I'm still not used to how Europeans say "the government has collapsed" to refer to a routine inconvenience and not the catastrophic outbreak of civil war

@0xabad1dea With how this govt was running, it's likely nothing will change except for fewer terrible ideas being proposed (and voted down).

@0xabad1dea Yet too many Europeans can't tell the difference between the government and the state...

@0xabad1dea
That would be the collapse of the civil service, who do all the actual work after the government say what they want to happen.

@petealexharris we Americans don't really make that distinction; the masses of everyday employees are very much included in what is meant by "the government"

@0xabad1dea Around the time of the 2008 financial crisis, Belgium didn't have a government for over two years, and did relatively well through it compared to "stable" countries which actually had a government.

There's certainly an argument that the Netherlands would do better with no government than the VVD in charge.

@pndc this ties into the same fundamental terminology difference, because when an American hears "Belgium had no government for two years and did fine", what they hear is no schools, no roads, no police, no courts, no laws...

@0xabad1dea yeah it doesn't translate real well. "The government has disbanded" would be more accurate IMO

@silhouette @0xabad1dea "Politicians get some PTO"

@buherator it is the other way around, Europeans understand fully well that the fall of (the/a) government isn't outright synonymous with societal/State failure. The State (Public Institutions) can still survive and keep doing its job even without the Executive power being entrusted to someone with powers to change things. For example, in many (if not most) European countries, failing to approve a State Budget doesn't close public services, nor does it send thousands of public workers into unemployment/lay-off.
@0xabad1dea

@jt_rebelo @0xabad1dea Yes, the system works this way fortunately. But talk to Average Joe and ask him who paid for his tax refund.

@jt_rebelo @buherator @0xabad1dea Government means different things in the US (all institutions and basically all civil servants) than in Europe (the coalition of ruling parties, including. heads of ministries, maybe).

@buherator or raised the social budget (pensions, unemployment benefits, etc.)... in my country the opposition raised pensions against the government coalition State Budget proposal, and then that coalition tried to say pensions were raised because of them (and won the May 18th snap election)...
@0xabad1dea

This ⬆️ @Squig thank you. @buherator @0xabad1dea

@0xabad1dea Governments collapsing and new ones being formed should be the default. Democracy is when the people are able to say that what is going on isn't working for them so let's try something else. It's the ability to admit our failures and choose a different path going forward. I'd far rather a system where governments are regularly replaced than one which devolves to few parties and positions using their power to entrench themselves in office.

@Infoseepage you're not wrong, but this is largely a difference in terminology: when Europeans say "the government" they mean the top-level elected officials who make general broad decisions, but when Americans say "the government" that includes the local courts, the local schools, the fire department, the people who clean the roads after bad weather, and the existence of "laws" as a concept, all of which many Americans may grumble about and resent paying taxes for, but would sober up awful fast if all that "collapsed" overnight

( ... as we may have an opportunity to observe firsthand sometime soon, the way things are going... )

to clarify a little further: when Europeans say "the government", they usually mean the top elected officials who make broad, general decisions. But when Americans say "the government", they're also envisioning their local courts, schools, roads, so on and so forth, all the day-to-day stuff managed by minor functionaries and employees, and ideas like "murder is illegal". Hence why "the government has collapsed" sounding apocalyptic.

@0xabad1dea I feel like in this sense a more accurate thing for us Europeans to say is "The Senate has collapsed", where (I think) the U.S. Senate performs actions similar to the government body that actually collapsed, at least in Finland (a subsection of the whole Parliament that is responsible for writing up new laws and some very high level positions, such as ministers).

The problem I think is that the word we use for it directly also translates to "Government".

@kybernoita @0xabad1dea almost, it's the House (Tweede Kamer) that has collapsed, not the Senate (Eerste Kamer).

@Squig @jt_rebelo @buherator @0xabad1dea because of how often this happens in Italy, we usually learn relatively quickly to differentiate between Government, members of Parliament, senate, chamber, and other generic state employees

@xfranky @jt_rebelo @buherator @0xabad1dea I think it really is a different meaning for the same word, so a question of vocabulary, sort of how 'liberal' means something else across both sides of the ponds (and then completely different in Australia again).

@Squig @jt_rebelo @buherator @0xabad1dea that makes sense

@0xabad1dea Yes, I remember hearing something like "Italy has had 30 governments since WWII" and thinking wow, that's a startling number of revolutions.

@nathanw @0xabad1dea Well, you could also say the US has had 15 administrations since WWII ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@pixelcode @nathanw yes but the point is that doesn’t sound *strange* and certainly not *alarming* to an American, who’s using somewhat different definitions of these words than Europeans