The State, the Government, and the Public Sector

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The terms are clearly related, but there are nuances of difference.

In geopolitical terms, a state is a nation-state, city-state, or other such sovereign, territorial entity; in the United States, a state is a gubernatorial unit below the federal union. Domestically, we speak of the welfare state, a police state, a separation of church and state, state monopoly on force, the state acting as an adversary in criminal proceedings, certain responsibilities being functions of the state, etc. Commonwealth nations appear to use the term the Crown for much of this.

Then we have the government. In the U.S., references to the government can refer to government from the federal level, to the level of individual states, down to the local level; it can refer to the executive branch, legislative bodies, and the courts. Government can refer to those in power at the present moment or more abstractly to the system of governance laid out in the Constitution and other relevant laws. We speak of government welfare, government contractors, etc. In the UK, in contrast, the term government seems to be limited to that portion of the Parliament that is actually in power. Businesses often speak of their internal governance processes.

Lastly, the term public sphere or public sector is usually contrasted with the private sector, denoting the economic activity of the state in opposition to the economic activity of non-state entities. Confusingly, many of the large for-profit corporations are chartered by the state and publicly held/traded; these are nevertheless considered to be part of the private sector.

In some sense, they all draw in the idea that the entity or overarching power is responsive to the people as a whole (at least in a democratic society). Public goods are considered to be for everyone's benefit (yet try waltzing into a top-secret military base). The terms also become somewhat ambiguous when we look at different types of societies. For example, in a feudal society, what was the state? Was each noble's estate its own state? Oftentimes, the king did not have sufficient centralized power to form anything we'd call the state today. In a capitalist society, it would seem that sometimes private interests (in opposition to the common interest) can sometimes dominate, meaning that much of a society's actual power is held by a relative few private parties.

These concepts are probably easier to compartmentalize for people who have studied the evolution of government within Constitutional Monarchies. If once looks to the Common Law of England and Wales prior to the 18th century, one will have a clearer understanding of the origins of these divergent understandings.

The monarch was personally vested with the territory of the realm (to this day, fee simple land tenure is tied to tenancies of land granted from the Crown). The territorial identification of the state could be understood to be the physical extent of the Sovereign's jurisdiction. It is for this reason that monarchs could be referred to as the territories which they held: e.g. "Good Hamlet...let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark," refers not to Denmark, the territory under the Danish Crown, but rather to Hamlet's uncle Claudius, personally.

The monarch similarly held all of those powers that we now think of with these various concepts. The "State" is rarely used as a conceptual entity in Canada, where the "Crown" is a legal entity that encapsulates the concept. The theory of state continues to hold that all power is held by the Crown. Executive authority rests with the Crown entire, and is delegated to Ministers, who, in turn, employ the public service to carry out executive functions. Legislative authority is held by the Crown, acting by and with the consent of Parliament (of which the Crown is a constituent component). Judicial authority is held by the Crown, and delegated to Judges, who more recently have gained the authority to bind the Crown.

The Government is, in reality, only the Executive authority of the Crown, and includes the Crown and the Ministry (along with its associated public service). "Government" in its colloquial use might include other organs of State (particularly the party supporting the Government in Parliament, Parliament itself and the Courts) but these are not, strictly speaking, accurate uses (except, perhaps, in a derivative sense for the party to the Speaker's right in the House and the Senate).

Crown corporations in Canada, while clearly participating in the domestic economy, are never equated with their private sector counterparts. For example, Canada Post Corporation is a monopolistic postal enterprise--no other entity is authorized, by law, to carry mail. However, Canada Post competes directly with private sector delivery agents for messenger and courier services, electronic billing services, and a variety of other information management and delivery activities. Notwithstanding this competitive participation in the retail economy, Canada Post is always considered to be a public sector participant.

In his philosophical masterpiece -Leviathan-, Thomas Hobbes explained why we need government. Government is nasty, it is often unjust and tyrannical, but we are worse of without it, generally speaking, than with it. As another Thomas, Thomas Paine pointed out in -Common Sense-, it is a necessary evil.

ruveyn

Your explication makes sense within the context of Canadian and other Commonwealth systems—it doesn't really describe the constitution of the United States.

In a more generic sense, are there real differences between the state (perhaps called "the Crown" in Commonwealth nations), government, and the public sector?