This is “The Building Blocks of Government”, chapter 7 from the book A Primer on Politics (v. 0.0). For details on it (including licensing), click here.

For more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for free, please see the project's home page. You can browse or download additional books there. To download a .zip file containing this book to use offline, simply click here.

Has this book helped you? Consider passing it on:

Help Creative Commons

Creative Commons supports free culture from music to education. Their licenses helped make this book available to you.

Help a Public School

DonorsChoose.org helps people like you help teachers fund their classroom projects, from art supplies to books to calculators.

Chapter 7 The Building Blocks of Government

PLEASE NOTE: This book is currently in draft form; material is not final.

We may sometimes think of government as a monolithic force, acting in concert to achieve its ends like a well-trained team. In fact, government is a lot of people divided into a lot of different parts. These building blocks of government usually include some kind of legislature; an executive or person in charge; a court system; and the bureaucracy—the agencies charged with putting law into practice. Additionally, in a federal system, where the national government shares power with state or local governments, those smaller, sub-national governments also will be part of the system. Let us consider them piece by piece.