GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION - THE BINOMIAL DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

Abstract

An essential aspect of the political relations is represented by the relation
between power and opposition, the power being in the meaning of this relationship the
legitimate capacity to impose its own will or to exert the authority, which reveals a relation
of domination. The two socio-political entities, government and opposition, acts by its specific
means and in a democratic system these ease the confrontation of ideas, solutions, open
competition between political forces generating the alternation in power, as a result of the
electorate's will and political orientation.
Generally, the power is assimilated to the force or capacity of constraint, which
suggests that, from a certain perspective, the imposition of the political will.
In the socio-political area, J.J. Rousseau in his "Social Contract" stated that the most
powerful is not strong enough to always be the "master", if he does not transform the force
into law and subjection into duty, so that the normative power shall emerge from a social
morality stated by the law. As the pair term of the "power", the opposition is the ensemble of
the political groups, parties or alliances, which, taken separately or as an ensemble, are
opposing the political regime in force or the actual government's policy.