- The state is more extensive than government. The state is an inclusive association that encompasses all the institutions of the public realm and embraces all the members of the community (in their capacity as citizens). Government is part of the state.
- The state is a continuing, even permanent, entity. Government is temporary: governments come and go, and systems of government can be reformed and remodelled.
- Government is the means through which the authority of the state is brought into operation. In making and implementing state policy, government is 'the brains' of the state, and it perpetuates the state's existence.
- The state exercises impersonal authority. The personnel of state bodies is recruited and trained in a bureaucratic manner and is (usually) expected to be politically neutral, enabling state bodies to resist the ideological enthusiasms of the government of the day.
- The state, in theory at least, represents the permanent interests of society: that is, the common good or general will. Government, on the other hand, represents the partisan sympathies of those who happen to be in power at a particular time.