A government is the organization, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects.

Typically, the term "government" refers to the civil government of a 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 forest). 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
  • 1.1 Fictional, author unidentified
• 2 Unsourced
• 3 See also
• 4 External links

Sourced

• Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.
  • Barnhill, John Basil (1914). "Indictment of Socialism No. 3" (PDF). Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism. Saint Louis, Missouri: National Rip-Saw Publishing. pp. p. 34. Retrieved on 2008-10-16.

• The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
  • William Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942), Pt. 7

• If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.
  • U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting; Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Thu Sep 2 19:50:44 2010

• Dependent Areas (1)
• Local Government (17)
• State Government (27)
• Tribal Government (196)
• Washington, DC@ (99)

• Constitution@ (177)
• Executive Branch (1,995)
• Judicial Branch (242)
• Legislative Branch (2,018)

• Agencies (507)
• Documents (65)
• Elections (1,059)
• Embassies and Consulates (284)
• Employment (66)
• Intelligence (5)
• Law (242)
• Law Enforcement (1)
• Military (4,588)

• News and Media (9)
• Politics@ (1,589)
• Professional Associations (15)
• Reference (42)
• Research Institutes (3)
• Services (24)
• State-Federal Relations (1)
• Transparency@ (16)
• Treaties (11)

See also:

• Business: Business Services: Government Contracting (98)

• USA.gov Search
  usasearch.gov
  The U.S. Government's official search engine. Find information from federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments. Meta-search special government databases.
• America.gov Telling America's Story
  america.gov
  U.S. Department of State portal about the people, places, values and ideas that define the character of the United States. [Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, Russian, Spanish]
• Data.gov
  data.gov
  Official U.S. government site providing increased public access to federal government datasets. Includes metadata, how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage them.