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May 17, 2021 · Learn about the three branches of the federal government and the state governments in the US, as well as the federal and state reporting entities and related entities. The web page provides data, analysis, and sources for each branch and agency of the US government.
- DictionaryGov·ern·ment/ˈɡəvər(n)mənt/
noun
- 1. the governing body of a nation, state, or community: "an agency of the federal government"
- 2. the relation between a governed and a governing word.
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state . In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy.
- Overview
- Agricultural society
- The spread of civilization
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
government, the political system by which a country or community is administered and regulated.
Most of the key words commonly used to describe governments—words such as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—are of Greek or Roman origin. They have been current for more than 2,000 years and have not yet exhausted their usefulness. This suggests that humankind has not altered very much since they were coined. However, such verbal and psychological uniformity must not be allowed to hide the enormous changes in society and politics that have occurred. The earliest analytical use of the term monarchy, for example, occurred in ancient Athens, in the dialogues of Plato (c. 428–c. 348 bce), but even in Plato’s time the term was not self-explanatory. There was a king in Macedonia and a king in Persia, but the two societies, and therefore their institutions, were radically different. To give real meaning to the word monarchy in those two instances, it would be necessary to investigate their actual political and historical contexts. Any general account of monarchy required then, and requires today, an inquiry as to what circumstances have predisposed societies to adopt monarchy and what have led them to reject it. So it is with all political terms.
So long as humans were few, there was hardly any government. The division of function between ruler and ruled occurred only, if at all, within the family. The largest social groups, whether tribes or villages, were little more than loose associations of families, in which every elder or family head had an equal voice. Chieftains, if any, had strictly limited powers; some tribes did without chieftains altogether. This prepolitical form of social organization may still be found in some regions of the world, such as the Amazonian jungle in South America or the upper Nile River valley in Africa.
The rise of agriculture began to change that state of affairs. In the land of Sumer (in what is now Iraq) the invention of irrigation necessitated grander arrangements. Control of the flow of water down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers had to be coordinated by a central authority, so that fields could be watered downstream as well as farther up. It became necessary also to devise a calendar, so as to know when the spring floods might be expected. As those skills evolved, society evolved with them. In early Sumer, it is reasonable to assume, the heads of the first cities, which were little more than enlarged villages, only gradually assumed the special attributes of monarchy—the rule of one—and the village council only gradually undertook a division of labour, so that some specialized as priests and others as warriors, farmers, or tax gatherers (key figures in every civilized society). As organization grew more complex, so did religion: an elaborate system of worship seemed necessary to propitiate the quite elaborate family of gods who, it was hoped, would protect the city from attack, from natural disaster, and from any questioning of the political arrangements deemed necessary by the ruler group.
Unfortunately—but, given human nature, inevitably—the young cities of Sumer quarrelled over the distribution of the rivers’ water, and their wealth excited the greed of nomads outside the still comparatively small area of civilization (a word deriving from the Latin word for city, civitas). War, perhaps the most potent of all forces of historical change, announced its arrival, and military leadership became at least as important an element of kingship as divine sanction. It was to remain so throughout the long history of monarchy: whenever kings have neglected their military duties, they have endangered their thrones. The wars of Sumer also laid bare another imperative of monarchy—the drive for empire, arising from the need to defend and define frontiers by extending them and the need to find new means to pay for troops and weapons, whether by the plunder of an enemy or by the conquest of new lands, or both.
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The history of Old World monarchy, and indeed of civilization, was to consist largely of variations on the patterns mentioned above for four or five millennia. Trade contacts carried the principles of civilization to Egypt and to India (China, like the pre-Columbian societies of the Americas, seems to have evolved independently). And everywhere, once the social order was established, the problem of defending it became paramount. Although the broad zone of civilization spread steadily, so that by the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan (98–117 ce) there was a continuous band of civilized societies from Britain to the China Sea, it was always at risk from the barbarian nomads who roamed the great steppelands of central Eurasia. These nomads had retained the loose and simple institutions of primitive societies, but they had in other ways evolved as rapidly and successfully as the cities themselves (and partly under the cities’ influence). The steppe was horse country, and, armed with bows and arrows, the barbarians of all epochs possessed marvelously swift and deadly light cavalry. They fought constantly among themselves for pasturage, and the losers were forever being driven west, south, and east, where they often overcame any defenses that the farms and cities of civilization could muster against them.
Yet the nomads’ military challenge was never sufficient to overturn civilization entirely. Either the invaders would overrun the settled lands and then adopt civilized customs, or the frontier defenses would prove strong enough to hold them off. There were even long periods of peace, when the barbarian threat was negligible. It was at such times that the spontaneous ingenuity of humankind had greatest play, in politics as in everything else. But it is noteworthy that, in the end, what may be described as the ancient norm always reasserted itself, whether in Europe, the Middle East, India, or China. Military crises—barbarian invasions, civil wars, or war between competing polities—recurred, necessitating the strengthening of government.
The effort to secure a measure of peace and prosperity required the assertion of authority over vast distances, the raising of large armies, and the gathering of taxes to pay for them. Those requirements in turn fostered literacy and numeracy and the emergence of what later came to be called bureaucracy—government by officials. Bureaucratic imperialism emerged again and again and spread with civilization. Barbarian challenge occasionally laid it low but never for very long. When one city or people rose to hegemony over its neighbours, it simply incorporated their bureaucracy into its own. Sumer and Babylon were conquered by Assyria; Assyria was overthrown by the Medes of Persia, in alliance with a resurgent Babylon and nomadic Scythians; the empire of the Persians was overthrown by Alexander the Great (356–323 bce) of Macedonia; the Macedonian successor states were conquered by Rome, which was in due course supplanted in the Middle East and North Africa by the Islamic Caliphate of Baghdad. Conquerors came and went, but life for their subjects, whether peasants or townspeople, was not much altered by anything they did, as long as the battles happened elsewhere.
Nevertheless, from time to time experiments were made, for no monarchy had the resources to rule all its subjects directly. So long as they paid tribute punctually, local rulers and local communities were perforce left to govern themselves. Even if they did not pay, the effort required to mount a military operation at a distance from the imperial centre was so great that only in exceptional circumstances would it be undertaken, and even then it might not succeed, as the kings of Persia found when they launched punitive expeditions from Asia Minor against mainland Greece at the beginning of the 5th century bce (see Greco-Persian Wars). Thus, in normal times the inhabitants of the borderlands had extensive freedom of action.
Learn about the origins and evolution of government in different societies and cultures, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern times. Explore the key terms and concepts of political science, such as monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and more.
- Hugh Brogan
The federal government of the United States ( U.S. federal government or U.S. government) [a] is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, five major self-governing territories, several island possessions, and the federal district and national capital of ...
Dec 6, 2023 · Learn about the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the U.S. government, as well as the system of checks and balances that ensure no individual or group will have too much power. Find out how each branch can change or veto the actions of the other branches and how to contact a real person for government-related questions.
Learn about the United States, its history, culture, and government structure. Find contact information for federal, state, and local government agencies, departments, and officials.
