For example, “Washington” (US), “Brussels” (EU), “Moscow” (Russia).
I guess it’s a short hand for writing “US government”, “Russian government”, etc. but why? And what happens when you’re referring to a country with multiple capitals like South Africa?
We do that in Arabic too. It’s called “badal”, a figure of speech where you replace “the whole” with “the part” to emphasize that part’s importance in the context; in this case that would be either where the government is located in the country or where the report originated from.
For example when Arabic news agencies want to refer to the USA’s government they say Washington or the white house. Since that’s usually where the news come from.