• 1 treated as singular or plural The group of people with the authority to govern a country or state; a particular ministry in office.

  1. 1.1 mass noun The system by which a state or community is governed.
  2. 1.2 mass noun The action or manner of controlling or regulating a state, organization, or people.
• 2 Grammar
  The relation between a governed and a governing word.

NOUN

mass noun

• 1A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.

  1. 1.1 count noun A state governed under a system of democracy.
  2. 1.2 Control of an organization or group by the majority of its members.
  3. 1.3 The practice or principles of social equality.

NOUN

• 1A small group of people having control of a country or organization.
  ‘the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president’

  1. 1.1 A country governed by an oligarchy.
  2. 1.2mass noun Government by an oligarchy.

NOUN

mass noun

• 1 A form of government with a monarch at the head.

  1. 1.1 count noun A state that has a monarch.
  2. 1.2 the monarchy The monarch and royal family of a country.

NOUN

mass noun

• 1 A state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
• 2 Absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.

NOUN

• 1 A state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.

  1. 1.1 archaic A group with a certain equality between its members.

NOUN

• 1 The elected head of a republican state.

  1. 1.1 The head of a society, council, or other organization.
  2. 1.2 The head of certain colleges.
  3. 1.3 North American The head of a university.
  4. 1.4 North American The head of a company.
• 2 Christian Church The celebrant at a Eucharist.

NOUN

• The head of an elected government; the principal minister of a sovereign or state.

In current use, the terms Premier and Prime Minister refer to the same office in Britain, but in Canada and Australia the government of a province or state is headed by a Premier, that of the federal government by a Prime Minister. In countries such as France, where the President has an executive function, the Prime Minister is in a subordinate position

NOUN

• 1 A ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force.

  1. 1.1 A person who behaves in an autocratic way.
  2. 1.2 (in ancient Rome) a chief magistrate with absolute power, appointed in an emergency.

NOUN

mass noun

• 1 A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

  1. 1.1 Policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.
  2. 1.2 (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism.

The term ‘socialism’ has been used to describe positions as far apart as anarchism, Soviet state Communism, and social democracy; however, it necessarily implies an opposition to the untrammelled workings of the economic market. The socialist parties that have arisen in most European countries from the late 19th century have generally tended towards social democracy

NOUN

mass noun

• A theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

The most familiar form of communism is that established by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and it has generally been understood in terms of the system practised by the former Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe, in China since 1949, and in some developing countries such as Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. In this form of communism it was held that the state would wither away after the overthrow of the capitalist system. In practice, however, the state grew to control all aspects of communist society. Communism in eastern Europe collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s against a background of failure to meet people’s economic expectations, a shift to more democracy in political life, and increasing nationalism such as that which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union