In the social sciences, the term government refers to the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy, who control a state at a given time, and the manner in which their governing organizations are structured.
That is, governments are the means through which state power is
employed. States are served by a continuous succession of different
governments.
Each successive government is composed of a specialized and
privileged body of individuals, who monopolize political
decision-making, and are separated by status and organization from the
population as a whole. Their function is to enforce existing laws,
legislate new ones, and arbitrate conflicts via their monopoly on
violence. In some societies, this group is often a self-perpetuating or
hereditary class. In other societies, such as democracies, the political roles remain, but there is frequent turnover of the people actually filling the positions.
In most Western societies, there is a clear distinction between a
government and the state. Public disapproval of a particular government
(expressed, for example, by not re-electing an incumbent) does not
necessarily represent disapproval of the state itself (i.e. of the
particular framework of government). However, some in some totalitarian
regimes, there is not a clear distinction between the regime and the
state. In fact, leaders in such regimes often attempt to deliberately
blur the lines between to two, in order to conflate their own selfish
interests with those of the polity.
