Politics in the Maldives takes place in the framework of a presidential republic, whereby the President is the head of government. The President heads the executive branch and appoints the cabinet which is approved by the Parliament. The President is nominated to a five-year term by a secret ballot of the Majlis (parliament), a nomination which is confirmed by national referendum.

The unicameral Majlis of the Maldives is composed of fifty members serving five-year terms. Two members from each atoll are directly elected. Eight are appointed by the president, which is the main route through which women enter parliament.

The country introduced political parties for the first time in its history in July 2005, six months after the last elections for the parliament. Thirty-six members of the parliament joined the Dhivehi Raiyyathunge Party (the Maldivian People's Party) and elected Maumoon Abdul Gayoom to the presidency. Twelve members of parliament formed the opposition as members of the Maldivian Democratic Party, and two members remained independent. In March 2006, President Gayoom published a detailed roadmap for his reform agenda, providing a time-line to write a new constitution, and modernize the legal framework. Under the roadmap, the government has submitted to the Parliament a raft of reform measures. The most significant piece of legislation passed so far is the Amendment to the Human Rights Commission Act, making the new body fully compliant with the Paris Principles.

The fifty members of parliament sit with an equal number of similarly constituted persons and the Cabinet to form the Constitutional Assembly, which has been convened at the initiative of the President to write a modern liberal democratic constitution for the Maldives. The Assembly has been sitting since July 2004, and has been widely criticised for making very slow progress. The Government and the Opposition have been blaming each other for the delays, but independent observers attribute the slow progress to weak parliamentary traditions, poor whipping (none of the MPs were elected on a party ticket) and endless points of order interventions. Progress has also been slow due to the commitment of the main opposition party, MDP, to depose President Gayoom by direct action ahead of the implementation of the reform agenda, leading to civil unrest in July-August 2004, August 2005 and an abortive putsch in November 2006. Significantly, the leader of the MDP, Ibrahim Ismail (MP for the biggest constituency – Mal?) resigned from his party post in April 2005 after having narrowly beat Dr. Mohammed Waheed Hassan only a couple months earlier. He eventually left MDP in November 2006 citing the intransigence of his own National Executive Committee. The government had engaged the services of a Commonwealth Special Envoy Tun Musa Hitam to facilitate all party dialogue, and when the MDP boycotted him, enlisted the services of the British High Commissioner to facilitate a dialogue. The ensuing Westminster House process made some progress but was abandoned as MDP called for the November revolution.

The Roadmap provides the deadline of 31 May 2007 for the Assembly to conclude its work and to pave the way for the first multi-party elections in the country by October 2008. The election was close enough to trigger a second run-off election in which challenger Mohamed Nasheed and Dr. Mohammed Waheed Hassan prevailed.Dr. Mohammed Waheed Hassan will come to Maldives to participate in elections. President Nasheed and Vice President Dr. Waheed was sworn into office on 11 November 2008.

Despite the passage from monarchy to republic, the contemporary political structure shows a continuity with the feudal past in which power was shared among a few families at the top of the social structure. In some islands, the offices have remained within the same family for generations. In the modern day, the village is ruled by an administrative officer called Kat?bu, who serves as the executive headman of the island. Above the Kat?bus of every atoll is the Ato?uveriya (Atoll Chief). The power of these local chiefs is very limited and they take few responsibilities. They are trained to report to the government about the situation in their islands and to merely wait for instructions from the central power and to follow them thoroughly. Although islands are of considerably long distances from the governing capital, administrative rights over the lawmaking body of a particular island is withheld to a minimum, hence centralizing representatives from islands to a general parliament; the People's Majlis located in Male' which houses members from all over the country.