Parliamentary Democracies

The United States government is by no means the only form of democratic government in the world. Indeed, there are many ways to organize a democracy. Some nations have parliamentary governments. In a parliamentary democracy, such as Great Britain or Israel, the party that has a majority or a plurality of the seats in the parliament (legislature) is allowed to select a prime minister, who leads the government. A prime minister is somewhat like the president (executive) in the American system of government, but, instead of being elected by the voters, the prime minister is chosen as leader of her or his party by that party's members of parliament. Parliamentary democracies differ widely. To use the examples above, Great Britain has a two-party system, in which the Conservative and Labor parties compete to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons, the lower house of the British Parliament, so that they can choose a member of their party as Prime Minister. Israel also has two large parties, Likud and Labor, but also has several smaller parties. In order to gain a majority in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, politicians sometimes have to assemble a coalition government, which includes members of different parties. The party (or parties) that is out of power in a parliamentary government has the task of scrutinizing and criticizing the actions of the governing party, and is often referred to as the opposition party or the loyal opposition.