As the bureaucratic intrigue continues, Ms. Tanaka has complained about being reduced to a figurehead, getting information late and going into meetings poorly briefed or missing meetings entirely.

After watching six months of leaked memos, public outbursts and bureaucratic intrigue, Japanese public opinion of the first woman to be foreign minister still seems to split along gender lines.

Mr. Silva, like Mr. le Carre, invokes bureaucratic intrigue in both Germany and Britain.

The chief, Hao Ruiduan, had run his bureau from 1994 to 1998 as a nest of nepotism and theft, blocking investigations through threats, bribes and bureaucratic intrigue.

Welcome to fast-food capitalism in the Soviet Union, where doing business requires a mastery of bureaucratic intrigue, Socialist economics, international trade and jungle survival techniques.

In an interview at the time, he spoke of his "steadily diminishing tolerance for petty bureaucratic intrigue."

In the last several decades, it functioned as a powerful political machine, lavishly supporting its favorites and providing a significant power base for bureaucratic intrigue.

He was the master of bureaucratic intrigue, but used it to foster political openness.

Lela Dax's life of bureaucratic intrigues offered nothing.

Mr. Putin's new law will undoubtedly create a maze of rules and a tangle of bureaucratic intrigues in the various outlying districts where powerful governors will control future property sales.