Democracy and Non-Democratic Government
A system in which citizens themselves make the governing decisions.
What is direct democracy?
This is a government that consistently acts in accordance with established fundamental rules and principles
What is constitutional government?
This is a system of governing in which there is a close interrelationship between the political executive (prime minister and Cabinet) and Parliament (the legislative or law-making body). The executive is generally composed of members of the House of Commons (the elected parliamentary body) and must maintain the support of the House of Commons.
What is a parliamentary system?
This is a course of action or inaction chosen by public authorities to address a given problem or interrelated set of problems.
What is public policy?
This is the absence of a central authority to make and enforce rules upon states in the international system.
What is international anarchy?
The French Revolution (1789-1799) challenged this.
What is the Divine Right of Kings?
This is the fundamental rules and principles by which a state is governed.
What is a constitution?
This is a governing system in which the political executive (the prime minister and Cabinet) is accountable to Parliament for its actions and must retain the support of the elected members of Parliament to remain in office.
What is responsible government?
This is a system in which most businesses and corporations are privately owned and seek profit in a competitive market through the production and sale of goods and services with prices and wages determined by the workings of supply and demand.
What is a capitalist economic system?
The process whereby a number of different actors provide a certain degree of order and predictability to relations among states.
What is global governance?
In Canada, provincial governments were generally responsible for determining this until 1920.
What is who had the right to vote both in provincial and federal elections?
This is a constitution whose major provisions are set out in a formal constitutional document or a set of constitutional documents.
What is a codified constitution?
This is a governing system that developed in Britain featuring single party majority rule, executive dominance of Parliament, and an adversarial relationship between the governing party and the opposition.
What is the Westminster system?
This is the idea that government can smooth the ups and downs of the free-market economy by stimulating the economy when private business investment is low and cooling the economy when excessive investment is creating inflation.
What are Keynesian economic policies?
This is an approach to the study of international politics that assumes that, because the international system is anarchic, security is the major preoccupation of states. Peace rests primarily on deterrence, and the possibility of international governance is limited because states are reluctant to put constraints on their sovereignty.
What is realism?
This is a form of democracy in which citizens elect representatives to the legislature to make decisions on their behalf.
What is representative democracy?
This is when fundamental principles are consistently followed even though they are not contained in a legal document and are not generally enforceable in the courts.
What are constitutional conventions?
This is the government formed when the prime minister's party has a majority of the members of the House of Commons; thus, a single party forms the government.
What is a majority government?
This is a state in which government ensures that all people have a decent standard of living and are provided protection from hardships resulting from circumstances such as unemployment, sickness, disability, and old age.
What is a welfare state?
This is the goals a state pursues in the conduct of its foreign policy. The term is multi-faceted and, besides the quest for power and security, includes goals ranging from the pursuit of economic growth and wealth to the preservation and expansion of national culture.
What is national interest?
This is a political system that combines the liberal ideas of limited government, individual freedom, and the rule of law with a democratic system of governing based on the election of representatives.
What is liberal democracy?
This was an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament that established Canada by uniting the colonies of Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. It also set out many of the features of Canada’s system of governing.
What is the Constitution Act, 1867?
This is when a single party governs, but that party does not have a majority of the members in the House of Commons. Thus, a minority government needs to gain the support of one or more other parties to pass legislation and to stay in office.
What is a minority government?
A perspective that views public policies as the outcome of competition among a wide variety of organized groups that seek to protect and promote the interests of their members, with no group having a dominant influence.
What is the pluralist perspective?
A system is a group of units characterized by some form of regular interaction. This system is a system made up of states that interact with one another. The type of interaction depends primarily on their relative power position in the system, i.e., how power is distributed among them.
What is the international system?