Class 7 Social Science Chapter 9: From the Rulers to the Ruled

What a government is for

A government does a great deal, and the chapter lists what. Keeping law and order. Securing peace, stability and safety. Handling relations with other countries, and defending the country itself.

Then the everyday things: supplying essential goods and services such as schooling, health care and infrastructure. Running the economy. And working for people's welfare, which means trying to make their lives better.

Seven jobs, one body

Count them and there are seven, and they are strikingly unlike one another. Defending a border has little in common with cleaning up a hospital.

That is the first thing to notice about government. One institution is expected to do all of it.

A school with too much to do

Now the chapter changes the subject, and the change is worth following closely.

Think of a school. Timetables must be made and then kept. Sports have to be arranged. Lunch has to be served and the utensils washed. Somebody must decide who speaks at assembly, and somebody must plan the No Bag Days. The list goes on a long way.

The head teacher's problem

She decides a student committee is the answer, so that pupils help make the rules, help carry them out, and help see that they are followed.

That leaves one question, and it is the hard one. Who is to be on the committee?

The pupils argue

She puts it to the assembly and an argument starts at once.

Naghma says Grade 12 are the most senior, so they should run everything. Shobha points out that Grade 12 will have left in a few months, so Grade 11 should do it instead. Gurpreet asks a better question: if one grade runs everything, how will they know the problems the other grades have?

Three options on the table

Out of the argument come three possibilities.

Everybody in the school joins the committee. Or the head teacher picks the members herself. Or the pupils vote for representatives, and those representatives form the committee.

Why not everybody

The first sounds fair and generous. It also will not work.

With every pupil on the committee, reaching a decision becomes very hard, and getting anything actually done becomes harder still. Size defeats it.

Why not the head teacher's choice

The second is quick and tidy. The problem is what it leaves out.

If she selects the members, most pupils have no part in it and no way of making sure their own needs are heard. The committee may be competent and still not answerable to anybody.

Why representatives work

The third does what the other two cannot. Each grade chooses one of its own members, somebody they believe will argue effectively for that class.

Those chosen sit on the committee, so the committee holds a representative from every grade. The chapter calls this the democratic way of doing it.

What a representative is

A representative is somebody chosen to act, or to decide, on behalf of another person or a group.

That word is doing real work in the sentence above. The pupil on the committee is not there for herself.

Back to government

Now transfer it. A government, like the committee, has to make the rules it needs, put them into effect, and make sure everybody keeps to them.

Those three duties are what we call the functions of government, and each has a name.

The three functions

Making the rules is the legislative function, and those rules are the framework the country runs on.

Carrying them out, and administering the country according to them, is the executive function. Seeing that they are kept is the judicial function.

Rule of the people

The best short gloss on democracy is rule of the people, and the phrase means something precise: in a democracy the source of power and authority is the people of the country.

So a democracy works like the third option in the school. The people choose representatives, and those representatives govern.

But not identically everywhere

One caution before the chapter moves on. Not every country picks its representatives the same way.

Many countries are democracies and India is one, but democratic governments are not all alike, and some countries are not democracies at all. That is what the rest of the chapter is about.

A famous sentence

Abraham Lincoln, a president of the United States late in the nineteenth century, described a democracy as belonging to its people, run by them, and existing for their sake.

The phrase has lasted, and it is still quoted, because it packs the whole idea into eight words: where authority comes from, who exercises it, and whose benefit it is meant to serve.

Scenario:

A school decides to form a council and three proposals are put forward. The first is that all nine hundred pupils should belong, since leaving anybody out would be unfair. The second is that the head teacher should pick twenty pupils she judges reliable, which would be quick and would guarantee quality. The third is that each of the thirty classes should elect one member. A teacher asks the class to judge the three proposals by whether the council could actually decide anything, and by whether it would answer to the pupils.

Analysis:

Three proposals, and two tests that between them separate the three.

Activity:

Find out how the class or school representatives at your own school are chosen, and which of the three methods it is.

Title:

Sort the school jobs into three piles

Safety:

Scissors need care.

