The body, entity or agency invested with the power to manage a political unit or organization (oftentimes a State) through laws and decisions. Government can take on a variety of forms including monarchy, oligarchy, democracy (direct or indirect), autocracy and communism.
Governance is a set of techniques designed to achieve the twin goals of effective and safe governmental management. Founders like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton sought to design policies that would set the economy back on a path toward efficiency or equity, while ensuring that government officials’ personal preferences did not interfere with the execution of their duties. This is achieved through a series of auxiliary precautions that include subjecting state administration and private individuals to the self-regulating principles of market competition, nurturing the norms and values that are believed to exist naturally in the sphere of civil society, and implicating nongovernment and private actors in the activity of governing.
Among other things, governments provide stability to societies, free public education, police and fire services, social security benefits, housing for the poor and other essential infrastructure. They also regulate access to common resources such as public land.
In the United States, for example, Congress makes laws and the president appoints people to serve on the Cabinet and federal courts. These individuals are then approved by the Senate. This system is called a “checks and balances” system, which ensures that one branch of government cannot become too powerful. Learn more about how the US Constitution imposes restraints on the national and State governments.
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