Form of Government in Countries around the World: Classification Problems and their Possible Solutions

The main purpose of the paper is to develop a unified classification of the states of the world according to the form of government. The author considers the existing approaches, and the classification of the world states in the form of government in the theory and practice of state-building.Further, the author gives examples of states whose forms of government cannot be classified within the framework of traditional approaches. To solve this problem of classification, the author proposes, in addition to the typical (traditional) forms of government — monarchy and republic, to allocate atypical forms of government — a monarchy with a republican element and a republic with a monarchical element, and within the republican form of government, in addition to the traditional (classical) varieties — presidential, parliamentary and semi-presidential republics. It is proposed to allocate non-traditional (non-classical) varieties — hybrid, superpresidential, socialist and Islamic. In addition, the author distinguishes the mixed republic in two varieties (semipresidential and semi-parliamentary republics) as a kind of watershed between traditional and non-traditional varieties of the republican form of government. Within the framework of the paper, the author also touches upon the question of correlation of the categories «form of government», «state and political regime», concluding that they are independent but interrelated categories. In conclusion, the author summarizes the findings of the study and, for clarity, offers a scheme of his own approach to the classification of the States of the world in the form of government.