What You Notice:

Most people find the first column easy and the third hardest, because checking that a rule is followed is invisible when it is working. That is the judicial function, and it is the one people notice only when something has gone wrong.

Lincoln managed to describe a democracy in eight words, and people still quote them today.

The chapter teaches the whole structure of government from the problem of staffing a school committee.

Gurpreet objection is the sharpest of the three: one grade cannot know the problems of the others.

Make it, work it, judge it: legislative, executive, judicial.

Everybody is too many; one chooser is too few.

Why no two are alike

The government of a country is not designed once and then left alone. It develops as the country does.

And every country brings its own history to that, its own culture, its own hopes for itself. So governments turning out different from one another is what you would expect.

A method instead of a list

Here the chapter does something generous. Rather than hand over definitions to memorise, it gives four questions.

Put those four to any government anywhere and the answers tell you what kind it is. Learn the questions and the types look after themselves.

The first question

Who gets to say that a particular body is our government?

Put another way: what it is that grants a government its power to govern? The chapter calls this the most basic difference between types of government, and it is worth seeing why.

Two answers to it

In a democracy such as India, the people of the country decide. They are the source of authority.

In a theocracy the answer is different. There the source of authority is religious belief, together with the head of a religious institution. Same question, and the whole character of the state follows from which answer it gets.

The second question

How is the government actually formed?

In a democracy this normally happens through an election of some kind. In a kingdom, of the sort met in other chapters of this book, somebody from within the ruling family usually carries on, and decides how the government will be arranged.

And it is not only two

The chapter adds a caution here that is easy to skip.

A government can be formed in further ways besides those two. And even among democracies there are different kinds of election, which the next topic takes up.

The third question

What parts does the government have, and what does each of them do?

Every government is made of many parts and systems, which differ sharply from one type to another. The three functions from the last topic are the clearest case.

One body, or three

Legislative, executive and judicial work can be done by bodies that are entirely independent of one another.

Or all three can be done by the same body. That single structural fact tells you an enormous amount about how a country is governed, and whether anybody is in a position to check anybody else.

Written down, or not

There is a second part to the third question. How is it decided how the government will work?

It can be set out in a book of the country's fundamental rules, which is what a constitution is. That is what most democracies do. Or it can be settled by the king or queen, which is what happens in a monarchy.

The fourth question

What is the government working for? What is it trying to achieve?

Governments are built to pursue particular values and ideals, and those differ. This is the question a pupil is least likely to think of, and it may matter most.

Two kinds of answer

The government of India, to take one case, is built to pursue equality, and prosperity for everybody.

Some other governments are designed for the prosperity of certain families or certain groups. Both are genuine designs. They are simply aimed at different people.

Why four and not one

Notice that the four questions are independent of each other. A government can give an unexpected answer to one and an ordinary answer to the next.

That is exactly why four are needed. Britain has a king, which sounds like one answer to the second question, and it is really a parliamentary democracy, which is an answer to the third.

The questions are not exhaustive

The chapter is careful here, and so should we be. Those four are major aspects, but differences of other kinds exist too.

A list of four questions is a tool for thinking, not a complete account of every government on earth.

What the method buys you

Work through the four and something useful happens. A type of government stops being a label to be recognised and becomes a set of answers.

So when the chapter later describes an absolute monarchy, a theocracy, a dictatorship or an oligarchy, each one can be read as four answers rather than learnt as a definition.

And it works on your own country too

The questions are not only for faraway places. Ask them of India and the answers are available: the people are the source of authority, the government is formed by election, the functions sit in separate bodies under a written constitution, and the stated goal is equality and prosperity for all.

That last answer is an aim rather than a description of how things are, and the chapter says as much about democratic ideals generally. Knowing which of the four answers is an achievement and which is still a goal is part of reading a government honestly.

Scenario:

A class is told four things about a country called Meronia and asked what kind of government it has. Its head of state inherits the position from a parent. Its laws are made by an assembly the citizens elect every four years. Its courts are entirely separate from that assembly and from the ministers. Its written rule book states that the country aims at prosperity for every citizen. One pupil says Meronia must be a monarchy, because the head of state inherits. Another says it cannot be, because the citizens vote.

