Talk:List of heads of state by diplomatic precedence

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Liberia
This should have Liberia's new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who was sworn in on 16 January 2006

Montenegro
I have added Montenegro as it is now an independent nation and a member of the UN. Filip Vujanović has been President of Montenegro since June 22, 2003 he was not the head of state of an independent nation so I have added him on the day that Montenegro declared independence.

O le Ao o le Malo
Samoa does not have an office of President. The title of the head of state of Samoa is O le Ao o le Malo. Translating to President is a) wrong and b) western imperialistic chauvinism at its worst. For example, the head of state of Kuwait is an Emir, there is not an English translation and so it is left as Emir not President (or King) of Kuwait, translating O le Ao o le Malo is just as wrong. Snappy56 20:06, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Though he is considered a ceremonial president, not a monarch. Therequiembellishere 20:22, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, seems more like an elected monarch a la Malaysia. Snappy56 02:29, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * See the talk page for Template:Monarchies and for O le Ao o le Malo you will see a real email between myself and the Press Secretary. Therequiembellishere 02:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Interesting, but I note that the previous O le Ao o le Malo Malietoa Tanumafili II was regarded as a King not President by western media, e.g. Samaon King dies at 94. IMHO an O le Ao o le Malo is not the equivalent of a King or President as known in the west but an office unique to Samoa. Snappy56 16:33, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, but we've changed now haven't we? HE now has a set term. Therequiembellishere 17:39, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems the confusion is caused by the fact that Tanumafili II was Malietoa, which is a Samoan dynastic title, hence he has the second in his title. He then became O le Ao o le Malo while keeping the title Malietoa. The current Malietoa is the splendidly named: Fa'amausili Papali'i Moli Malietoa, who is not the O le Ao o le Malo. If you want to change it back to this: President, then that's fine with me. Snappy56 19:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Fa'amausili Papali'i Moli is not the current Malietoa. He is but a claimant amonst many claimants and is unlikely to be Malietoa at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.176.77.192 (talk) 00:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

According to the article about O le Ao o le Malo its rought translation is 'head of state' and as much as I know the Samoa constitution itself doesn't define the country as either a republic or a monarchy, so maybe it's best not to make the decision for them and use 'head of state' for the title. Zoltan Bukovszky (talk) 13:07, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Holy See / Vatican
The Holy See and the Vatican City state are two separate and distinct entities. The Holy See, not the Vatican City, maintains diplomatic relations with states and participates in international organizations. Foreign embassies are accredited to the Holy See, not to the Vatican City, and it is the Holy See that establishes treaties and concordats with other sovereign entities. It is the Holy See that has United Nations Observer status not the Vatican. Therefore I have removed the Vatican from Pope Benedict XVI's entry and left the Holy See. Snappy56 16:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I think we should put both though, the Holy See does maintain relations, but it is not a sovereign nation. I'll put the Vatican back, if you want to put a note, you can. (I'm putting the Holy See on top). Therequiembellishere 18:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I knew you wouldn't be long in reverting it! I'll put in a footnote. Snappy56 19:35, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Lol, that's me! Therequiembellishere 20:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Emperor of Japan
The name of the current Emperor of Japan is Akihito not Heisei. Heisei will be his posthumous name, and since he is still alive I have removed Heisei and put back in Akihito. Anyone wishing to revert this, better post a good explanation here first! Snappy56 (talk) 15:08, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz
I'm adding Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz as Mauritania's new leader but I fully expect within the week to truly have it all sorted out. Therequiembellishere (talk) 14:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Inconsistency of starting dates
There are a few instances of inconsistency with the dates under 'Head of State since'.

Independence v. taking office

The presidents of Serbia, Montenegro, Uzbekistan and Eritrea are listed with the dates when they took office, while their countries only became independent later (2, 3, 1 and 2 years later respectively). However the Sultan of Brunei is dated from 1 January 1984 (the independence of Brunei), while he acceeded to the throne on 4 October 1967 and the president of Kazakhstan is also listed with the date of the country's independence while he took office the previous year. On the other hand Queen Elizabeth II is credited as being the head of state of all 16 of her present Commonwealth Realms since 6 February 1952, while several of them only attained independence much later, so for example the title 'Queen of Barbados' didn't even exist at the time. So it should be decided - and consistently applied - whether predence is determined by taking office or independence.

Acting v. sui iuris

In the cases of Raúl Castro of Cuba and Rupiah Banda of Zambia the dates given are when they started acting for the incumbent heads of state (Fidel Castro and Levy Mwanawasa respectively) while only later did they became heads of state in their own right (Castro on 24 February 2008 and Banda on 19 August 2008). However the dates given for the King of Norway, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and the Princes of Monaco and Liechtenstein are when they acceeded to their thrones despite the fact that they had all been their fathers' regents before their own accession.

Continuity of person or country

President Ali Abdullah Saleh is described as head of state since 22 May 1990 when the united Yemen (Republic of Yemen) was established, while up to that day he had been the president of North Yemen (Yemen Arab Republic) since 18 July 1978, so he has been a head of state of an independent country uninterruptedly since that date, but not of the present day Yemen.

