GOVERNMENT 



3627 



GOVERNMENT 



GOVERNMENT: ITS MAIN FUNCTIONS 



Prof. W. S. McKechnie, Author of The State and the Individual 



The method of government in each country of the world is described 



under that heading, e.g. Canada ; England ; France : Germany . See 



also articles on the various instruments of government, e.g. Cabinet : 



King ; Parliament. See also Democracy ; Sovereignty ; State 



The term government (Lat. 

 gnbernare, to steer, direct) de- 

 scribes the work of those who guide 

 the ship of state, determining its 

 course and controlling its rate of 

 progress. The numerous services 

 performed on behalf of the com- 

 plex modern state are usually 

 classified as legislative, or the mak- 

 ing of laws ; executive, or the en- 

 forcing of laws ; and judicial, or 

 the interpretation of laws. 



The facts are hardly so simple 

 as this classification seems to sug- 

 gest. The legislature, indeed, is 

 the supreme authority in enacting 

 and repealing statutes. The judi- 

 ciary, i.e. the judges taken col- 

 lectively, it is equally true, con- 

 fines itself to expounding the law 

 and applying it to particular cases. 

 But the executive government by 

 no means restricts its activities to 

 executing or enforcing statutes and 

 judicial decisions ; it is the agent 

 or man of business of the commun- 

 ity as a whole, conducting the 

 domestic, colonial, and foreign 

 policy of the state, accepting re- 

 sponsibility for army, navy, and the 

 numerous civil services and depart- 

 ments of government, and manag- 

 ing the whole national property. 



The word " administrative " 

 would less inadequately indicate 

 the extent and nature of these 

 functions. Long-established usage, 

 however, points to " executive " as 

 the natural antithesis to legisla- 

 tive, and no confusion need arise 

 if the words are recognized as inter- 

 changeable. 



Powers of the Legislature 



If the usual three functions of 

 government, however, are still to 

 be accepted as covering all the 

 activities of a modern state, the 

 word legislature must be so inter- 

 preted as to include not merely 

 law-making proper, but also the 

 right to impose taxes involving 

 complete control over the financial 

 and material resources of the nation. 

 Parliament passes money bills as 

 well as ordinary bills, and this 

 power, now freed from all restric- 

 tions, forms a weapon of almost in- 

 calculable possibilities. 



The form of government /tf a 

 state is known as its constitution, 

 which may thus be defined as the 

 sum of the principles, usages, and 

 laws that determine who is to 

 exercise in any given state the 

 supreme legislative, executive, and 

 judicial authorities respectively, to- 

 gether with the relations of these 



authorities to each other, and to 

 individual citizens. To define the 

 relations between the supreme 

 legislature and the supreme exe- 

 cutive is the first problem under 

 every form of constitution ; and in 

 Great Britain the solution has been 

 found in cabinet government. 

 The British Cabinet 



The cabinet is, indeed, the char- 

 acteristic and central feature of the 

 modern British system of govern- 

 ment, and illustrates the subtle 

 manner in which ancient theories 

 and institutions have been made 

 compatible with modern require- 

 ments and realities. In theory the 

 British Constitution is the em- 

 bodiment, in the clearest and the 

 most typical manner, of Montes- 

 quieu's doctrine of the separation of 

 powers ; in practice, by an applica- 

 tion of the principle of unity in 

 difference, it has resulted in the 

 almost complete monopolisation of 

 all authority both legislative and 

 executive by one small group of 

 political leaders, ministers of the 

 crown, who, possessing the con- 

 fiSence of the House of Commons, 

 acting in the king's name, and shar- 

 ing among them the control of all 

 the great departments of govern- 

 ment, together form the cabinet 

 for the time being. In this cabinet 

 or 'inner circle of the ministry all 

 the powers of government have 

 come to be concentrated. 



In theory the making of laws 

 rests with king, lords, and com- 

 mons. Statutes are granted by the 

 king in his own name, while the 

 lords spiritual and temporal, and 

 the commons are merely consenters 

 to the grant. In theory the king's 

 free acquiescence is the chief essen- 

 tial. In practice he could not with- 

 hold his authority except in cir- 

 cumstances that are almost impos- 

 sible to occur, and then only on the 

 advice and at the request of re- 

 sponsible ministers. The theoretical 

 right of the lords, again, freely to 

 reject or amend had been much 

 curtailed even before 1911, while 

 the Parliament Act has almost ex- 

 tinguished it. 



Finally, the consent of the all- 

 powerful House of Commons is 

 practically assured to cabinet 

 measures beforehand from the fact 

 that the majority in the lower 

 chamber, organized in normal 

 times upon party lines, vote as they 

 are directed by the party leaders, 

 with whom their own political 

 interests and hopes of office are 



closely bound up. In this busy age, 

 only ministerial measures have a 

 fair chance of becoming statutes. 

 Thus, by a slow and bloodless 

 revolution, the cabinet has usurped 

 the legislative rights of king, lords, 

 and commons. 



It has equally usurped the 

 monarch's administrative autho- 

 rity. While in theory the supreme 

 executive power is to-day, in the 

 strict letter of constitutional law, 

 vested solely in his majesty King 

 George V as an individual as fully 

 as it was in Henry VIII or Edward 

 I, in practice every official act 

 of the crown is in reality the act 

 of the cabinet. Thus functions 

 which in theory are carefully 

 separated and vested in different 

 organs are in reality collected to- 

 gether again and placed under ex- 

 clusive control of the cabinet, on 

 the sole condition that that 

 cabinet retains the confidence of- its 

 faithful henchmen, the majority 

 in the people's chamber. 



The system of polity now 

 supreme in the British Empire is 

 thus one of extreme simplicity ; all 

 real power is concentrated in one 

 central authority, the cabinet in 

 alliance with the Commons' House. 



This system is known from one 

 point of view as parliamentary gov- 

 ernment, because the predominant 

 House of Commons by its support 

 keeps the cabinet in power ; and, 

 from another point of view, as 

 cabinet government because the 

 cabinet owes responsibility to 

 parliament. 



Party or Coalition 



It is one of the merits of the 

 constitutional system that in 

 times of emergency it can rapidly 

 adapt itself to new needs by the 

 formation of a coalition ministry 

 which is no longer dependent on 

 the support of one of the two 

 great parties. That party system, 

 which is reckoned, in normal times, 

 to be required for smooth working 

 of cabinet government, would seem 

 not to be essential to its existence. 

 It is one thing, however, to do with- 

 out party government for a brief 

 period of abnormal stress and quite 

 another thing to attempt to discard 

 it altogether. 



The great rival of cabinet govern- 

 ment, as a system of popular con- 

 trol, is presidential government as 

 exemplified in the U.S.A., where 

 the president, appointed by an 

 elaborate method of what is nomin- 

 ally double election, is not, like the 

 British Cabinet, responsible to Con- 

 gress. In Switzerland, again, a 

 democratic form of polity has been 

 established on a federal basis that 

 seems to be entirely independent of 

 the party system, and includes as 

 its main feature the possibility of 



