Talk:List of heads of state and government who died in office

Recommendations

This page should also list the cause of death. I myself cannot be bothered going through and adding this information but somebody else should, if they are so inclined. - LolPop. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.255.31.66 (talk) 07:11, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Title/criteria

The title is very misleading, as it invites entries on people including those "who were assassinated, murdered, committed suicide, killed in battle, executed, drowned or who died as a result of a transportation accident" - until one reads the fine print. I've just added Harold Holt, and then discovered he's excluded by the criteria. Is there a separate "List of heads of state and government who drowned in office" - it would be a VERY short list, I presume. Where else would one logically look for a name such as Harold Holt than on this list? It wasn't his fault that he drowned rather than had a heart attack or cancer. We need to get some re-thinking happening here. -- JackofOz (talk) 10 July 2008

Anyone? This really does need to be resolved. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:11, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

This seems more properly titled something along the lines of "List of heads of state and government who do not have a lifetime position and died of natural causes while in office." Originally, I was thinking "non-hereditary heads of state" would do it, but that would include Popes and Presidents-For-Life. Or "List of heads of state and government whose terms were cut short by death by natural causes." Anyone with a lifetime position has not had their term cut short when they died; it ended when it was supposed to. On the other hand, if a list is so hard to define, maybe it shouldn't exist. M Pinck (talk) 16:12, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

One way to do it is to leave the title exactly as it is, and then partition deaths in office into as many categories as we think are appropriate, with a catch-all "Other" for those who don't fit into a more specific category. We wouldn't need to re-list the assassinations, but just have a link to List of assassinated people. Same for the other categories: murdered, committed suicide, killed in battle, executed, drowned, died as a result of a transportation accident. I don't know where these people are listed, but I'm reliably informed the people "who fit these categories are listed elsewhere". So, we do our readers a service and list all these links as well. Then, the only people we actually list here are those not covered elsewhere, and we never have to get into defining the composition of the list at all. We just call it "Other deaths in office" or similar. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:15, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

"Heads of state and government who fit these categories are listed elsewhere."

These "elsewhere"s ought to be listed in a See also section at the bottom of this list. Robert K S (talk) 07:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC) ((Resolved: but now the page needs to be updated, and may I recommend adding some function by which visitors to the page can sort the list by cause if they so wish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.255.31.66 (talk) 07:07, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Governors-General of Commonwealth Realms

These people are neither heads of government nor heads of state. The head of state of the Commonwealth Realms is Queen Elizabeth II. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:11, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no Head of state of the Commonwealth realms. Elizabeth is head of state in the United Kingdom & 15 other Commonwealth realms. Anyways, you're correct in that the governors-general should be deleted. GoodDay (talk) 22:06, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Definition of "In office"

Heads of state may die in two ways, unexpected ones (such as assassinations) or expected ones (such as illness or age). In the second case, few ones would die still as head of state: shortly before that the power is transferred to whoever follows in the succesion line, and then he dies (after all, someone must still govern in that time, and such head of state would be in no condition to do so). Would those ones still count as "died in office" for the purposes of this list, even if not accurately correct? MBelgrano (talk) 02:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak about any other country, but the four US Presidents who died of natural causes all died while in office. None of them resigned beforehand. And there was no temporary transfer of power with any of them. The mechanism for that didn't come about until later. M Pinck (talk) 22:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Er, that is circular and woolly thinking. Excluding the incumbent Obama, and Cleveland who gets counted twice, there have been 42 US Presidents, of whom 38 are dead. The only 4 of those 38 who died other than of natural causes were the 4 assassinated ones (all while in office). Another 4 died in office of natural causes. That leaves 30, all of whom died of natural causes after leaving the presidency. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 23:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I think you missed my point. MBelfrano was suggesting that dying heads of state transfer their power to the next in line of succession before dying. I was merely giving the data point of the US, saying that was not the case for any of the US Presidents who died in office. None resigned or were removed from office while they were dying. Hope that clarifies it. M Pinck (talk) 03:12, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I would also add that heads of state or government that were deposed should not be added to the list if they subsequently died (usually murdered or executed). I note a 19th century President of Peru is listed as "deposed and murdered" - a check of his wiki biography shows he was deposed 4 days before his death. I have for that reason deleted this man, Jose Balta (1872) and Abd al-Karim Qasim, Prime Minister of Iraq (1963) who was executed on the day after he was deposed.Cloptonson (talk) 20:44, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

This list seems to have quite arbitrary inclusion criteria. I can see why monarchs are excluded, but why exclude those heads of state who were assassinated or who died in accidents? It states they are listed elsewhere, but they are not linked at all and the only other relevant article I can find is Death in office which just links to this page and then lists four Russian governors.

