Government - the Constitution which is based on the separation of powers among three

branches: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. This system provides a series of
checks and balances because each branch is able to limit the power of the others.

Nation - a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language,
inhabiting a particular country or territory.

State - a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one

government.

Country - a nation with its own government, occupying a particular territory.

Sovereignty - the authority of a state to govern itself or another state.

Divine right - The doctrine that kings and queens have a God-given right to rule and that
rebellion against them is a sin. This belief was common through the seventeenth
century and was urged by such kings as Louis xiv of France.

social contract - an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for
social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection.
Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among
theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of
explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects.

unitary system - The central government is supreme, and the administrative divisions
exercise only powers that the central government has delegated to them.

Confederacy - Meetings held by the Senate to gather information about candidates for
federal office nominated by the president of the United States.

Federal system - A federal government is a system that divides up power between a

strong national government and smaller local governments. We'll take a look at how
power plays out between the national and local government, and the benefits of a
federal government.

Constitution - a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to

which a state or other organization is acknowledged to be governed.
Constitutional government - is defined by the existence of a constitution—which may
be a legal instrument or merely a set of fixed norms or principles generally accepted as
the fundamental law of the polity—that effectively controls the exercise of political
power.

Authoritarian - favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the

government, at the expense of personal freedom.

Totalitarianism - a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires

complete subservience to the state.

Dictatorship - a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator.

Oligarchy - a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a

dominant class or clique.

Monarchy - a form of government with a monarch at the head.

Democracy - a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible

members of a state, typically through elected representatives.

Republic - a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected
representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a
monarch.

Economics - the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and
transfer of wealth.

Capitalism - an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry
are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

free market - an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition
between privately owned businesses.
free enterprise - an economic system in which private business operates in competition and
largely free of state contro.

mixed economy - an economic system combining private and public enterprise.

Socialism - a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the
means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the
community as a whole.

Command economy - an economy in which production, investment, prices, and incomes are
determined centrally by a government.

Communism - a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a
society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to
their abilities and needs.

Anarchy - a state of disorder due to absence or non recognition of authority.