I grew up in the USA and this is exactly how those terms were defined for us in school.
The head of state is the leader of the country. They deal with other heads of states, and typically are in control of the military.
The head of government is the top bureaucrat. They do governmenty bureaucratty stuff like meet with their cabinet and manage the executive branch.
This isn't true, at least in Western states. E.g in the Netherlands and Germany the king and the President respectively are head of state, but neither of them controls the military, which is done by respectively the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
It's really hard to make a universal definition for heads of state and government, since they fulfill different roles in forms of government. However, generally, the head of state is a more ceremonial role while the head of government actually governs. But there are exceptions.
The oddity to me is the position of the Speaker of the House, which is a weird amalgam of the role of the Speaker of Parliament and also acting as a de facto Prime Minister although there really isn't an explicit equivalent role in the US.
Usually such a role is a literal figurehead, or a de facto figurehead who de jure has power but culturally is not supposed to exercise them, (such as the aforementioned Queen, or the Irish President). Attempts by such a de facto figurehead to use powers they officially have have led to controversy, such as the 1975 incident with the Australian Governor General (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...)
All of these former British territories are 1 terrorist attack and 1 ambitious politician away from a political crisis.
Roll the dice 10 times, each time one of these monarchs could make a play for power.
Although I'm not even sure how to handle the dissolution of the monarchy without executing everyone. Taking their property only means a foreign state would prop them up.
Both of these fall to me under "refusing to exercise powers" rather than exercising powers though.
When the Queen dissolves parliament she's just going through the motions, it's a formality. If she had refused, say, Theresa May's request for a general election in 2017, saying that there was no need as the Government had a clear majority and Brexit needed to be the focus (and she did this by either hiding down the countryside, not answering her phone or by shooting down the idea preemptively) that would be a huge deal. That would be her exercising her power.
Not quite true, at least not in limited constitutional monarchies, like the UK and Canada (I'm Canadian): The Queen is the Head of State for both the UK and Canada (and for many other countries) and her role is almost exclusively ceremonial (without getting into the role of the Governor General, who represents Her Majesty when she is out of the country).
In both the UK and Canada, the head of government is the Prime Minister, that is, the leader of the party that controls the House of Parliament. In both countries, they do far more than "bureaucratty stuff" since, among other things, they choose and chair the cabinet, set the overall government agenda, etc. The military reports to cabinet through the appropriate minister(s).
(Mitchell Sharp once wrote a book on Canadian government in which he rightly asserted that ours is government-by-cabinet, more than government by parliament....)
In both countries, the PM is effectively head of the executive branch, but definitely not head of state, as well as sitting atop the legislative branch.
* The speaker of parliament is responsible for nominating and dismissing the prime minister (who appoints the prime minister? the parliament as a whole appoint the prime minister? does the king get to, but is compelled to appoint whoever the speaker nominates? does wikipedia mean "appoint" when it says "nominate"?)
* The king is not part of parliament, and bills do not need royal assent to become law.
* The king is not part of an executive council like the UK privy council. Formerly there was a Council of State.
However the king does have royal immunity from criminal prosecution. If the Swedish King killed you, they would probably have a crisis over whether the absolute immunity the king possesses is in fact not absolute.
So the king is clearly a special person in Sweden, but it does seem they are almost powerless according to the constitution, unlike say the British queen.
Parliament votes on whoever the speaker nominates. If that person is tolerated (<50% of parliament votes against the nominee) they become prime minister.
If the vote fails the speaker gets to nominate someone else. After 4 failed such votes, an extra election is called.
Prime minister is whoever gets the majority of the parliament behind them in a vote. In practice in Sweden’s case the leader of the biggest party in the coalition that makes the majority.
(Due to how the voting system works in Sweden more than 2 parties exist in the parliament and thus coalitions of parties make up the government as no party manages to get 50% if the seats)
In the US, head of state and head of gov are the same (the President).
In Russia, the head of state is Putin. He's not officially head of gov, but c'mon, we all know who controls the show there.
In Canada, the Head of State is Queen Elizabeth II. But for all practical purposes, Justin Trudeau holds both rows. It's not like the Queen is handling Canada's foreign policy. She technically has the power to dissolve Canada's parliament, but it would be hard to imagine her exercising this power. When foreign leaders visit Canada, they aren't going to see the Queen, whereas they might if they visit the UK.
Though they would typically be hosted by the Queen's representative in Canada, the Governor General (as of yesterday, R.H. Mary Simon). The Queen would never directly exercise her head-of-state powers in Canada. However, the GG does have to make some controversial decisions about choosing governments from time to time.
Does Canada not have a Governor General, like other countries where Elizabeth II is the absentee monarch? The Governor General performs most of the functions of the head of state and technically has the power to appoint or dismiss the Prime Minister, but much like the Queen the role is mostly ceremonial.
The Governor General is mostly ceremonial, but is mostly a case of Chesterton's Fence. The Crown is an important safety value for when things are abnormal. For example, the Governor General of Canada in 2008 essentially chose who would be prime minister (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_par...). The issue that arose was that, during a hung parliament, the opposition announced that they would vote non-confidence in the government at the next opportunity and intended to form a coalition. The prime minister at the time instead went to the Governor General to request prorogation, ending the parliamentary session.
This was a crisis that required judgement by the governor general. The prime minister clearly no longer held the confidence of the House, but not officially. On the other hand, the governor general is constitutionally required to follow the advice of the prime minister. She chose to follow the prime minister and prorogue Parliament for better or for worse. I'm not a legal scholar and I think the Governor General got it right, but having an independent individual make these decisions is a feature, not a bug.
I don't have one in mind, I don't think there's a likely one - there's an argument that it brings a sort of long-term stability that makes an actual application of its powers unnecessary, like a nuclear deterrent - I just think if there was some sort of unrest or rising dictatorial power in a state with ER as monarch 'we' would pay (even) more attention than otherwise?
The person who is president get 2x the vote in case a vote is tied (abstention is permitted). Also the high honer of being the first to shake hands with foreign presidents when they arrive.
The Federal Council is both head of state and head of government.
Seems to be a pretty good system, the idea is to actually share this between different parties at all times. It always seems strange to me when in countries like the US there is the constant massive power shift back and forth every couple years.
The Governor-General of Australia has forcibly dissolved Australia's parliament before back in 1975, causing a constitutional crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...
But yes, the current monarch strongly adheres to conventions of not exercising her devolved(?) powers.
The exception here is that the US President is both head of state and head of government, so Churchill meeting Roosevelt is actually a meeting between two heads of government.
No head of state is in control of the military. Head of state is a ceremonial role. They may be the ceremonial "head" of the military, as in "her majesty's ship".
In the U.S. the office of the President unifies the roles of head of state, head of government, and Commander in Chief of the military. This is not merely a ceremonial role.
As the saying goes, the exception proves the rule false.
In France the President, the head of state, commands the military, and not the Prime Minister, the head of government.