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Comment by alvatar | Hacker News Reader

I keep reading this in international media. The Spanish government didn't declare the referendum illegal. It was the top court, which is independent from the government. The government ensures that the law is applied once that is decided. That said, I think Spain should have held a referendum (by changing the constitution). Everything would have been much easier.

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In the US "the government" typically applies to either all three branches (courts, legislature, executive) or occasionally to the latter two only. The latter definition is typically only used in the case of a lawsuit involving the state. This is in contrast to parliamentary systems where the government is formed of the dominant political party or coalition in parliament, and also gets to act as the executive branch. The US almost always uses the first definition (all 3 branches are government), parliamentary systems almost always use the second (courts aren't government).

In the first (more common) US-style sense, the government certainly did declare the referendum illegal.

> more common

This doesn’t sound right. I’d like to see some proof of this. I’m from India and I only use government to refer to the legislature which happens to commingle with the executive branch. I’d love to join the mainstream if my usage is in the minority.

Also, Spain is a parliamentary monarchy so in a thread centered on Spanish politics, I feel you should use the word government as used by Spaniards.

It's more common in the US for government to mean all three branches. It seems to be more common in parliamentary countries for government to mean just the legislative branch (and possibly, when present, the monarch's implied consent?).

This is a point of confusion here, because this is a US based discussion site. So US persons say 'the government suppressed the election', Spain persons say 'no, the government didn't do it, the courts did it'.

To the US person objecting, it doesn't make a huge difference if judicial, legislative, or executive is suppressing an election -- suppressing an election is bad. How can a vote be illegal? Certainly the referendum may not be legal, and that should be decided by the courts, but we're not used to that being decided before holding the vote.

But do you have a word for the whole of government in the US sense? I can't think of something that's not awkward.

Edit to add: In the US sense, government also includes military and police. In the US those are mostly part of the executive branch, but may act at the direction of the judicial or legislative branches. In some countries the military is an effectively separate branch of government.

"more common" may just mean "more common in US English". There are good reasons for the term to have a different meaning in the US and other English-speaking countries with parliamentary systems.

As an American, though it is absolutely true that I think of "the government" as including the courts, because the government of the US is established by the Constitution, which establishes all three branches. There's not even good reason to talk about a "governing party" most of the time, except for rare times such as now when the Republicans control all three branches of government.

US news media using the word "government" are of course going to use the word "government" in the American English sense. Reporters or copyeditors may not even realize there is a distinction to be made.

I suspect your usage of the term is much more common in India (and possibly other nations outside the US).

I'm really curious as to whether this difference in interpretation is just a linguistic fluke, or if it actually reflects some larger cultural difference in how we in the US view our government compared to how people in India and Spain view theirs.

Do you have a different word which encompasses all governmental bodies and organizations? The State, perhaps? Or would you not consider the courts to be part of the State either? Obviously the courts are involved in governing, since they interpret the law and they have legal authority granted by the constitution. How then are they not part of the government?

> The State, perhaps?

This is also confusing in nations where administrative regions are called states. I've seen some media refer to Catelonia as a state, although I believe the term used in Spain is autonomous community.

Internationally “government” refers to either the monarchy in a strong authoritarian regime, or the ruling coalition in parliament. The US model of separate but equal powers in a federation is somewhat unique.. although it is more of clusters on a spectrum and many countries copied he US model (or had it forced upon them).

Most definitions of government include the judicial system as part of government. I don't know much Spanish, maybe they have different words for the different parts of government, but no word that describes all of government in general, so maybe it is just a translation issue.

All 12 of the members in the Spanish "top court" (Constitutional Tribunal) are appointed by the king himself.

8 of them are proposed by the legislative branch (parliament and senate), 2 by the executive, and 2 by the judicial.

Whether that makes the tribunal as a whole independent from the government or not is an opinion I leave to the reader.

Please don't bend the facts for your own bias. The king doesn't appoint those judges, will just ratify and is pretty much symbolical. They do have political influence but is kept balance traditionally. Just because everyone has political inclinations you cannot blame it of being controled by the government.

Who is paying the judges wages? For important matter like that, it is difficult to trust that the State and the government have totally no implication.

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