How Governments Actually Work: Systems, Mechanisms and the Agencies That Execute Policy

Absolute monarchy: a hereditary ruler's power with no constitution to bind it, the sharpest possible contrast with the office next door.

Constitutional monarchy: the same royal office, bound instead to a constitution and, in most modern cases, an elected government.

The legislative process: how a proposed law actually moves from introduction to enactment, the mechanism every system of government routes through.

The veto: the power to unilaterally stop what a legislature already approved, from the Roman tribunes to the UN Security Council's permanent members.

The vote of confidence: a government testing its own majority, the mirror image of the motion of no confidence its opponents can bring against it.

Fiscal policy: the taxing-and-spending mechanism a government uses to steer the economy, and the arrangement that funds a welfare state once one exists.

Immigration policy: the arrangements a state uses to decide who may enter, remain and eventually belong, an ordinary exercise of sovereignty over territory.

The Environmental Protection Agency: policy made an institution, born in 1970 from President Nixon's Reorganization Plan No. 3.

The Election Commission of India: a mechanism executed at the largest scale on Earth, one country's general election drawing hundreds of millions of voters.

The European Commission: an executive body distinct from the union it serves, proposing law for twenty seven member states without representing any one of them.