Government

1. Collectively the highest executive body at any discrete political level. Government may also be referred to as administration or regime. It includes the judicial, executive and legislative functions and their civil and military instruments. Some governments may be constituted at any one time, in democracies, by office incumbents of different political parties.

2. A government may have its supreme authority vested in a king or other monarch, in a body of hereditary aristocrats, in a religious figure, in a dictator, in a parliament (of one or two houses), or in the instruments of its constitution or by popular referendum.