A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled. In the Commonwealth of Nations, the word government is also used more narrowly to refer to the collective group of people that exercises executive authority in a state. This usage is analogous to what is called an "administration" in American English. Furthermore, especially in American English, the concepts of the state and the government may be used synonymously to refer to the person or group of people exercising authority over a politically organized territory. Finally, government is also sometimes 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 organization 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, environmentalism, history, philosophy, science, and sociology.This book gives a thorough discussion and examples of the influence that politics and power have on government. Various types of government are discussed from aristocracy, hegemony, oligarchy, timocracy, despotism, theocracy, kritarchy, kleptocracy and dozens of other forms along with their history and most recent examples.Note: In the opinion of this editor it is a misnomer to refer to the study of politics as political science. There is not much science in the field of politics - none that I can think of that even comes close to using any of the rigor associated with the scientific method other than the use of statistics when conducting surveys and polls. And more often than not the conclusions or inferences made from these surveys or polls prove to be erroneous at best. The motivation to mislead by making hasty, often unfounded, predictions during campaigns, elections and by the misuse of demographics at the hands of inexperienced pundits is reaching a tipping point. These 'journalists' seem to rarely understand the margins of error, effects of sample size and other statistically significant factors that effect the survey or poll. The observer should always take note of these factors and regard the study of politics to be just that - politics; not science. This book reflects the most recent realities and dynamics that effect the present world governments.This book is designed to be a general overview of the topic and provide you with the structured knowledge to familiarize yourself with the topic at the most affordable price possible. The level of discussion is that of Wikipedia. The accuracy and knowledge is of an international viewpoint as the edited articles represent the inputs of many knowledgeable individuals and some of the most currently available general knowledge on the topic based on the date of publication.