Research Guides: Political Science: A Research Guide: International Studies

US Government Resources on Foreign Countries

Country Backgrounds & Facts

CIA World Factbook
Encyclopedic entries on countries compiled by the CIA
Nation Guides from Law Online
The Guide to Law Online, prepared by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division, is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online. It includes selected links to useful and reliable sites for legal information for international countries.
U.S. Bilateral Relations Fact Sheets
Information from the State Dept on US relations with foreign countries. Links at the bottom of each entry point to other useful US government pages detailing aspects of the country.
USA.gov
The U.S. government's official web portal. Use this search engine to find more official US government pages on foreign countries.

Reports

Congressional Research Services Reports
These expert reports are created as briefings for Congress and include country profile briefs.
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
Annual reports filed by country. Compiled by the Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

United Nations

From the UN Library

United Nations Library
The UN's Dag Hammarskjöld Library provides research and information services to support the participation of Member States at the United Nations.
United Nations Digital Library
A database of materials from the UN including documents, votes, speeches, public domain publications and more.
Research Guides from the UN Library
Guides created by the UN library to help you find materials in their collections.
United Nations
Homepage of the UN

Additional UN Guides

Northwestern University UN Guide
This guide has helpful pages on researching UN activities related to individual issues.
Oxford University UN Guide
This guide has helpful pages to get you started researching the UN and using the UN Digital Library.

Library Databases

Background Information

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Reference database that provides access to a large number of biographical sources, atlases, and encyclopedias covering the arts, business, economics, history, literature, science, technology, religion, philosophy, politics, psychology, geography, country studies, and more.
CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Provides reports of research and analysis on issues in the news. Coverage includes health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy. Each report focuses on a single issue and is written by a seasoned journalist.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista provides statistical data from sources such as opinion research institutions, business organizations, scientific journals, trade publications and government agencies. Topics include business, politics, society, technology, education.

Scholarly Articles

Political Science Complete This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing and abstracts for over 2,000 journals, and full-text articles for 500 top-ranked scholarly journals. Also includes reference works and professional conference papers. Coverage includes law and legislation, comparative politics, political theory, international relations, humanitarian issues, and non-governmental organizations.
HeinOnline Academic This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline is the world's largest fully searchable, image-based government document and legal research database. It contains comprehensive coverage from inception of both U.S. statutory materials, U.S. Congressional Documents and the US Congressional Serial Set and more than 2,600 scholarly journals, all of the world's constitutions, all U.S. treaties, collections of classic treatises and presidential documents, and access to the full text of state and federal case law powered by Fastcase. This HeinOnline Academic database package includes, among other things, special collections on Criminal Justice, History, Foreign Relations, Religion and the Law and Women and the Law.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Primary index to materials for research in non-U.S./non-Canadian history, including social and cultural history, from the 15th century to the present. Includes hundreds of history journals and books and provides selective indexing of historical articles from thousands of journals in a wide variety of languages. Topics include world history, military history, women’s history, history of education and much more.