Constitutional v. de facto

The terms of office of the presidents of São Tomé and Príncipe and Venezuela were shortly interrupted by coups d'état between 16-23 July 2003 and 12-14 April 2002 respectively, after which they were restored to power. So they have only been in office uninterruptedly since the end of the coups, but the insurgents (Fernando Pereira in São Tomé and Príncipe and Pedro Carmona in Venezuela) cannot be regarded as the constititional heads of state of their countries. Zoltan Bukovszky (talk) 08:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Acting president
Having the case of the Zambian head of state in mind, I suggest that a distinction ought to be made between an acting president (when he/she is alone in the office) and a person acting for a president (when there's someone else in office at the same time). Because if you ask the question who the head of state of Zambia is today, I believe the correct answer is Rupiah Banda, despite the fact that he is only acting in that capacity. The answer to the same question between 29 June and 19 August 2008 was Levy Mwanawasa, despite the fact that the duties of the office were performed by Rupiah Banda, as the president was incapacitated. I believe as long as someone is legally still in office, anyone acting for him/her cannot formally be regarded as the head of state. That's why I fully agree with the decision to date Raúl Castro from the day he took over as President (of the Council of State) of Cuba and not when he started deputizing for Fidel. And this is why I wouldn't put Prince Regent Alois of Liechtenstein in a separate row, only as a comment.

Zoltan Bukovszky (talk) 21:33, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Both Alois and Hans-Adam II should be included (I'll combine their note) and if and when Banda takes office, he'll get the same treatment as Castro. Therequiembellishere (talk) 21:43, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Font size
Could Therequiembellishere, please explain why they keep changing the font to 90%? It is too small! Try thinking of the people who unlike you are not blessed with perfect eyesight, try thinking of older people with bad eyesight or people with good eyesight but with small monitors. I have set it to 95%, I think that's a reasonable compromise between 90 and 100. Snappy56 (talk) 01:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I just find it easier to see without them stretching the boxes so tightly. Therequiembellishere (talk) 01:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And just to clarify, my right eye is extremely bad. Somewhere around 260/20. Therequiembellishere (talk) 01:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Collective head of state
According to the description of the Head of State article, a collective head of state is a constitutional or (in extraordinary circumstances) practical arrangement where each member of the body has equal power and their decisions are made together (present examples: Switzerland, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Andorra and San Marino). With this is mind I believe the leaders of Libya, Iran and North Korea cannot be regarded as collective heads of state as they aren't equal in power and in the case of Libya the arrangement isn't even constitutionally mandated. In Iran the Supreme Leader (rahbar) is defined as the highest political office, so he is clearly above the president. In North Korea the Chairman of the National Defence Commission is described as the "highest office of state" (a defining point of a head of state) while the President of the Supreme People's Assembly is mainly performing formal head of state functions and is clearly not of equal power with the Chairman. In Libya the Secretary General of the General People's Congress is theoretically the head of state while the real power is held by the Leader of the Revolution, so again the two aren't equal. So in the above examples the people involved appear to share typical head of state powers and attributes among them, rather than perform them jointly.

Zoltan Bukovszky (talk) 09:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

President Bush is missing
The head of state of the USA is missing in this list. The president-elect is on it, which seems logical but the absence of the current head of state makes no sense. User:Allard      Posted:Saturday November 15th 18:03 CET  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Allard (talk • contribs) 17:03, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Re-elections
When a Head of State is elected for a fixed period of time (v.g., in a Presidential system), in case of re-election the date of inauguration of the Head of State should be updated to that of the start of the last term, as both periods are legally different -fixed- mandates, so the office holder is not considered to be the "unit of measure" the legal term should be. Hope I'm speaking proper english. Salut, --IANVS (talk) 21:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

North Korea
Why are both Kim Jong-un and Kim Yong-nam listed? - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 20:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf
Why is Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf still present on the list now that her presidency of the Swiss Federal Council has ended? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cosmos666 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Michel Temer
Recommend we change Temer's assumption of office date from May 12, 2016 to August 31, 2016, as that's when he became President of Brazil. He was still Vice President from May 12 to August 31, 2016, while discharging presidential powers & duties as Acting President. GoodDay (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Seems fine. Cambalachero (talk) 17:48, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm opposed in order to follow the rule of diplomatic precedence which is by order of credentials. This rule is also followed in Rwanda, RDC, Venezuela and Bangladesh. Wykx  (talk) 20:16, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

We have Temer at May 12, 2016, but not Albert II of Monaco at March 31, 2005. Why the inconsistencies? GoodDay (talk) 14:05, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Albert II took the duty but Rainier III was still reigning between March 31, 2005 and May 12, 2005. Wykx  (talk) 19:47, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Same situation with Temer. He assumed duties, while Rousoff was still President. GoodDay (talk) 20:56, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 19 February 2019
All mentions of the Republic of Macedonia should be changed to North Macedonia

This:

||President||Gjorge Ivanov||12 May 2009||🇲🇰 Macedonia

should become this:

||President||Gjorge Ivanov||12 May 2009|| North Macedonia
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. there is an ongoing discussion about how to refer to the Republic of Macedonia/North Macedonia. DannyS712 (talk) 02:16, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * There is surely a consensus now?! TTFTAKM (talk) 23:38, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Total Page Update
This article needs a complete update, since a lot of the leaders are no longer heads of state. Kazakhstan’s is wrong now, for example. A complete and thorough update should be completed to reflect changes in all nations. Volunteers? TTFTAKM (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in List of heads of state by diplomatic precedence
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of List of heads of state by diplomatic precedence's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Commonwealth": From Antigua and Barbuda:  From List of current state leaders by date of assumption of office: The Governors-General of each Commonwealth realm outside of the United Kingdom represent Elizabeth II. 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 04:37, 22 March 2021 (UTC)