Analysis:

Four answers, two pupils, and each of them deciding on the strength of one answer out of four.

Activity:

Pick any country you are curious about and try to answer all four questions for it.

Title:

Put the four questions to three countries

Safety:

No hazards here.

What You Notice:

Several boxes end up with dashes, because the chapter answers some questions for some types only. That is honest rather than incomplete: the questions are a tool for thinking, and the chapter says plainly that other kinds of difference exist too.

Britain has a king and is really a parliamentary democracy, which is why one question is never enough.

The chapter says its four questions are major aspects, not a complete account of every difference.

The question a pupil is least likely to ask, what a government is working for, may be the one that matters most.

Four questions: who says so, how formed, what parts, what for.

A constitution is the rule book; a monarch can be the rule book.

Democracy is the usual answer now

Of all the ways of governing a country, democracy is the one most of the modern world has settled on.

But democracies are not copies of each other, and before the differences there are some principles that any democracy is supposed to rest on.

Equality

Each person is owed the same treatment as any other. That is the bare statement, and the chapter gives it three edges.

Everyone should have the same access to things like schooling and health care. And everyone stands equal before the law.

Freedom

A citizen may decide things for herself.

They also have the right to say what they think. Those two go together, and losing the second quietly empties the first.

Representative participation

Every person has the right to choose and to elect those who will represent them.

The way that right is exercised is an election. Those who win become part of the legislature, which is the body that makes the rules.

Universal adult franchise

Every citizen above a certain age is granted the right to vote and so to pick a representative.

Read that word universal carefully. It is doing the work: not some citizens, not property owners, not men. Every one of them.

Fundamental rights

A democracy both grants and protects certain rights of its citizens.

The chapter names three of them. There is the right to equality. There is the right to speak and to express oneself freely. And there is the right not to be exploited.

An independent judiciary

The last principle is the one that makes the others more than promises.

An independent judiciary sees to it that the rights promised to a citizen really hold. It also sees that the laws are obeyed by citizens, and here is the important part, by every part of the government too.

Why that last clause matters

A court that can only judge citizens is a tool of the government.

A court that can also judge the government is a check on it. That single difference is why independence is in the name of the principle.

These are ideals, and the chapter says so

Now the honest part. Even these principles have changed over time, and the chapter proves it with dates rather than assertions.

India granted universal adult franchise from the very beginning of the republic, in 1950. In Switzerland, women could not vote until 1971.

Two more dates

Britain reached effective universal adult suffrage in 1928. The United States did so by 1965.

Set those beside the Indian date and something becomes visible: a country can be a democracy for a long time before it is a democracy for everybody.

What follows from that

The chapter draws the conclusion itself, and it is worth quoting in substance.

These principles are ideals, and not every democracy manages to put them into practice. But it matters that citizens keep the ideals in front of them, because that is what they measure their own government against.

Direct democracy

Now to the forms. In a direct democracy the citizens themselves are in charge of every rule, every regulation and every function.

They take part in every decision in person. Nobody stands between the people and the decision.

Where it survives, and why rarely

Some kinds of this are still practised in a few countries, Switzerland among them.

The limitation is practical. It is very hard to carry out, and hardest in a large country. The school story already showed why: once everybody joins the committee, deciding anything and getting it done become difficult.

Representative democracy

Here the people elect representatives through universal adult franchise, as India does.

The people do not govern directly. But the government is always answerable to them, and that word answerable is the whole point of the arrangement.

Accountability, and how it is enforced

Accountability in a democracy means those governing must answer to the voters who elected it.

Elections are how that is enforced, which is why they must come at regular, fixed intervals rather than whenever a government chooses. India holds general elections every five years. The United States holds them every four.

Most democracies are this kind

Almost every democracy in the world today is a representative one, and the reason is the limitation just described.

Yet they still work differently from one another, which is what the next topic is about. Democracies also began at very different times: the United States in 1787, Switzerland in 1848, India in 1947, Germany in 1949, Kenya in 1964, Nepal as recently as 2008. A democracy is not a single invention that spread, but something many countries arrived at separately.

