that allowed for large and densely packed populations to form, and because cities concentrated knowledge, they also ended up concentrating power. Increasing population density in farming regions provided the demographic and physical raw materials used to construct the first cities and states, and increasing congestion provided much of the motivation for creating states.
Government is sometimes an enemy and sometimes a friend. Government exalts some of us and oppresses others. At times, governments are aligned with our religious, economic and social views, and at other times, it is misaligned. The role of government in the lives of people has expanded significantly during human history. Government's role has gone from providing basic security to concern in religious affairs to control of national economies and eventually to providing lifelong social security. As our societies have become more complex, governments have become more complex, powerful and intrusive. The controversies over how big, how powerful and how intrusive governments should become will continue for the remainder of human history.
