Vice president
officer in government, business or educational institutions
A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (or chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on the executive branch of the government, university or company. The name comes from the Latin term vice meaning "in place of" and typically serves as pro tempore (Latin: 'for the time being') to the president. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president. In everyday speech, the abbreviation VP is used.
In government
In government, a vice president is a person whose primary responsibility is to act in place of the president on the event of the president's death, resignation or incapacity. Vice presidents are either elected jointly with the president as their running mate, or more rarely, appointed independently after the president's election.
Most governments with vice presidents have one person in this role at any time, although in some countries there are two or more vice presidents–an extreme case being Iran's 14 vice presidents. If the president is not present, dies, resigns, or is otherwise unable to fulfill their duties, the vice president will generally serve as president. In many presidential systems, vice presidents may not wield much day-to-day political power, but are still considered important members of the cabinet, while other vice presidents might not have any purpose beyond acting in place of the president on the event of the president's death, resignation or incapacity.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Vice president” as officer in government, business or educational institutions. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as officer in government, business or educational institutions. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q42178. The Library of Congress control number is sh85143155. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Vice president”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Vice president primary sources, Vice president archive and Vice research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Vice president” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.