GovGlobe
Every seat of power on earth, and everyone who ever held it. GovGlobe covers
195 countries and, inside the United States,
90,837 separate governments — the exact figure
reported by the 2022 Census of Governments — across 54 states,
districts and territories. It records 837 offices,
26,653 officeholders and
60,026 tenures, each carrying a provenance row that
points at a primary source. There are 1,231 such rows.
What GovGlobe does not have is equally on the record: no central registry of
local officeholders exists in the United States. The Census Bureau counted elected
officials once, in 1992, and stopped. So while every one of those
90,837 governments is named here, almost none of their officeholders
are. That gap is drawn on the map rather than filled in.
The United States is not a tree
A county sheriff does not report to the President. A school board does not report
to a governor. The United States is a federation of 90,837 separate
governments, of which only 537 offices are federal: the President, the Vice President,
100 Senators and 435 Representatives. GovGlobe models this as a directed graph with a
typed, time-bounded edge for each relation — appoints, confirms, funds, preempts,
elects, adjudicates — rather than as an organisation chart, because an
organisation chart would be false.
Forms of government
- presidential republic — 59 countries
- parliamentary republic — 37 countries
- semi-presidential republic — 14 countries
- parliamentary constitutional monarchy — 8 countries
- federal parliamentary republic — 8 countries
- parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy; a Commonwealth realm — 7 countries
Presidents of the United States
The office has been held 47 times since 30 April 1789. The
current holder is Donald Trump, in office since
2025-01-20.
Sources
- Wikidata (CC0) — officeholders and lineages
- CIA World Factbook (public domain) — government type
- 2022 Census of Governments (public domain) — every US government unit
- unitedstates/congress-legislators (public domain) — Congress, 1789 to present
- Open States / Plural Policy — sitting state legislators
- Natural Earth (public domain) — boundaries