Practice question · True or false
Whether a country is a monarchy or a republic tells you little about how democratic it is.
Hints
- Consider Spain, Sweden and Japan against the world's republics.
- Several parliamentary monarchies are long-standing democracies and several republics are not.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Japan are parliamentary monarchies whose monarchs hold essentially no political power, while a great many republics are not democratic at all. Head of state and system of government are separate axes, and conflating them produces confident nonsense.
Practise Institutions and the Distribution of Power
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Political Science I is free to start.
More questions on Institutions and the Distribution of Power
- Ireland, Germany, Italy and Portugal all have presidents. Why are none of them presidential systems?
- Sort each feature by the system of government it belongs to.
- Which are true of Linz's critique of presidentialism?
- Complete the account of institutions.
- In a semi-presidential regime, the president and the prime minister can come from opposing parties, producing…
- How many autonomous communities did the 1978 Spanish Constitution ultimately produce?
- Arrange these territorial arrangements from the most centralised to the most decentralised.
- Match each institution to the trade-off it embodies.