2

In this sentence

Under what form would our government operate?

I am wondering whether Under what form or In which/what form would be the correct phrasing, and I realised that I can't find the answer. Does anyone have any ideas?

fev
  • 33,009
Aden
  • 23
  • 2
    Neither sounds appropriate. 'In what form[?] refers to constitution rather than mode of operation. I'd use 'How ...?'. If constitution is being queried, 'What form would our government take?' is more reasonable. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 04 '21 at 11:03

2 Answers2

1

It looks like either of them could be used, but according to Gngram in what form is the most common, while under what form is the least used. If you think of a sentence like

Our government will operate under this form for a few years.

it does look less common than

Our government will operate in this form for a few years.

Gngram again strongly agrees.

Having said that, when I did a search on Google I did find some examples of occurrences of The Government operates under.... Here is one:

Local government in England operates under either a one tier system...

However, if you wish to be on the safe side, maybe stick with "in".

fev
  • 33,009
0

Correct it is, grammatically, and whatever the construction you consider; the main reproach is not lack of idiomaticity, it is worse than that; these two formulations break with the usual affinities that concepts in the domain of political lore have for one another.

A government is something which comes initially with a form, and therefore, there is no question of choosing a form for it when the government is recognized as something extant. The use of "under" implies that there is an implicit choice, which is not in reality true. This sort of formulation entails the sentence "Our government operates under the form of …", and that is nonsense. There are two possibilities that will make something sensible of these formulations.

  • What form of operate would we have? — What should be the form of our government?

  • According to what line of action should our government operate?

LPH
  • 20,841