Government Types and Thoughts

When worldbuilding it is easy to fall into the habit of using the familiar forms of government and narrowing your scope even more by using the type of those governments that you are most familiar with. For fantasy authors that tends to be simple monarchies that may or may not be feudal or perhaps a republic if one truly feels experimental. But history is complex and there are a myriad of different government forms and each of those can be implemented in a vast array of different ways.

This list isn't comprehensive because a comprehensive list of government types is impossible as they are simply made up. You could, if you desired create a form of government in which pigs ruled or that all decisions were made through dice rolls, but this is my attempt to explore the type of government that have existed in our world as well as a few of the common forms of government from fictional worlds.

It is also worth remembering that none of these are entirely separate from the others. Democratic Republics are common in the modern world, but in the past monarchies in which the king was elected weren't uncommon. A theocracy could be a monarchy or a republic or neither. Beyond that the assumptions we make about different government types may not be as universal as we assume since the assumptions are made based on human nature, a nature that need not be universal in a fantasy or science fiction setting.

I have left authoritarian systems off of this list because they are, in my opinion, less of a distinct form of government and more the outcome of the failure of any government. Fascisms can appear in virtually any form of government, as can totalitarianism though some are are more resistant to it than others.