Scenario:

A country holds elections and every adult may vote. Its constitution lists the rights of citizens, including free speech. But its courts may rule only on disputes between citizens, and may never examine whether a minister has broken the law. Elections are held when the government announces them, which has twice been as much as nine years apart. A pupil says the country is clearly a democracy, because the voting is universal and the rights are written down. Her partner is not convinced.

Analysis:

Two principles satisfied, two missing, and a question about whether the label is earned.

Activity:

Find out how often elections are held where you live, and whether the date is fixed by law or chosen by the government.

Title:

Line up the franchise dates

Safety:

No hazards here.

What You Notice:

The Swiss arrow is by far the longest, running from 1848 to 1971, and the Indian one is almost nothing. A country can be a democracy for more than a century before it becomes a democracy for everybody, which is the chapter point about ideals in a single picture.

Swiss women could not vote until 1971, although Switzerland had been a democracy since 1848.

India granted every adult the vote from the very start of the republic, which many older democracies did not.

Nepal established democracy as recently as 2008.

Equality, freedom, participation, franchise, rights, courts.

Direct is everybody; representative is somebody chosen.

One question splits them

Almost every democracy today is a representative one, and they still work differently. The difference that matters most comes down to a single question.

Where does the executive sit? Inside the legislature, or outside it?

The parliamentary answer

In a parliamentary democracy the members of the executive are also members of the legislature.

India is the example. The council of ministers, the prime minister included, are themselves members of parliament. They are not outsiders brought in to administer; they sit in the body that makes the laws.

What that does to power

Two consequences follow, and they are worth separating.

The council of ministers is answerable to the legislature, and it continues in office only while it holds the legislature's confidence. In India that means the confidence of the Lok Sabha.

And what it does to voting

Here is the part that surprises people. In this form the people elect the legislature, and they do not elect the executive.

Ministers are chosen from among the members who were elected. So a voter picks a representative, and the representatives supply the government.

The presidential answer

In a presidential democracy the executive stands outside the legislature and works on its own. The people elect the president directly. And the president does not need the confidence of the legislature in order to keep the office.

Why the contrast matters

Set the two side by side and the trade becomes visible.

A parliamentary executive can be removed by the legislature between elections, which makes it answerable continuously. A presidential executive has its own mandate from the voters and cannot be dismissed that way, which makes it more stable and less easily checked.

Three words the chapter defines

The executive is the organ of government responsible for carrying the law into effect. How it is chosen differs from country to country, which is the whole point of this topic.

The legislature makes the law. The judiciary sees that it is kept.

Upper and lower houses

Most countries divide their legislature into two houses, an upper and a lower one.

In India the lower house is the Lok Sabha and it is the more powerful of the two, with the Rajya Sabha above it. In the United States the upper house is the Senate and the lower is the House of Representatives.

States inside a country

In some countries, India among them, the states have governments of their own. Rajasthan and Kerala each have one.

They are not completely independent, though. Above them still sits the national government, which is the Union Government of India.

Now look backwards

The chapter now does something unusual, and it is the best part of the topic. Having described modern democracy, it asks whether any of this is new.

What a republic is

A republic is a form of government whose head of state is elected rather than being a monarch by inheritance.

The definition matters here, because two or more of the old mahajanapadas meet it.

The Vajji, and how they chose

In the Vajji mahajanapada, and the Lichchhavi clan in particular, decisions were made collectively.

Leaders were chosen for merit rather than for birth. Key positions were filled by election, and representatives of the various clans met regularly to deal with problems and work out solutions for the welfare of the people. Such states have been called early republics.

A village election, written in stone

Even where a king or queen held power, the voice of ordinary people was valued. The clearest evidence is in Tamil Nadu.

From the Chola period, and carved in the 10th century CE, the Uttaramerur inscriptions record how members were elected onto the village sabha, which was the local administrative body.

What those inscriptions actually say

This is unusually detailed for its age. They record the election procedure itself, including sealed ballot boxes.

They record the qualifications a member needed, the duties of the office, and the conditions under which a member could be dismissed. A member found to have been corrupt was removed at once.

Republics elsewhere, and their limits

Other parts of the world had republics too. Rome and Greece had them in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.

