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About 90 percent of federal employees work outside of Washington DC, i.e., 'beyond the beltway.' And, the personal interaction of most Americans with their government is with this vast majority. [...]

Syria is slowly prising open. Since the youthful Bashar Al Assad took over from his late father in June 2000, change has been the buzzword in the country, which has [...]

Why surviving in D.C. is more about going through the motions than actually doing something A few days after Bill Clinton's victory in November, I happened to be on a [...]

On 17 July 2000, during his swearing-in-ceremony President Bashar Assad called on his regime to open up and start accepting the opinions of others. Immediately the Syrian people, longing for [...]

Donald Rumsfeld, the acerbic US secretary of defence, made no bones about it: he would rather that Osama bin Laden was killed than taken alive. Asked on an American television [...]

In Junichiro Koizumi, Japan has arguably its most popular prime minister ever. But this alone will not be enough to drag it from the economic doldrums and political quagmires in [...]

The 11 September suicide attacks on New York and Washington triggered a seismic shift in US foreign policy, almost overnight. Much of this has centred on the Islamic world and [...]

A broad coalition takes office in 1999 The government did not work well and became increasingly unpopular, and there were concerns that Major-General Rabuka might delay the general election, due [...]

Fijian politics remain characterised by highly charged divisions between the indigenous Fijian population and the Indo-Fijians, who make up around 37% of the population. Following the toppling of Fiji's first [...]

The smack of firm government, don't you just love it? Under former regimes it was known as the Department of Timidity and Inactivity. Not any more it isn't. Under the [...]

Prime minister Goran Persson Deputy prime minister Bosse Ringholm Key ministers: Agriculture, food & consumer affairs Ann-Christin Nykvist Defence Leni Bjorklund Education & culture Leif Pagrotsky Employment Hans Karlsson Environment [...]

The all-inclusive peace agreement led to the formation of the transitional government that was to rule the country for the next two years, which was inaugurated in July 2003. The [...]

Cyprus has been de facto divided since the 1974 invasion by Turkey. The population of the southern 57% of the island, controlled by the administration of the Republic of Cyprus [...]

In effect, Somalia was stateless throughout the civil war of the 1990s. A three-year interim government and a Transitional National Assembly (TNA), installed in November 2000 with international support, achieved [...]

UK organisations have many dealings with local and central government even if these are limited to no more than filing tax returns. How do you see online transactions with government […]

Byline: James Brady Murray Kempton would have loved last Tuesday. It was an absolutely great and quintessential New York event in which no one came off particularly well, and which [...]

AT&T hopes to raise its profile in the Web hosting market following its recent win of a high-visibility contract to support the federal government's Web portal, FirstGov.gov, which is one […]

How western firms could help western diplomats to buttress a failing democracy THESE ought to be good times for Kazakhstan. With every prospect of becoming one of the world's main [...]

Devolution was meant to revitalise Scottish politics. Three years on the Scots are still waiting AND so to Edinburgh. Hoping to escape, however briefly, from the confines of the Westminster [...]

The popular anger that toppled his predecessor has weakened President Eduardo Duhalde. With other politicians faltering, Carlos Menem could yet return EVER since rioting in Buenos Aires forced the resignation [...]

In the first of a series on issues in the French elections, we look at crime YOUNG hooligans in Strasbourg boast of burning cars and taunting the police; the serial [...]

An ambitious Web site project is providing training and support for MPs' assistants. Karl Cushing reports The Industry and Parliament Trust has set up a training scheme for MPs' assistants […]

The Individual Learning Accounts scheme is an expensive shambles. Aside from fraudulent claims for training not provided, the quality of some that did materialise was far from acceptable. Bill Goodwin […]

Prince Masitsela A member of the Swazi National Council (SNC), and an influential adviser to King Mswati III. Moi Moi Masilela Influential in the clique of conservatives on the SNC, [...]

Monarchy dominates the political process Under the tinkhundla system, nominations to the 55-member House of Assembly (parliament) are conducted by a show of hands within 55 local areas. Three candidates [...]

Swaziland has maintained its traditional system of a dual monarchy. Political parties were banned when the constitution was suspended in 1973. Parliament is part-elected under a modified traditional system and [...]

The political scene is, for such a small country, remarkably divided and bitter. Since 1994 the country has been ruled under a political cohabitation with the presidency held by 'the [...]

A democratic constitution A multiparty constitution was adopted in September 1990 by referendum, replacing the autocratic Marxist constitution that had been in force since independence in 1975. It defines Sao [...]

The constitution The constitution is largely unwritten and is a mixture of statutes and constitutional convention. The founding charter of New Zealand's constitution is generally considered to be the 1840 [...]

Economic crisis in the 1980s; boom in the 1990s Excessive government expenditure from 1977 coincided with a period of rapidly rising international interest rates and economic slowdown following the second [...]

A congressional election suggests the days of the centre-left are numbered NOT so much a defeat for the centre-left coalition that has governed Chile since 1990 as a resounding triumph [...]

Australia's Labor opposition is struggling to remake itself A FEW years ago, when it was winning election after election, the Australian Labor Party's most fervent supporters started talking of it [...]

In the days following Mike Harris's announcement that he would resign as the 22nd premier of Ontario next spring, few in the media wondered how he'd make a living after [...]

Power is returning to the White House. But George Bush's room for manoeuvre is still circumscribed AUTUMN has hardly begun, and yet Washington is already enveloped in an impenetrable fog. [...]

Leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SAD C) are agreed that dialogue on the question of land redistribution in the region is urgent and necessary between all stakeholders. Community [...]

WASHINGTON -- After a hijacked airliner smashed into the Pentagon on Tuesday morning, a security blanket covered the nation's capital. The White House, a target the terrorists failed to strike, [...]

SHOULD Taiwan be an independent country? And should the U.S. support Taiwan in its quest for independence? There are a lot of people in Washington, Southern California and elsewhere who [...]

Thailand's prime minister has escaped censure--for unexplained reasons SINCE Asia was first engulfed in financial turmoil in 1997, no country in the region has struggled as hard as Thailand to [...]

The party of Suharto still wields lots of power--and it wants more TO ALL appearances, Golkar, the party set up as a vehicle for the New Order of Indonesia's dictatorial [...]

India's prime minister confronts his many critics ONE can hardly blame Atal Behari Vajpayee, India's prime minister, for wanting to give up. The economy is sluggish, the recent summit with [...]

From king to exile to prime minister to... It may not have been wise of ex-King Simeon to become prime minister CROWNS off to Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha for becoming the world's [...]