A government is a body that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws within a civil, corporate, religious, academic, or other organization or group. However, these are not physical laws. In its broadest sense, "to govern" means to administer or supervise, whether over a state, a set group of people, or a collection of assets.

The word government is derived from the Greek (kyvernites), which means "steersman", "governor", "pilot" or "rudder".

Typically, "the government" refers to the executive function. In many countries (particularly those having parliamentary systems), the Government refers to the executive branch of government or a specifically named executive, i.e. the Blair Government (compare to the administration as in the Clinton administration in U.S. usage). The Welsh Assembly Government is the name of the executive branch of Wales, and Scottish Government is the unofficial term to describe the Scottish Executive. In countries using the Westminster system, the party in government will also usually control the legislature.

Attributes of governments

Effective governments possess two attributes, authority and legitimacy.

Authority is the ability to compel obedience. Authority can be exercised as naked force and terror as was the case in Stalinist Russia or Baathist Iraq or through a series of more or less transparent public hearings as is the case in many western democracies.

All governments compel obedience using an element of direct physical duress. Less violent forms of compulsion typically include threats, exile, religious banishment, social banishment, or siege (isolation of individuals from subsistence-level economic goods). In some cases money may be used as a form of compulsion.

Legitimacy is the attribute of a government that prompts the governed to acquiesce willingly to its authority. Legitimacy is gained through the acquisition and application of power in accordance with recognised or accepted standards or principles. That is to say that a legitimate government will "do the right thing" and therefore deserves to be respected and obeyed.

Authority can be upheld through violent means while legitimacy must be earned. As legitimacy is challenged the use of violence to maintain authority increases.

Branches of government

Under modern political theory, government is understood as having three main powers: legislative (the power to make laws), executive (the power to implement laws) and judiciary (the power to judge and apply punishment when laws are broken). It is normally assumed -- at least in democracies -- that nomination and election resides with the citizens. But even in a democracy such as in the U.S., the President nominates Supreme Court Justices and the Senate confirms (elects) them. Also in the case of electing the President, the citizens do not elect the President -- they elect "electors" who elect the President. And in Parliamentary forms of democracy, Parliament nominates and elects the Prime Minister. Clearly, the powers to nominate and elect must be included as distinct powers.

Under traditional forms of government that ruled most of the world until a few centuries ago, such as monarchy and oligarchy, these powers were concentrated in the hands of one person or a small group of people. One of the innovations of modern democracy is the separation of powers into three distinct branches of government that operate independently while acting as checks and balances for each other. This separation is supposed to prevent any one individual or small group from acquiring too much power for themselves and becoming despotic.

Forms of government

Many different forms of government have existed in the past, exist today, or may exist in the future. They are traditionally classified according to the number of people who hold political power:

The lines between some of the above forms of government can sometimes be ambiguous. For example, during the 19th century, most self-proclaimed "democracies" restricted voting rights to a minority of the population (e.g. property-owning males). This could qualify them as oligarchies rather than democracies^{citation needed]}. On the other hand, the voting minority was often quite large (20-30% of the population) and its members did not form the compact group with common interests that is the hallmark of most oligarchies. Thus, this form of government occupied a space between democracy and oligarchy as they are understood today.

Reasons for government

There are a wide range of theories about the reasons for establishing governments. The four major ones are briefly described below. Note that they do not always fully oppose each other - it is possible for a person to subscribe to a combination of ideas from two or more of these theories.

Self interest

Many political philosophies that are opposed to the existence of a government (such as Anarchism, and to a lesser extent Marxism), as well as others, emphasize the historical roots of governments - the fact that governments, along with private property, originated from the authority of warlords and petty despots who took, by force, certain patches of land as their own (and began exercising authority over the people living on that land). Thus, it is argued that governments exist to enforce the will of the strong and oppress the weak, maintaining and protecting class antagonisms.

Order and tradition

The various forms of conservatism, by contrast, generally see the government as a positive force that brings order out of chaos, establishes laws to end the "war of all against all", encourages moral virtue while punishing vice, and respects tradition. Sometimes, in this view, the government is seen as something ordained by a higher power, as in the divine right of kings, which human beings have a duty to obey.

Natural rights

Natural rights are the basis for the theory of government shared by most branches of liberalism (including libertarianism). In this view, human beings are born with certain natural rights, and governments are established strictly for the purpose of protecting those rights. While there is much controversy in the details of natural rights, the tradition of liberalism generally recognize three or four fundamental natural rights: a right to life, liberty, property and/or the pursuit of happiness. These rights are a common thread of debate from modern natural rights theorists such as Tibor Machan to Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Kant, or Jefferson.

Social contract

One of the most influential theories of government in the past two hundred years has been the social contract, on which modern democracy and most forms of socialism are founded. The social contract theory holds that governments are created by the people in order to provide for collective needs (such as safety from crime, poverty, illiteracy) that cannot be properly satisfied using purely individual means. Governments thus exist for the purpose of serving the needs and wishes of the people, and their relationship with the people is clearly stipulated in a "social contract" (a constitution and a set of laws) which both the government and the people must abide by. If a majority is unhappy, it may change the social contract. If a minority is unhappy, it may persuade the majority to change the contract, or it may opt out of it by emigration or secession.

Governmental operations

Governments concern themselves with regulating and administering many areas of human activity, such as trade, education, or medicine. Governments also employ different methods to maintain the established order, such as secrecy, police and military forces, (particularly under despotism, see also police state), making agreements with other states, and maintaining support within the state.

Typical methods of maintaining support and legitimacy include providing the infrastructure for administration, justice, transport, communication, social welfare etc., claiming support from deities, providing benefits to elites, providing shops for important posts within the state, limiting the power of the state through laws and constitutions and appealing to nationalism. Different political ideologies hold different ideas on what the government should or should not do.

The modern standard unit of territory is a country. In addition to the meaning used above, the word state can refer either to a government or to its territory. Within a territory, subnational entities may have local governments which do not have the full power of a national government (for example, they will generally lack the authority to declare war or carry out diplomatic negotiations).

Size of government

Main articles: government ownership, government spending

The scale to which government should exist and operate in the world is a matter of debate. Government spending in developed countries varies considerably but generally makes up between about 30% and 70% of their GDP. One major exception is the United States, where central government spending takes up less than 20% of GDP.

See also

Relevant lists