But the chapter is careful about who took part. Free men in parts of Greece had a vote while women, workers and enslaved people could not. Elsewhere a small privileged few were the only ones who could vote or decide anything. An election is not the same thing as a universal franchise, which is exactly the point the last topic made with dates from the twentieth century.

Scenario:

Two countries hold a vote on the same day. In Country A the ministers all sit in the law-making assembly. That assembly votes that it no longer supports them. In Country B the head of the executive was elected separately by the citizens. Her assembly votes the same way about her. One pupil in the class predicts that both governments must now resign. Each assembly has withdrawn its support, he reasons, so each government must go. Another pupil says that neither needs to resign at all. In both countries the people voted, she argues, and only the people can undo what they did.

Analysis:

One vote, two countries, and two pupils who have each flattened a real difference.

Activity:

Find out whether your own country executive needs the confidence of its legislature, and what happens if it loses it.

Title:

Read an inscription like a historian

Safety:

No hazards here.

What You Notice:

The gap is who was allowed to stand and to vote. The inscriptions are remarkably full on procedure and very quiet on that, which is exactly the distinction the chapter draws with Greece: an election can be carefully run and still not be open to everybody.

The Uttaramerur inscriptions record that a member found corrupt was removed from office immediately.

In the Vajji mahajanapada leaders were chosen on merit rather than by birth.

In India the lower house, the Lok Sabha, is the more powerful of the two houses.

Parliamentary: ministers are members. Presidential: separate.

Uttaramerur: sealed boxes, in the 10th century.

A question about limits

Democracy is not the only way a country can be run, and the rest of this chapter is about the others.

One question runs through all of them. What, if anything, limits the person in charge?

The Indian king was limited

Start where this book started. A mahajanapada was headed by a king, but he was guided by the sabha or the samiti, and he was expected to take their advice seriously.

As empires grew, kings gained enormous power. Even then they leaned on their ministers, and on a web of officials under them, and often asked learned scholars about matters of dharma.

Rajadharma

In much of India the power of a raja was neither absolute nor beyond question.

He was expected to decide within the limits of rajadharma, which meant ruling according to dharma and securing the welfare of all his people. The chapter adds the honest qualification at once: this was an ideal, and kings did not necessarily live up to it.

And some kings were not limited

Elsewhere in the world the picture was different. Some kings held all the power themselves: they made the laws, they enforced them, and they fixed the punishments too. A few of them claimed their power had come from God. There were also Indian kings who used what they had to subjugate their own people, which means taking control by force and compelling obedience.

What Bhishma told Yudhishthira

The Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata contains the clearest statement of the Indian ideal. Bhishma, the elder of the Kuru dynasty, lies dying on a bed of arrows and teaches Yudhishthira at length about governing well.

A raja is not merely a ruler. Above all else he owes his people their wellbeing. He must apply the law without bias, so that it is fair and equal. He must not become attached to power, because attachment breeds ego and corruption. He must take advice from the wise. And he must grasp that what he holds is temporary, and that dharma binds it.

A king and a cobbler

The Rajatarangini, written by the Kashmiri scholar Kalhana in the 12th century, tells a story that puts the ideal to the test.

King Chandrapida wanted a temple built, and a cobbler's hut stood on the site. When the builders complained that the man would not even let them measure, the king blamed the builders for not asking his permission first.

What the cobbler said

The cobbler said the poor hut stood to him as a mother would, as dear to him as any palace was to a king.

He said that only a god fallen from his celestial car, or a king who had lost his kingdom, could describe the misery of having your home taken by force. He was willing to give it up if the king would come and ask respectfully. The king did, and paid him properly, and the text concludes that those who want happiness should have no false pride.

Monarchy today

A monarchy is a government under the rule of a monarch. Kings and queens count as monarchs, and they exercise sovereign power, meaning power whose source is independent of outside influence.

Such rule usually passes down a family. As a rule the ruling monarch eldest son takes the throne next. There are two kinds today.

An absolute monarchy

Here the monarch has complete control of making the laws, of seeing them obeyed, and of adjudicating when they are not, which means judging a case in a dispute.

