ABSTRACT
The heart of political science may be the study of government structures, including legislatures, administrative agencies, chief executives, courts, political parties and interest groups at the national, provincial and local levels of government. The existence of those governmental structures or institutions generates a system for classifying governments along at least five dimensions that may be causal conditions of public policy outputs:
1 federalism, which relates to whether the government is relatively centralized or relatively decentralized;
2 separation of powers, which relates to whether the chief executive is part of the legislature or is elected independently;
3 judicial review, which relates to whether the courts have and exercise the power to declare acts of the other branches of government unconstitutional;
4 the two-party system, which includes a system of two relatively stable coalitions, as contrasted to a one-party system or a multi-party system; and
5 democracy, which basically involves universal adult suffrage but with minority viewpoints having the right to try to convert the majority.
