No two governments, past or present, are exactly the same.
However, it is possible to examine the similarities and differences among political and economic systems and categorize different forms of government. One simple way to categorize governments is to divide them into democratic and authoritarian political systems.
Democracies
Many countries today claim to be democracies, but if the citizens are not involved in government and politics, they are democratic in name only. Some governments are more democratic than others, but systems cannot be considered truly democratic unless the meet certain criteria:
The President's Commission on the Celebration of Women in American History continued meeting through the 1990s. The aim was to further extend the inclusion of women's history in school lesson plans. They also wanted people to remember women in history every day. One result has been the effort toward establishing a National Museum of Women's History in Washington, D.C.
