page_title: Politics
section_title: Source of power
hierarchical_section_title: Politics / Political system / Forms of government / Source of power
caption_attribution_description: English: This diagram illustrates the various forms of government, and their associated political systems, located along the pathway of regional integration or separation.
context_page_description: Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The academic study of politics is referred to as political science.
  Politics is a multifaceted word. It may be used positively in the context of a "political solution" which is compromising and non-violent, or descriptively as "the art or science of government", but also often carries a negative connotation. For example, abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared that "we do not play politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us." The concept has been defined in various ways, and different approaches have fundamentally differing views on whether it should be used extensively or limitedly, empirically or normatively, and on whether conflict or co-operation is more essential to it.
  A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries.
context_section_description: The source of power determines the difference between democracies, oligarchies, and autocracies.
  In a democracy, political legitimacy is based on popular sovereignty. Forms of democracy include representative democracy, direct democracy, and demarchy. These are separated by the way decisions are made, whether by elected representatives, referenda, or by citizen juries. Democracies can be either republics or constitutional monarchies. 
  Oligarchy is a power structure where a minority rules. These may be in the form of anocracy, aristocracy, ergatocracy, geniocracy, gerontocracy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, meritocracy, noocracy, particracy, plutocracy, stratocracy, technocracy, theocracy, or timocracy. 
  
  Autocracies are either dictatorships (including military dictatorships) or absolute monarchies.
caption: The pathway of regional integration or separation
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