Civic Mirror

What is government? Government is the governing body of nation, state, or community. Government determines the way any group of people are ran. There a several different types of government used all around the world. In the United States for example, uses a type of government that has three different branches of power. The Legislative Branch is the law making branch. The Judicial branch is the courts and the low enforcement. Lastly, the Executive branch is the presidential branch. “Each has its own responsibilities and at the same time they work together to make the country run smoothly and to assure that the rights of citizens are not ignored or disallowed.” (Osborne) Usually, governments break up the responsibilities into two or more groups. Two very influential writers wrote about their views on government; Lao-tzu and Machiavelli. These writers were in very different times which makes it very interesting to compare their views. Lao-tzu and Machiavelli had very different views on the ultimate purpose of government, the obligations of government leaders, and the main work of the state.

In the United States of America, there are two forms of government that most cities adhere to, Mayor-Council and Council-Manager. However, there is a third form of government that a smaller few adhere to call the commission. Moreover, approximately 59% of the cities in the United States utilize the Council-Manager form of government; conversely 33% utilize the Mayor-Council form of government, which means the remaining 8% more than likely utilize the commission form of government.

Freedom of municipal law, when pertaining to the state government, has its pros and cons. One pro is the lack of necessary for the state to review every policy that the city makes. Another is that the cities could work on ways to solve their own problems and allow more of the community’s voices to be heard. A corresponding con is the lack of connection between the cities and states that could further lead to a misuse of power. Also, if the cities feel that there is little to no authority acting over them, they could become power hungry and try to push policies that their communities disagree with.

Lastly we move to federal government this is one in which the powers of government is divided between a central government and several local governments. There is a authority superior to both the central and local governments which makes this division of powers on a geographic basis; That division cannot be changed by either the local or national level acting alone. Both levels of government act directly on the people through their own sets of laws, the officials, and agencies. In the United States, for example the National Government has certain powers and the 50 states have others. This division of powers is set out in the Constitution of the United States.

There are a variety of differences and similarities between federal, state, and local governments. This includes, but is not limited to, the responsibilities, size, and staff of the administration. The machinery of government is intended to better the quality of citizen’s lives. Ultimately, federal, state, and local governments were established to work together in bettering programs and laws (Berkley & Rouse, 2009, p.32).

The City of Bend, Oregon Government consists of approximately 500 employees across thirteen different divisions. These divisions are Police, Fire, Community Development, Public Works, etc and are all coordinated under the City Manager’s office. Bend’s government style is called a “weak mayor” form of city government, in that the citizens elect a city council, which then elects a mayor from among the council members. The city council and mayor, then hire a City Manager to run the day to day operations of the city. In doing this form of government, the City Manager is not directly accountable to the citizens and can focus on the needs of the city and its employees. At the same time, the City Council can only provide direction to the city manager and is accountable to the citizens. The city employees in this case are led by the city manager as directed by city council. The community leadership environment in this case is established by council to provide direction to the city manager.

Local authorities such as the county and city councils have roles such as education, libraries, public transport, emergency planning which will contribute in more of the latest technology resources which will help the people of illness or of people who need immediate medical attention; this will help services throughout a city or a county. Planning and development to improve on the communities appearance; this will make the people in the society love the place where they live which may lead to less criminal damage. Also fire and public safety and waste management and trading standards. Councils make decisions on the situations within the community; they do this by holding council meetings to discuss what needs to be done to help the society. Members of the public are allowed to attend the meetings so they have first hearing of the decisions discussed than those who don’t attend. All decisions the council make in these meeting must be later published. In my opinion I would say that local authorities are a good thing to have as they can focus on small communities than looking at things as a whole country, otherwise no problems within a community will be solved. I think there should be no improvements for local authorities as they tackle all areas that need improving in the community. Local authorities help the public

There are many different forms of local government, such as county councils, the metropolitan councils, and parish and district councils. Many of the roles and responsibilities they preform and deal with sometimes overlap, but they all mainly focus on the services and facilities needed in local areas across the country

The United Kingdom has different levels of government system; the function of this multi-level government system can be observed in brief from the figure given below:

The levels of government are Central, (which involve the Monarchy, the House of Commons, and the House of Lords), Regional, (which involve Devolved parliaments) and Local, (which involve Local authorities, country councils and Metropolitan councils). Each level contains a variety of different organisations and branches of government which help to keep the country and the public services running smoothly and effectively. All branches of the government

government is not the only government that has power; provincial governments have a role in

A parliamentary government is a democratic form of government which operates on a party system. It is the most popular and widely adopted form of democracy. A state that operates on a parliamentary system is run by two executives, firstly the head of state who is either a monarch or president who then appoints a prime minister as the head of government. A parliament can be run by either a single majority political party or as a coalition government in which more than one party collaborate to form the government. In this essay I will be assessing the key strengths and weaknesses associated with a parliamentary government. In doing so I will conclude that whilst a parliamentary government has weaknesses its strengths outweigh these and therefore it is the superior form of democratic government.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively compare and contrast the implementation of two types of mayor-council government systems which are that of the weak-mayor type of the mayor council system and the strong-mayor type of the mayor council system. The premise of the analysis which has been conducted in this paper is based upon assessing the local governments of two cities within the United States – Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Minneapolis, Minnesota which follow the adoption of a strong-mayor system and weak-mayor system respectively.

The services they provide the community and the responsibilities they acquire differs in various ways . For instance the services that a community requires differs from each city, town or region causing different responsibilities amongst the government. Also, a municipal government is only the elected representative and the municipality administration. Whereas, a local government includes all sorts of other things because a municipality gives authority to the other organizations to do things. Thus, a local government is a municipal government in addition to agencies, boards and other corporations. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the differences between them as they are different in various aspects and have different responsibilities and provide various

After playing Civic Mirror for three years, I learned lessons that I never would have imagined of learning in grade 10 civics. The most important thing I discovered was the significance of participating and posessing initiative in order to be a successful member of society. During the first year, I did not make many trades as I had little money, was too nervous to raise my concerns in Town Hall and did not find it important to sue anyone in National Court. Along with preventing me from obtaining a high score, not participating restricted me from enjoying myself in Civic Mirror like others did. However, once I increased my participation and took the initiative to trade, I found that my grade in Civic Mirror increased, I looked forward to come to class and I spoke with people whom I had never talked to before. Secondly, Civic Mirror helped me realize the necessity of having a source of income in order to be a prosperous citizen. During the auction, I did not buy a hex as I had very little money and could not afford it. Although the money I had originally been given sufficed me for the first year, the lack of money made it very difficult to fulfill my family’s needs for the next two years. This experience allowed me to understand that when I grow up and become a self-sufficient member of society, it is extremely important that I have a secure source of income. Along with helping me fulfill my needs, the money that I