Order of succession

An order of succession or right of succession is the sequence of those entitled to hold a high office such as head of state or an honor such as a title of nobility in the order in which they stand in line to it when it becomes vacated. This sequence may be regulated through descent or by statute.It is often the case that the inheritance of a hereditary title, office or the like, is indivisible, i.e. on the previous holder ceasing to hold the title etc., it is inherited by a single individual. Many titles and offices are not hereditary (such as democratic state offices) and they are subject to different rules of succession.In hereditary monarchies the order of succession determines who becomes the new monarch when the incumbent sovereign dies or otherwise vacates the throne. Such orders of succession, derived from rules established by law or tradition, usually specify an order of seniority, which is applied to indicate which relative of the previous monarch, or other person, has the strongest claim to assume the throne when the vacancy occurs.In Tibetan Buddhism, it is believed that the holders of some high offices such as the Dalai Lama are reincarnations of the incumbent: the order of succession is simply that an incumbent is followed by a reincarnation of himself. When an incumbent dies, his successor is sought in the general population by certain criteria considered to indicate that the reincarnated Dalai Lama has been found, a process which typically takes two to four years to find the infant boy.In republics, the requirement to ensure continuity of operations at all times has resulted in most offices having some formalized order of succession. In a country with fixed-term elections, the head of state (president) is sometimes succeeded following death or resignation by the vice president, chancellor, or prime minister, in turn followed by various office holders of the legislative assembly or other government ministers. In many republics, a new election takes place some time after the 'presidency' becomes unexpectedly vacant.(Incomplete list)P22