Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Government
A government is the system by which a state or community is governed. In British English (and that of the Commonwealth of Nations), a government more narrowly refers to the particular executive in control of a state at a given time -- known in American English as an administration. In American English, government refers to the larger system by which any state is organized. Furthermore, government is occasionally used in English as a synonym for governance.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislators, administrators, and arbitrators. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining the policy of the state. A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political systems and institutions that make up the organisation of a specific government.
Government of any kind currently affects every human activity in many important ways. For this reason, political scientists generally argue that government should not be studied by itself; but should be studied along with anthropology, economics, history, philosophy, science, and sociology.
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January 15, 2026
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Dec. 27, 2025 Stanford scientists have uncovered how mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can very rarely trigger heart inflammation in young men — and how that risk might be reduced. They found that the vaccines can spark a ...
Dec. 24, 2025 What we put on our plates may matter more for the climate than we realize. Researchers found that most people, especially in wealthy countries, are exceeding a “food emissions budget” needed to keep global warming below 2°C. Beef alone accounts ...
Dec. 20, 2025 Long before opioids flooded communities, something else was quietly changing—and it may have helped set the stage for today’s crisis. A new study finds that as church attendance dropped among middle-aged, less educated white Americans, deaths ...
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Jan. 12, 2026 Waiting to eat when your food arrives first feels polite—but it may be mostly for your own peace of mind. Researchers found people feel far more uncomfortable breaking the “wait until everyone is ...
Jan. 6, 2026 Dogs began diversifying thousands of years earlier than previously believed, with clear differences in size and shape appearing over 11,000 years ago. A massive global analysis of ancient skulls ...
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Dec. 31, 2025 A philosopher at the University of Cambridge says there’s no reliable way to know whether AI is conscious—and that may remain true for the foreseeable future. According to Dr. Tom McClelland, ...
Dec. 29, 2025 Scientists have uncovered ancient wolf remains on a small Baltic island where wolves could only have been brought by humans. These animals weren’t dogs, but true wolves that ate the same marine ...
Dec. 24, 2025 The familiar fight between “mind as software” and “mind as biology” may be a false choice. This work proposes biological computationalism: the idea that brains compute, but not in the ...
Dec. 24, 2025 AI writing tools are supercharging scientific productivity, with researchers posting up to 50% more papers after adopting them. The biggest beneficiaries are scientists who don’t speak English as a ...
Dec. 23, 2025 Your eyes may reveal when your brain is working overtime. Researchers found that people blink less when trying to understand speech in noisy environments, especially during the most important ...
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