Seat of government

The seat of government is the place of a state in which the government (and mostly also the parliament ) is located. This is usually the capital of the country (which in monarchies is also called the royal seat ), which is why one normally only expressly speaks of the “ seat of government” when this is not the case.

Current situation

Currently, the government of the following countries is not based in the capital:

Africa

Benin - Cotonou (capital Porto-Novo )
Ivory Coast - Abidjan (capital Yamoussoukro )
Eswatini - Lobamba (capital Mbabane )
Tanzania - Dar es Salaam (capital Dodoma )

Asia

Malaysia - Putrajaya (capital Kuala Lumpur )
Sri Lanka - Sri Jayawardenepura (capital Colombo )

Europe

Netherlands - The Hague (capital Amsterdam )

South America

Bolivia - La Paz (capital Sucre )
Montserrat - Brades (capital Plymouth )

special cases

Germany

German Empire

The building in Flensburg - Mürwik , which the executive government used. (Photo 2014)

A few days before and then after the end of the Second World War , from May 2 to 23, 1945, the seat of the executive government under Karl Dönitz was not in the occupied capital of Berlin .

It succeeded Adolf Hitler's last cabinet and was based in Plön and Eutin for a few hours on May 2, 1945, and in Flensburg - Mürwik from May 3, 1945 in the so-called Mürwik special area until its members finally passed on May 23 British troops were arrested.

Federal Republic of Germany

In Germany was of the reunification in 1990 until the move of the Bundestag and the Federal Government in 1999 in Berlin the capital and Bonn seat of government.

Today Bonn is the federal city and six federal ministries still have their headquarters in the city. The other departments in Berlin have a second office in Bonn. As a result, the government functions in Germany are divided between two cities due to the Berlin / Bonn Act . Although Germany de facto still has two government seats, since the completion of the “Berlin move” in 1999, only the federal capital Berlin has been the de jure seat of the constitutional body of the federal government.

Separate parliamentary seat

In the Republic of South Africa , the two houses of parliament are located in Cape Town and not, like the government, in Pretoria , with Cape Town as the capital in the first half of the year from January to June and Pretoria in the second from July to December.

In Chile , the National Congress is also not located in the capital Santiago , but in Valparaíso . Government officials also fly back and forth between two cities in both countries.

Missing capital

Some states do not have a capital, but only a seat of government. In Switzerland the federal city of Bern and in Nauru the place Yaren (district) is the seat of government of the country.

Individual evidence

^ Which means that Flensburg did not become the capital of the Reich. Only the Mürwik special area became the provisional seat of the government , cf. Broder Schwensen , in: Flexikon. 725 aha experiences from Flensburg! , Flensburg 2009, article: Reich capital; although the assertion that Flensburg was the provisional capital of the Reich during this time is seldom made anyway (see e.g. Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, Flensburg , accessed on May 6, 2014).

Web links

Wiktionary: seat of government - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Claudia Ehrenstein, Martin Greive: Berlin and Bonn: Double seat of government costs taxpayers millions , Welt Online , August 3, 2014

[1] Which means that Flensburg did not become the capital of the Reich. Only the Mürwik special area became the provisional seat of the government , cf. Broder Schwensen , in: Flexikon. 725 aha experiences from Flensburg! , Flensburg 2009, article: Reich capital; although the assertion that Flensburg was the provisional capital of the Reich during this time is seldom made anyway (see e.g. Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, Flensburg , accessed on May 6, 2014).