All Heads of State and Government

A person who has held a country's top political office, the presidency or the premiership, by that country's own ordinary process of succession: direct election, parliamentary election, appointment or confirmation within a one party system, or routine constitutional succession to a ceremonial post. Belongs here: a sitting or recent president, prime minister, chancellor or ceremonial head of state, such as Donald Trump, Keir Starmer, Xi Jinping and Droupadi Murmu, and a historical office holder who reached power the same ordinary way, such as Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Abraham Lincoln. A leader governing a one party state through that state's own internal party process, rather than through a coup, is filed here rather than under Military, Coup and Transitional Rulers: Xi Jinping, Li Qiang, To Lam and Deng Xiaoping are filed here on that basis. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is filed here too: his current Sisi Administration is itself classified among this atlas's own Semi-Presidential Governments rather than its Military and Transitional Governments, and this entity follows that same call for consistency, even though his 2013 rise to power followed a coup against the Morsi government. Sheikh Hasina is filed here for the ordinary electoral basis of most of her tenure, a disclosed contested call given her government's later authoritarian turn and her 2024 removal amid mass protest. Isabel Peron is filed here because she reached the presidency by ordinary constitutional vice presidential succession, even though a military coup later removed her from office. Abelardo de la Espriella is filed here as a disclosed, lower confidence placement: this wave could not independently reconfirm the exact office behind this entity within its budget and files him among ordinary office holders as the closest default fit; a successor should confirm and correct if warranted. Does not belong here: a person whose defining historical role is leading an independence or revolutionary movement, filed under Revolutionary and Independence Leaders even where that person later held ordinary office, such as Nelson Mandela and Jawaharlal Nehru, a monarch, filed under Monarchs, and a person who took power by coup or leads an unresolved rival or transitional government, filed under Military, Coup and Transitional Rulers instead.