But this government may assume different aspects, and the republic--for we have seen that the republic is the normal form of democratic government--may be organized according to three different principles. There may be noted, according to the type, the _presidential republic_, such as the United States of America, which tends to realize a separation of powers as complete as possible and in which the President elected by the people and his ministers or secretaries nominated by the President are never responsible to the Parliament. Then there is the _collegiate republic_, such as Switzerland and the Hanseatic Cities, in which the President is replaced by a college which is, by the side of the Parliament, an organ of popular sovereignty and which exercises executive powers. This college is elected by the popular representative body and depends on it. Finally there is the _parliamentary republic_, such as exists in France. We know what makes up parliamentary rule. Here also legislative power and executive power are separated and are to a certain measure independent. But the two cannot exercise their functions except when in co-operation. On the one hand, a certain separation; on the other, a certain co-operation, co-operation of separate and independent powers. The functioning of this system is insured by a very simple mechanism. The president names his ministers but these ministers cannot begin functioning or remain as such until they have obtained the confidence of the national representative body. The day that these ministers lose this confidence they also lose their power. Parliament does not only exercise legislative power therefore; it also controls executive action. The chief of states names his ministers, but he has not the liberty to appoint them. He must take those designated by the majority of the Chamber and reject them when they are discarded by the Chamber. It is this last system that the German Constitution has chosen. One may express surprise thereat. For has not Germany been the classic ground for pleasantries over “parliamentary cretinism”? However, it has chosen parliamentarism. To use the words of Member of the Reichstag Koch, “The best form of expression of democracy is parliamentarism. We know of no other form superior to it and we have consequently decided to make parliamentarism one of the foundations of the new edifice.”[33] Now, the mechanisms which the Constitution has instituted, and through which the parliamentary system must function, are--either because of the federal form of the State, or because of new ideas which it has introduced in its creation--more numerous and more complicated than in most other countries. There is a Reichstag, a President, a Cabinet, a Reichsrat, and an Economic Council.