The Parliamentary form of government was first introduced in which of the following countries?

The correct answer is A, Great Britain. The parliamentary system, where the executive is drawn from and answerable to the legislature, evolved in England over the 17th and 18th centuries. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights, 1689, established parliamentary supremacy over the Crown, and the convention of a cabinet responsible to the House of Commons developed under Walpole in the 1720s and 1730s.

• Belgium: Its 1831 constitution adopted a parliamentary system, but it was modelled on the British pattern and came well after England.
• France: Parliamentary-style arrangements appeared only after the Revolution, and the Third Republic (1870 onwards) is the notable example; France's history is marked by repeated shifts between systems.
• Switzerland: Its federal government is a directorial system where the Federal Council is elected by the legislature for a fixed term and is not removable by a no-confidence vote, so it is not a parliamentary model.

Connection: this is a core Polity concept, and for Mains you should be able to contrast parliamentary and presidential systems, as the Indian Constitution, borrowing from the British model, makes the Council of Ministers collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha under Article 75.

Trap: Aspirants pick Switzerland or France because of the Swiss Federal Council or France's long constitutional history, forgetting that the British system is the origin the others later copied.