What is the difference between a president and a prime minister?

It all depends on the Constitution of the particular nation which define within the laws of that specific nation exactly what the function and powers of different rulers are. because every country in the world is different. The key difference between different countries constitutions is whether the elected President is both Head of State and Head of Government which is the case in both the USA and Russia, or whether the Head of State is defined in the constitution to be a totally different person, such as in the United Kingdom or Canada or France. In the UK the Head of state is the reigning "King" or "Queen" who is never elected while the Head of Government is always the leader of the party that won most seats in the parliament in the country's last General Election, currently Gordon Brown. In Canada they call their Head of State "Governor General & Commander" and their Head of Government Prime minister while in France they call their Head of State President but he is only Head of State and not Head of government.

Ok having explained that , in Russia's Constitution set up after the end of the Soviet Unionit is much more like that of the USA than France or the UK. Because in Russia today the elected President is both Head of State and Head of government currently Dmitry Medvedev, but the deputy to the President (who is of course called the "Vice President" in the USA) is called "Prime Minister" in Russia, currently Vladimir Putin. There are certain differences defined between the role of the President and the role of the Prime Minister in Russia which are not quite the same as the differences in the role of President and Vice President in the USA, but basically the system in Russia is as if George Bush became Vice President when Barrack Obama took over as President, because in Russia the same political party remains in power.

In Russia the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is head of the government.

Prime ministers are more like the religious leaders and presidents are the leaders of the country which control more

prime minister is chosen by the legislators while the pres is voted by the states

most president in the world are not the head of state, many are just figureheads with no real power like in Israel

Good Question, I really don't even know. Will come back to look for the answer.

They are two faces for one coin !

if u hav the capabality then read wikipedia

one to run the country and the other to run the mafia