What system of government do I live in?

[sam h]

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I live in the US. I would like to know what system of government I am living in. And I don't mean the 'official' label for system of government. What I am looking for is the system(s) of government it most closely resembles in practice.

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Think of it on three levels.

(1) First, what type of organization constitutes the "government": a state. For better or (for all the ACists out there) for worse, there is an organization that controls the territory you live in, maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within that territory, extracts resources from that territory coercively, and has an elaborate administrative/legal apparatus for carrying out many functions. This type of organization has not always existed in human societies, but it is now nearly universal and has been more-or-less so in the western world for many centuries.

(2) Second, how is power within that organization accessed? This is a question of the type of regime. We have a democratic regime, which is generally thought to be marked by free and fair elections, universal suffrage, some protection for individual liberties and political rights, party competition, etc. Other possible types of regimes include authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, in which state power is accessed through means other than elections.

(3) Third, what specific institutions structure political representation within this democracy? Most importantly, we have a presidential system, in which the president is elected independently of the legislature. Other countries have parliamentary systems, in which the party with a plurality in the legislature is given the opportunity to choose a prime minister to lead a government which, assumedly, forms a majority coalition with other parties in the legislature.