ABSTRACT
We have so far examined the nature of the relationship between people and government in different types of political system. We must now turn to the structure of governmental institutions and to the processes of public decision making. Such an analysis is rendered complex, however, because it is not sufficient to describe structures of government as they are: one must also take into account the part played by constitutions in prescribing how these structures should be organized and how governmental bodies should behave. For a long time, the analysis of governmental structures was almost entirely confined to the examination of the constitutional provisions regulating these structures. For the reasons which we discussed in Chapter 1, modern political science has deliberately emphasized the analysis of patterns of behaviour alongside the examination of constitutional arrangements, occasionally at the expense of constitutional arrangements. A truly realistic approach entails that prescription and behaviour be examined in parallel, since the prescriptions put forward by constitutions both influence behaviour and are, in themselves, behavioural statements about the characteristics which governments are expected to embody.
