Government of the Arab Union

The Government of the Arab Union (Arabic: حكومة الاتحاد ḥukūmat al-ittiḥād) is the central and federal government of the Union of Arab Republics (UAR; informally the Arab Union). It is composed of three branches: the Council of Ministers (the executive), which oversees multiple ministries, state committees and subordinate agencies; the Arab Congress (the legislative branch), a bicameral assembly of elected representatives; and the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals of the Arab Union (the federal judiciary). The term often refers more narrowly to the federal executive alone (the Council of Ministers).

The head of government at the federal level is the Prime Minister of the Arab Union, who chairs the Council of Ministers and appoints its members. The Prime Minister is chosen by the Arab Congress and serves at its pleasure, and is thus an indirectly elected office.

The Arab Union's 20 republics (constituent federated states) are each administered by an executive body known as a governorate, which along with a unicameral legislature and complex judicial hierarchy forms the machinery of government below the federal level. The Constitution of the Arab Union regulates the discrete areas of jurisdiction of and relationship between these two levels of government: for example, criminal law is set exclusively by the federal legislature (Arab Congress), while its actual enforcement is for the most part the responsibility of republican courts, the federal judiciary performing this role only when it concerns more than one republic at a time.