Canada

Modern world necessitates countries to follow or to design a specific government system to be able to rule their states base on the contemporary international relationships. Some of those political systems are very similar, some are completely different, some are democratic while on the other hand some dictatorship, some of them govern independently unlike some that are being influenced by another countries. In some countries, a monarch is the head of state and does not govern the country whereas there are still some monarchs with full authority. Here, we are going to simply compare two countries in political point of view. Iran and Canada are my preference as I am an Iranian living in Canada.

Comparing these two countries sounds very interesting because despite of the fact that they both have a democratic skeleton; they are fundamentally different. The way that Canada’s government operates is similar to Britain in some points while on other hand, Iran has been influenced by the French political system. Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy while Iran is a unitary Islamic republic with one legislative house. Unlike Canada that has secular liberalism trend, Iran is a theocratic republic. In Canada, the Queen is head of state and Governor General represents the sovereign in her absence whereas in Iran the Supreme Leader is head of state and doesn’t have any designee. In contrast, the Queen, who is a monarch, but the Supreme Leader in Iran is elected. He is overseen by the Assembly of Experts which is elected through direct public vote. However, from the military’s point of view, the Queen and Supreme Leader are both the supreme authority of the military.

In addition, both countries have similarly three branches of government including Legislative, Executive and Judicial. Just like Canada’s legislative system, Iran has two branches, parliament which is an Islamic consultative assembly where we know as the House of Commons in Canada. The Guardian council, that resembles the Senate in Canada, reviews laws that have been proposed by the parliament and they are both appointed by head of state. However, the Guardian council has some other liability such as supervising all elections and approving of the candidates.

In Canada, the Prime Minister is the head of government who is leader of political party that has the largest number of MPs and he chooses some of MPs to be ministers of cabinet. On the contrary, Iran has a presidential system where the president, who is elected directly by public vote, is the head of government and the ministers of his cabinet have to be approved by the MPs and being supervised consecutively.

And finally, the judicial system in Canada consists of the Federal and provincial courts which are governed by the Supreme Court of Canada and the judges of Supreme Court appointments are made by the Head of state on the advice of the PM. Conversely, Iran has a unitary judicial system that has a head of judiciary and he is appointed directly by the Supreme leader.

In brief, despite many of the differences between these two countries’ governmental system, still we can see some similarities especially when we look at the authorities and liabilities of both countries’ head of states or duties and the structure of the legislative branch.