Saudi Arabia is the chapter's example. Its king keeps every power in his own hands and rules by Islamic law. He appoints a council to advise and assist him, but he is not bound by its advice.

A constitutional monarchy

The United Kingdom is also a monarchy, and works entirely differently. The king or queen is head of state with only nominal power.

The council of ministers under its prime minister wields the real executive power, while parliament wields the legislative. All the laws are made by that elected parliament. So Britain has a king and is in truth a parliamentary democracy, and A monarchy arranged that way is the constitutional kind.

A theocracy

In a theocracy the country runs on religious rule and religious leaders hold the authority.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, combines theocratic and democratic elements. Its constitution rests on the fundamental principles of Islam, the official religion. Ultimate authority over all three organs rests with the Supreme Leader. A body of Islamic clerics picks him, and he serves for life. There is also an elected president and a parliament for everyday governance. Afghanistan and Vatican City are other theocracies.

A dictatorship

A dictatorship is a state where absolute power rests with one person, or with a few with no limits imposed by a constitution or by law.

The twentieth century produced many, and the chapter gives two.

Hitler, and Idi Amin

Germany made Adolf Hitler its Chancellor in 1933. He soon passed laws giving himself full power and removing the opposition. He believed his own people superior, that his country ought to rule the world and hold down those he called inferior. At least six million Jews were killed under him, in what is known as the Holocaust, and of hundreds of thousands of Roma and others. He caused the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945, with immense loss of life and property.

In Uganda the military dictator was Idi Amin. Thousands were killed mercilessly under him, and the responsibility was directly his. Many Indians whose families had migrated there generations earlier were forced to flee.

What living under one is like

The chapter illustrates it through Shane, who lives in North Korea. His everyday life is governed by set rules. He is in compulsory military service, for as long as the government decides.

There are rules about how his hair is cut and what he wears. He cannot reach the global internet, so he knows little of the world outside. The government watches what he does, and he is expected to report anyone breaking the rules. Asked by a tourist why everyone has the same haircut, he answers that they would all like to try new styles, but the government decides.

An oligarchy

The word comes from Greek: olígos means few, and árkhō means to rule. An oligarchy is a government where a small powerful group takes all the important decisions, usually wealthy families or influential people.

Aristocratic families ruled as oligarchies in parts of ancient Greece. In modern times political commentators, who analyse politics and give their opinions on it, have noted signs of oligarchy even inside some democracies, where a few politicians and rich businesspeople holds too much influence over governance.

Why democracy is usually preferred

These forms show that democracy is not the only way to govern. In most countries it is still thought the better one, and the chapter invites a comparison to see why.

Set the forms against four characteristics. Universal adult franchise exists in a democracy and in none of dictatorship, absolute monarchy or oligarchy. The same holds for equality among citizens, for freedom of speech, for the separation of powers, and for the wellbeing and prosperity of all citizens rather than of a few. The pattern in that table is the argument.

Scenario:

A class is given four rulers and asked what limits each one. The first is a mahajanapada king, advised by a sabha whose counsel he is expected to take seriously. The second is a monarch who makes the laws, enforces them and judges those accused of breaking them, with a council he may ignore. The third is a head of state with ceremonial duties, while an elected assembly makes every law. The fourth took power by passing laws that abolished all opposition. One pupil says only the fourth is dangerous, since the others all have somebody around them.

Analysis:

Four rulers, four different limits, and a pupil who has counted advisers instead of limits.

Activity:

Pick any country with a monarch today and find out whether its laws are made by that monarch or by an elected body.

Title:

Fill in the comparison table

Safety:

No hazards here.

What You Notice:

The democracy column fills with yes and the other three with no, which is the chapter argument in a single table. The reason behind every no is the same: each of those forms removes a limit on whoever is in charge.

Kalhana Rajatarangini records a king apologising to a cobbler and paying him for his hut.

The word oligarchy is built from the Greek for few and for to rule.

Britain has a king and is in truth a parliamentary democracy.

Rajadharma is the limit; a dictatorship is the absence of one.

Oligos few, arkho rule: an oligarchy.