Noun

Singular government

Plural countable and uncountable; plural governments

government (countable and uncountable; plural governments)

1. The body with the power to make and/or enforce laws for a country, land area, people, or organization.
2. A group of people who hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory.
3. The state and its administration viewed as the ruling political power.
4. (uncountable) The management or control of a system.
5. The tenure of a chief of state.

Derived terms

• branch of government
• close enough for government work
• federal government
• government agent
• government bond
• government-censored
• government debt
• government house
• government issue
• government man
• government note
• government purchases
• government security
• government stroke
• government wharf
• governmental

• governmentese
• governmentwide
• head of government
• in government
• local government
• military government
• municipal government
• non-government
• parliamentary government
• petticoat government
• puppet government
• representative government
• seat of government
• self-government
• shadow government
• unitary government

Related terms

• govern
• governance
• governor

A government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws, and regulations.

Typically, the term "government" refers to a civil government or sovereign state which can be either local, national, or international. However, commercial, academic, religious, or other formal organizations are also governed by internal bodies. Such bodies may be called boards of directors, managers, or governors or they may be known as the administration (as in schools) or councils of elders (as in churches). The size of governments can vary by region or purpose.

Growth of an organization advances the complexity of its government, therefore small towns or small-to-medium privately-operated enterprises will have fewer officials than typically larger organizations such as multinational corporations which tend to have multiple interlocking, hierarchical layers of administration and governance. As complexity increases and the nature of governance becomes more complicated, so does the need for formal policies and procedures.

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.

Contents

• 1 Sourced
• 2 Unsourced
• 3 See also
• 4 External links

Sourced

• [Administration] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom restrained from acting, such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America (1835)

• A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people. It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spake Zarathustra, XI. The New Idol

• Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.
  • William Lyon Mackenzie King, Message of the Carillon (1927)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Tue Jan 12 05:31:07 2010