The representative form of government practiced by the U.S. isn't the only way to run a country, but is it, or some other method, the ideal approach?

Curiosity contributor Bambi Turner looks at the benefits, and effectiveness, of representative democracy.

Every form of government, from liberal democracy to aristocracy to state communism, comes with its own unique issues. For example, democracy offers a measure of fairness and equality, but also can be inefficient. The opposite is true for monarchies and other models where power is concentrated at the top but where the efficiency of a single leader sacrifices a great deal of fairness and equality. In order to compare various systems of government, one must first determine what the goals of government should be, and what the people are willing to sacrifice to achieve them.

Leaders like John Adams and John Locke argued that the ideal form of government provides the greatest happiness or utility to the largest number of people. Each proposed using a representative assembly or legislature that must be paired with a separate executive and/or judicial branch to ensure checks and balances. This form of government not only allows each citizen to vote based on individual concerns, but also ensures that no one person or group will gather enough power to threaten the representative democracy. A representative democracy, in which the people elect executives and legislators to vote on their behalf, also offers a more responsive and efficient governing body than a direct democracy, which would require cumbersome popular votes to decide every issue.

Further support for this form of government comes from the World Bank, which ranks nations according to a "Government Effectiveness" score, based on how well each government meets the needs of the people. The countries that rank highest on this scale -- including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and several Scandinavian nations -- all maintain some form of bicameral, multi-party, representative government. By contrast, governments that were part of the former Soviet Union; those located in Sub-Saharan Africa; and nations in Southern Asia -- many of which are not truly representative, multi-party democracies -- rate fairly poorly. Countries scoring lowest are likely to have a one-party system, a military or monarchy, or a state of government so disordered it is best described as anarchy [source: Andrews].