Officially, the politics of Sudan takes place in the framework of a presidential representative democratic consociationalist republic, where the President of Sudan is Head of State, Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces in a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in both the government and in the two chambers, the National Assembly (lower) and the Council of States (upper), of the bicameral National Legislature. The judiciary is independent and obtained by the Constitutional Court. However, following a deadly civil war and the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan is widely recognized as an authoritarian state where all effective political power is obtained by President Omar al-Bashir the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).
The political system of the Republic of Sudan was restructured following a military coup on 30 June 1989, when Omar al-Bashir, then a colonel in the Sudanese Army, led a group of officers and ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. Under al-Bashir's leadership, the new military government suspended political parties and introduced an Islamic legal code on the national level. He then became Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation (a newly established body with legislative and executive powers for what was described as a transitional period), and assumed the posts of chief of state, prime minister, chief of the armed forces, and minister of defense. Further on, after institutionalizing Sharia law in the northern part of the country along with Hassan al-Turabi, al-Bashir issued purges and executions in the upper ranks of the army, the banning of associations, political parties, and independent newspapers and the imprisonment of leading political figures and journalists. In 1993, Sudan transformed into an Islamic totalitarian one-party state as al-Bashir abolished the Revolutionary Command Council and created the National Islamic Front (NIF) with a new parliament and government obtained solely by members of the NIF, and proclaimed himself President of Sudan. As a result, the Second Sudanese Civil War with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) would only escalate in the following years.