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After the May 2, 2011 general election, there was both continuity and change in a number of key positions in the Senate in the new Parliament. Speaker Noel A. Kinsella [...]

It is May 2009. A general election has been called. Michael Howard, the Prime Minister, has just handed over to his successor, David Cameron, after four years in Downing Street. [...]

Najaf, the holy center of Shiism in Iraq, sits on the edge of a desert parched and plain. Two-story plaster and concrete houses compose most of its historic quarters. Nowhere […]

Could a former president of Latvia make it as the European Union president? OPTIMISTIC Latvians are thin on the ground these days. The combination of fractious politics and a dismal [...]

From independence in 1960 until the early 1990s, the Central African Republic (CAR) was ruled by a series of French-backed autocrats originating from the south of the country. The holding [...]

Years of on-off civil war from 1989 and kleptocratic rule by the president, Charles Taylor, since July 1997, came to an end in Liberia in 2003. Under regional and international [...]

A narrow victory in the April 2006 general election gave Romano Prodi's broad left-of-centre Unione government a comfortable majority in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, but only the [...]

In the September 2005 parliamentary election the PiS narrowly defeated the liberal-conservative Civic Platform (PO) party. Just one month later the PiS candidate, Lech Kaczynski, the twin brother of the [...]

Poland is a parliamentary democracy. A minority government comprising the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and led by Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz came to power in October 2005, following a parliamentary [...]

The Swiss Confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica) is, despite its name, not a confederation, but a federal state and a parliamentary democracy with strong direct-democratic elements. Several national referendums are held every [...]

Tajikistan is a presidential republic, with a bicameral legislature, made up of a Council of Representatives (lower house) and a National Council (upper house). The People's Democratic Party (PDP), led [...]

'Ideological monolithism' Real politics in North Korea goes on behind the mask of yuilsasang (ideological monolithism). Despite dire economic straits and rumoured coup attempts, Kim Jong-il has so far kept [...]

A former military dictator (between 1972 and 1991), Mathieu Kerekou, was re-elected as president for a second consecutive term in March 2001, amid allegations of serious electoral irregularities. Refusing to [...]

The present government came to power in 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) overthrew the previous government and ended the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus that had been [...]

South Korea is a constitutional democracy. The president is the head of state and serves a five-year term by direct election. The president is also the chief executive of the [...]

Somalia has not had a nationally functioning state government since the descent into civil war at the beginning of the 1990s. A three-year interim government and a Transitional National Assembly [...]

In 1990 the Soviet-backed one-party state, governed by the (then) communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), gave way to a more democratic political system, with a freely elected assembly and [...]

As a small country wedged between India and China, Bhutan has been sensitive about opening up and initially adopted a cautious development policy. Its development philosophy, 'gross national happiness', is [...]

Lesotho is a constitutional monarchy in which democracy has gradually stabilised after a tumultuous recent history. Democracy was restored to the country in 1993 after it had been under military [...]

Once considered to be one of the most stable countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Cote d'Ivoire has experienced a collapse of political order since 1999, degenerating into civil war in September [...]

Macedonia is a parliamentary democracy. The most recent parliamentary election was held on July 5th 2006, and a coalition government comprising the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation-Democratic Party of Macedonian National [...]

Following the first world war, during which the Grand Duchy was occupied by Germany, the Belgo-Luxembourg Economic Union (BLEU) was created in 1921. This free-trade area was augmented by linking [...]

The PDGE dominates the political scene The PDGE has access to the full resources of the state and remains by far the largest, most disciplined and successful political party. Mr [...]

Equatorial Guinea has nominally had a multiparty system since 1991. However, the president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who seized power in a coup in 1979, dominates the government and public [...]

In 1999, after almost three decades of political instability, Niger's current president, Mamadou Tandja, was democratically elected. His party, Mouvement national pour la societe de developpement (MNSD)--in coalition with Convention [...]

Sweden is ruled by a four-party centre-right coalition government (the Alliance for Sweden), comprising the Moderate Party, Centre Party, Liberal People's Party and the Christian Democrats. The government took office [...]

Cape Verde is a multiparty democracy in which power has changed hands regularly and peacefully through elections since 1991. The Partido Africano da Independencia de Cabo Verde (PAICV), the historic [...]

The politics of Sao Tome and Principe is, for such a small country, remarkably complex and divided. Following presidential and legislative elections in 2006, both the president, Fradique de Menezes, [...]

Business bods invited into Theresa May's Downing Street lair for pep talks are leaving unimpressed, I hear. My snout with a large wage bill to pay grumbled that the Prime [...]

Norway gains independence in 1905 Norway gained independence in 1905. From 1450 to 1814 it had been ruled by Denmark, and subsequently formed part of a joint kingdom headed by [...]

Samoa is one of the most politically stable states in the Pacific region. It is governed by the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), which was first elected in 1982. The [...]

Iran has a dual power structure, with a supreme religious leader (the vali-e faqih) and a president. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who came to power in 1989 after the death of [...]

The incumbent right-of-centre minority coalition government, which consists of the Liberal Party and the Conservative People's Party and is led by the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was re-elected on [...]

Egypt is an Arab republic with limited democratic characteristics, headed by the president, Hosni Mubarak, who was elected to his fifth six-year term in the country's first multi-candidate election in [...]

The Dominican Republic has a presidential form of government. The president and Congress (parliament) are elected for four-year terms at two-year intervals. Leonel Fernandez of the Partido de la Liberacion [...]

Indonesia is a multi-party presidential democracy. In 2004 the president and the vice-president were elected by direct popular vote for the first time, and the automatic right of the security [...]

The Italian influence The colonial state of Eritrea was formed in 1889 after Italy and Ethiopia signed the Treaty of Wechale. Attempts at further expansion into Ethiopia were defeated in [...]

Since coming to power in 1987, the president, Blaise Compaore, and his party, Congres pour la democratie et le progres (CDP), have controlled parliament and the state apparatus. However, pressure [...]

Whereas in many countries history is invoked to build on past achievements, its importance in the German context is very different. Much of the country's institutional design, including federalism, can [...]

Germany is a federal democracy. The 16 states have an important role in the legislative process at the federal level and independent responsibilities, particularly in the fields of education and [...]

Modern Tajikistan reflects Soviet-era political cartography Modern Tajikistan is the result of the Soviet division of Central Asia in the 1920s. Before that most of what is now Tajikistan (excluding [...]

The Russian Federation, composed of 88 federal subjects, is a presidential system with a bicameral parliament. Vladimir Putin, re-elected in March 2004 for a second presidential term, has consolidated power [...]

Westernisation from above The relative backwardness of the vast Russian state--which had expanded rapidly in the 16th century--became evident in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Tsar Peter I, [...]

With Israel's prime minister gone from the political landscape, who will now set the agenda for the Middle East? ONE can only imagine what was going through the minds of [...]

Martin has no mandate Canada's dysfunctional politics 'BEWARE of what you wish for' might be an apt motto for Paul Martin. Canada's prime minister worked long, hard and--say some rivals--deviously [...]

Bashar Assad is in a pickle, and has no easy way out THE capital looks stubbornly normal. Shoppers crowd its markets in the run-up to the fasting month of Ramadan, [...]

Fears of renewed autocracy THREE months ago, Kirgizstan's president, Askar Akaev, was flushed out of office when more than 5,000 demonstrators stormed the seat of government in the capital, Bishkek, [...]

Unpopular but not endangered Why Peru's president has avoided his neighbours' fate HE HAS long been Latin America's most unpopular president, his poll ratings since 2003 fluctuating between 8-14%. In [...]