Government is an institution through which leaders exercise power to make and enforce laws. Governments at all levels provide stability and security, as well as public goods and services like education, police and fire departments, and food, housing and health care for the poor.

A government’s most fundamental role is to set rules for society. It decides how much liberty citizens should have, and what types of business it will run and regulate. It also sets limits on the amount of privacy people can expect in their daily lives and imposes regulations on the media.

Creating the right mix of rules is challenging. There are many different ideas about what is the best form of government, including those that promote equality, protect the environment and help the poor. Governments create a wide variety of rules in response to these ideas and others, with each country and state having its own unique rules.

How a government makes and enforces its rules is important. Governments can be democratic, autocratic, totalitarian or a mixture of the three. In modern classification systems, the main types are democracies, totalitarian regimes and authoritarian governments that range from fascist to socialist, with a number of hybrid regimes in between.

The way a government raises money is another key factor. It can tax businesses, individuals and property. It can also borrow money by selling securities, such as bonds. This helps fund the national, state and local levels of government.

In addition to putting its own rules into practice, a government must also set priorities. For example, if it chooses to support an ideal that emphasizes egalitarianism, it will spend more on public education, transportation and health care for the poor. If it prioritizes national security, it will allow law enforcement agencies to tap people’s phones and restrict what newspapers can publish.

Another essential task is to ensure that human beings and nature coexist in harmony. Governments must clean national and international waters, maintain forests, and rehabilitate wildlife habitats. They must also focus on investing in renewable energy resources. These tasks are so broad that they cannot be carried out by a single entity, but rather must be divided up between several levels of government. This is why a government is generally described as having three parts: the Government, the Executive and the Judiciary.