In the US "government" means the whole Leviathan. In the UK the word for that is "state", while "government" means the ruling political party or parties and the officials they appoint.
Government is often understood to be the executive part, somewhat like 'administration', I don't know if there is a better word to use.
Not in the English speaking world at least. "Government" is an umbrella term which includes the legislature, executive, and judiciary.
In the UK "government" is generally taken to mean the executive who are also part of the legislature (parliament), but not judiciary. UK Judiciary separation appears to be far stronger than in the US viewed from here in the UK.
Ah, I didn't know that. Well both HN and Github are US sites, not UK, so the title is accurate in this context.
"English speaking world" is a tad wider than US specific - many of whom stick with a variation on the Westminster model. ;)
From the context of this subthread seems like the Spanish think of government as executive and legislature, with judiciary separate too.
No, that's a US English meaning that isn't widely used in other English speaking countries.
Or other non-English speaking parliamentary democracies for that matter.
I don't think the meaning currently given to cognates in other languages is relevant to the question of what a word means in modern English. In Spanish, bizarro means "brave", and recordar means "to recall from memory"; this does not provide any evidence that "bizarre" means "brave" in English, or that "recording" means "recalling from memory" in English. (Although, as it turns out, it once did.)
Seems like an American point of view to see it like that. The government does not control what the judges rule, that's what it means.
It's not so much an American "point of view" as it is their definition of the word. It appears that Spain defines the government as the executive branch, while the US (and several other English speaking countries) defines it as an umbrella covering the various branches (in the US; executive, judicial, legislative).