Government and the state
The state is often defined narrowly as a separate institution or set of
institutions, as what is commonly thought of as ‘the state’. For example
when Louis XIV supposedly declared, ‘L’e´tat c’est moi’, he was referring to
the absolute power that was vested in himself as monarch. The state
therefore stands for the apparatus of government in its broadest sense, for
those institutions that are recognizably ‘public’ in that they are responsible
for the collective organization of communal life and are funded at the
public’s expense. Thus the state is usually distinguished from civil society.
The state comprises the various institutions of government, the bureaucracy,
the military, police, courts, social security system and so forth; it can