Talk: Government

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"It can be noted that a government can be seperated from other institutions becuase a government always maintains the sole use of violence to maintain and enforce its view."

surely not true: many governments don't manage to maintain a sole use of violence, some may not even care much as long as they are not threatened. I'm not sure that introducing the "legitimate force" idea from political philosophy would be a good idea either: just see what kind of morass trying to define "legitimate" leads to. In any case it's against common usage, e.g., one can talk about an "illegitimate goverment" or a government not generally "recognised" outside a state, but it's still basically a government as long as it maintains control. Also, preoccupation with violence is probably mistaken: it's easy to imagine a government ruling a heavily indoctrinated population, not needing to use violence since lynch mobs will take care of any "problems".

I agree most governments accept that citizens use violence in self defence etc. It was a nice try for a definition but it doesn't work --BozMo|talk 13:27, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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need to mention social organization of cyberspace