ABSTRACT
Unlike political parties, the national executives, the governments in ordinary parlance, have always existed and have existed everywhere; countries have to be governed. Despite the fact that they have remained relatively small – minute even, often with two dozen members only and very rarely with more than one hundred, including minor posts – these executives have come to have increasingly complex tasks as a combined result of the vast increase in state intervention and of the development of representative institutions. On the one hand, national executives are now at the top of large, often huge bureaucracies which deal with economic and social matters which were simply not of public concern in the past; on the other, they have to ensure that the society is in a condition of internal peace and have therefore to endeavour to act on the basis of consent and/or to exercise enough control to prevent discontent from threatening the basis of public order.