The intro also contradicts the entries, given that it states "It only includes the heads of the state or government in the republican countries", the first four entries are three British prime ministers (Britain is not a republic) and a viceroy (not a head of state or government, by definition not a republican country). Thryduulf (talk) 11:52, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Changing inclusion criteria

Given that we've been talking for years about the fact that the criteria listed in the introduction don't match the page title, is arbitrary and incorrect in saying that all of the other categories are listed elsewhere, I'm going to rewrite the criteria to match the page title (excluding royalty and others who have lifetime positions.) M Pinck (talk) 02:59, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I've reverted a change by an anonymous user who wanted to include in this list all heads of state or government who had lifetime appointment. This would make this list effectively a list of every king, queen, pope, sultan, etc. who ever ruled. M Pinck (talk) 21:21, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I disagree with excluding them from this list as it's arbitrary, it openly contradicts the article title ("List of heads of state and government who died in office") and especially in the past it wasn't unheard of for monarchs to be removed by coups rather than death, and currently there is a growing trend for monarchs to abdicate their thrones (so far five sovereign did it since the beginning of 2013). So I'm going to rewrite the article lead accordingly. ZBukov (talk) 13:17, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Vatican

IMHO, the Presidents of the Governate of Vatican City and the Vatican Secretaries of State, should be excluded. AFAIK, the Pope is Vatican City's head of state and government. GoodDay (talk) 22:08, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Michael Collins (Irish leader)

Collins is called 'assassinated' as cause of death but in the Republic of Ireland he is officially cited as 'killed in action', his death taking place when Collins, commander-in-chief of the Irish National Army, was in a military convoy that was ambushed by armed and uniformed opponents of the Treaty that created the Irish Free State.Cloptonson (talk) 20:57, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Omit monarchs

• Monarchs are supposed to die in office, they should be removed.
• Cause of death (natural or assassination) never matters!
• Should Governor-Generals of colonies be removed?

Possibly we should define criteria, of edit the title.--Maher27777 (talk) 14:35, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

+1 for removing monarchs from the list, 95% of monarchs die in office, it's the rule rather than the exception as with elected leaders. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 09:03, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Monarchs typically holding office for life is no reason to remove them from this list. They are incumbent heads of state at the time of their passing, therefore they belong here. We should put them back here, as they were originally. ZBukov (talk) 17:48, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Since monarchs are expected to serve for life, inclusive them would make the list unwieldily long.2601:241:300:B610:CC6A:70FB:B86C:D5EA (talk) 23:55, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Zoltan Bukovszky, excluding monarchs makes this list practically useless. 18:21, 18 May 2021 (UTC)Dimadick (talk)

The distinction seems to be that elected heads of state and government have set terms in office, usually of less than a decade, so dying before the completion is considered unsual. Monarchs usually have no limits on their length of reign, so dying while on the throne is not considered usual. This is presumably why Presidents for life are also excluded, as they are expected to serve until their death.2601:241:300:B610:7C7F:A9F0:D28D:19EA (talk) 01:32, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

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Inclusion criteria

Does this list include heads of government of non-independent, but self-governing/autonomous territories and republics? I have added a few such examples (such as heads of state/government of former Soviet and Yugoslav union/federal republics, and heads of government of autonomous/self-governing territories and colonies).

From my viewpoint, it would seem logical to include them, given that the criteria on top of the page doesn't say anything about whether the people listed here should be heads of independent states. However, there doesn't seem to be consensus about this, as, browsing through the editing history of the page, I noticed that such office-holders have at times been removed by other editors, with the reason given being precisely that they weren't heads of state/government of independent states.

What do you think? Fogelstrom (talk) 11:22, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Better to separate a table for them to avoid confusion. A bit awkward actually seeing Scotland looking like an independent state next to UN members. Borgenland (talk) 07:27, 17 February 2024 (UTC)