- Vintage
- As of 2026-07-30, from master build mb-2026-07-30.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Total institutions | 719,588 |
| Countries / territories | 225 |
| Government levels | 4 |
| Institution types | 25 |
| Distinct sources cited | 436 |
| Government level | Institutions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| National | 6,360 | 0.88% |
| First subnational (state / province / region) | 1,693 | 0.24% |
| Second subnational (county / district) | 33,293 | 4.63% |
| Local (municipality / city / commune / school district) | 678,242 | 94.25% |
| Total | 719,588 | 100% |
The registry is overwhelmingly local government by count, and that is a fact about what the registry is rather than a caveat hidden at the bottom of a page. Local-level institutions are 678,242 of 719,588 records (94.25% of everything in it). Any statistic computed over the registry as a whole is, to a first approximation, a statistic about local government. A reader interested in national ministries is working with 6,360 records, and should weight, filter, or stratify accordingly rather than treating the registry as a balanced sample of government.
Within that local tier, two distinct kinds of institution should not be run together. Municipalities (cities, towns, and communes) account for 664,901 records, or 92.40% of the registry. US school districts account for a further 13,341, or 1.85%. Together they make the 678,242 local-level total. “Local” and “municipality” are therefore not interchangeable on this page or in any analysis drawn from it: school districts are special-purpose authorities with a single policy remit, they exist in one country, and folding them into a municipality count would misstate both.
| Institution type | Institutions |
|---|---|
| Municipality | 664,901 |
| District | 33,293 |
| School district | 13,341 |
| Ministry | 3,818 |
| Region | 1,693 |
| Parliament | 279 |
| Statistical office | 199 |
| IP office | 196 |
| Supreme audit institution | 194 |
| Telecom regulator | 194 |
| Supreme court | 193 |
| Financial intelligence unit | 182 |
| Central bank | 177 |
| Customs administration | 139 |
| Tax administration | 116 |
| Insurance regulator | 98 |
| Ombudsman | 91 |
| Securities regulator | 90 |
| Energy regulator | 87 |
| Competition authority | 79 |
| Electoral management body | 61 |
| Data protection authority | 51 |
| Constitutional court | 50 |
| Anti-corruption authority | 36 |
| Banking supervisor | 30 |
| Total | 719,588 |
The long tail of that table is the cross-country layer: twenty-odd institution types, each with somewhere between thirty and a few hundred members worldwide, one row per country that has such a body. Those categories are small by construction rather than by omission: there are only so many central banks.