Communism tends to distort the whole spectrum as it is the only government philosophy which has a compulsory economic philosophy tied into it. Socialism is not a form of government, it an economic theory like Keynesian theory and the Chicago school.
I don't believe forms of government are part of any wing the exception being communism. Democracies, theocracies, oligarchies all are in a position to implement high taxes or virtually none, to legalise gay marriages and abortions or to make them punishable by death. In terms of what form of government will implement the policies most helpful for the people I heard someone suggest benevolent dictator, or autocrat because it has a nicer ring to it. Benevolence in itself is not enough, Pausanias of Sparta was the most benevolent leader they ever had, look how it ended up for him.
But the real issue with autocrat benevolent or not is how do they get the following of the people, regardless of how good you do your job some people will think they can do a better job, case in point is in the Australian senate where seventy something parties that all have different ideas as to how best run the country and all of them have a voting base, how does the benevolent autocrat maintain power when you aren't chosen by the people? Without the support of the mob you need to pull out an iron first and suddenly the term dictator becomes more accuarate than autocrat. Even if you got the most lovely and intelligent man into a position of authority if he didn't get chosen by the people he would either need to resort to deception or brutality to keep his job.
Democracy is probably the best form although the fine tuning of it is still subject to debate, an elected autocrat perhaps whom basically has the world at his finger tips but cannot ever avoid the elections? An entirely statutory parliament? A constitutional parliament? A presidential?
My view is that the people should elect two bodies, one can be called a president if you will, the other is the treasury which would be similar to a senate, the President does not have any governing power of his own, he or she appoints ministers(and can not dismiss them, they are appointed for their term) and can only create or abolish a department through referenda. If one of the ministers resigns and they can do so on their own accord only, the senate can appoint a replacement, not the president. The Treasury/Senate gets to set taxes and such and has power to assign a certain amount of funds to each department. They're governing ability is otherwise very limmited. If a minister is deemed incompetent by the senate they can then limmit it's funding and attempt to force his or her resignation, if the minister is still proving incompetent as a drastic measure the senate can convey a recommendation to the high court to dismiss the minister and if the high court agrees about their incompetence than they could execute the request.
Really though there is nothing in that model about policy, which is what I was getting at, aside from communism which distorts at all, forms of government do not come with predetermined policy inclinations, they simply explain the distribution of power. As for economic policy I again don't like the terms socialism and capitalist thrown about as they are not black and white, indeed if you were a fundamentalist socialist or fundamentalist capitalist I'd be quite worried. I tend to favour Keynesian style economics which I consider a moderate branch of capitalism, interesting though alot of Freidmanites would heckle a Keynesianist as being a socialist, an example was actually Andrew Peacock and his constant "The Hawke Socialist government" rhetoric.
In terms of social policy my views are quite liberal and progressive, I reject tradtionalism and can summarise them in a simple way, If it hurts nobody, it should be permitted, if infringes upon someone elses rights, it should be forbidden. Ok there are instances where this isn't entirely practical but as a general rule, I don't agree with gay marriage legislation for example as I can't possible understand what the actual downside to it is. But that's a debate for another thread.
