Is there a name for this form of government?

Question

What I'm thinking of is a central government that is divided into partitions, each partition designated to govern over a given field (topic, subject), and each partition having elected representatives and heads.

For example, take the United States and make the partition be roughly the federal executive departments that have a Cabinet member--so you'd have Defense, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, Education, etc. You'd have a branch of the government in charge of defense with elected representatives and an elected head who all are to focus only on defense and the same would go for all of the branches.

With that general structure, I'm sure there would need to be mechanisms in place to ensure fluid and fair interactions on policy and implementation between and among the branches and some kind of checks and balances. But ignoring that for now, is there a term for this type of government and has anything similar to it been tried before?

Answer 1

Iraq is a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic. I assume they just add adverbs and adjectives like hashtags these days.

So to build some descriptors for what you're imagining, let's observe that a triumvirate shares power between three rulers. I assume a democratic triumviratic republic would elect three ministries, which would elect three ministers. A democratic dodecumviratic republic would elect twelve ministries, which in turn would elect twelve ministers.

Let's assume you want a separate ministry for each of our current executive departments: 1. state, 2. treasury, 3. justice, 4. interior, 5. agriculture, 6. commerce, 7. labor, 8. defense, 9. health, 10. housing and urban development, 11. transportation, 12. energy, 13. education, 14. veteran's affairs, and 15. homeland security. Pentadeca means fifteen, so you're thinking of a "democratic pentadecaviratic republic", at least until it operates long enough to be shortened to "chaotic mess"

Answer 2

What you're talking about here is a specific separation of powers. In fact, the United States (and probably many other countries) do this at a more local level. California, for example, has 7 major elected officials, 5 with specific offices they run. And at county or city levels you get elected sheriffs or fire chiefs or heads of various boards of education.

I don't think what you're talking about is really a traditional multiumviratic government, since there's no connotation of separate powers in that word's use. If you were to invent a name for this, you could call it a Departmental Government or something like that.

Answer 3

This sounds like a Technocracy

Technocracy is an organizational structure or system of governance where decision-makers are selected on the basis of technological knowledge. The concept of a technocracy remains mostly hypothetical. Technocrats, a term used frequently by journalists in the twenty-first century, can refer to individuals exercising governmental authority because of their knowledge. Technocrat has come to mean either "a member of a powerful technical elite" or "someone who advocates the supremacy of technical experts". Examples include scientists, engineers, and technologists who have special knowledge, expertise, or skills, and would compose the governing body, instead of people elected through political parties and businesspeople. In a technocracy, decision makers would be selected based upon how knowledgeable and skillful they are in their field.