Page 56 - DMGT547_INTERNATIONAL_MARKETING

Unit 3: Political Environment of International Marketing

The absolutist governments include monarchies and dictatorships. In the absolutist system, the Notes
ruling regime dictates government policies without considering citizens’ needs or opinions.
It has been observed that absolutist countries are mostly newly formed nations or those
undergoing some kind of political transformation. Absolute monarchies are now relatively
rare. The United Kingdom is a good example of a constitutional hereditary monarchy. Despite
the monarch, the government is still classified as parliamentary.
Political system of many countries does not fall neatly into these two categories. Some monarchies
and dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and North Korea have parliamentary elections. The erstwhile
Soviet Union had elections and mandatory voting but was not classified as parliamentary because
the ruling party never allowed any alternative on the ballot. Countries such as the Philippines
under Marcos and Nicaragua under Somoza held elections but the results were suspect because
of the government’s involvement in fraud.
At the international political level, the governments can be classified in a number of ways.
However, the best way to classify the government is through the political parties. The classification
could be based on four types of governments (i) Two party, (ii) Multiple party, (iii) Single party,
and (iv) Dominated by one party.
In a two party system, there are mainly two parties that control the government, turn by turn,
whichsoever in a majority and the other parties are also allowed to support any one of the two
parties.

Example: The classic examples are the United States and the United Kingdom. Both the
parties have different philosophies, which change the government policy when one of the
parties is elected to form the government. In the United States, the Republican Party represents
the business community whereas the Democratic Party represents the labour as well as
economically poor society’s interest. In the UK, the Republican Party is viewed as the
representative of the trading community whereas labour party is often viewed as representing
the labour cause as well as economically weaker society’s interest.
In a multi party system, there are a large number of parties; however, none of them are strong
enough to gain control of the government. There have been cases when the larger parties, in
spite of having a thin majority, cannot control the government because it needs support from
other parties. The government, in this case, can only be formed through coalition of like-
minded parties each one of which would like to protect its own interest. The coalition government
largely depends upon the cooperation of its allies. There have been instances when the
governments have fallen because one of the parties in the coalition government withdrew its
support. A change in a few votes may be sufficient to bring the coalition government down. In
such cases fresh elections are called for. The classic example of such a government is India where
Bharatiya Janata Party is the ruling party and its coalition partners, more than 23, are different
parties from different states. The other countries operating with this type of system include
Germany, France, and Israel and so on.
In a single party system, there may be a number of parties functioning in a country, however,
one party has so much of majority that there is very little opportunity for others to elect
representatives to govern the country. India is again a classic example of single party rule after
independence and after the formulation of the constitution in 1952. It was the Indian National
Congress that ruled the country, being the single largest party, till 1982. Subsequently, there
was a mixture of coalition governments, which could not complete their 5 years tenure. Egypt
has operated under single party rule for more than 3 decades. This type of government generally
operates in countries which are in the early stages of development of a parliamentary system
and is considered to be more stable than coalition governments. The drawback is that the
decisions are taken by a single party subjugating some of the sections of society, which creates

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