Governor-general
[3] Governors-general have also previously been appointed in respect of major colonial states or other territories held by either a monarchy or republic, such as Japan in Korea and Taiwan and France in Indochina.
In Iran, the provincial authority is headed by a governor general[4] (Persian: استاندار ostāndār), who is appointed by the minister of the interior.
The governor-general could be instructed by the colonial secretary on the exercise of some of his functions and duties, such as the use or withholding of royal assent from legislation; history shows many examples of governors-general using their prerogative and executive powers.
Following the Imperial Conference, and subsequent issuing of the Balfour Declaration in 1926, the role and responsibilities of the governor-general began to shift, reflecting the increased independence of the Dominions (which were in 1952 renamed realms; a term which includes the UK itself).
The report resulting from the 1926 Imperial Conference stated: "It is an essential consequence of the equality of status existing among the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations that the Governor General of a Dominion is the representative of the Crown, holding in all essential respects the same position in relation to the administration of public affairs in the Dominion as is held by His Majesty the King in Great Britain, and that he is not the representative or agent of His Majesty's Government in Great Britain or of any Department of that Government.
"[5] These concepts were entrenched in legislation with the enactment of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and governmental relations with the United Kingdom were placed in the hands of a British High Commissioner in each country.
In other words, the political reality of a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire with a governor-general answerable to the sovereign became clear.
A governor-general is usually a person with a distinguished record of public service, often a retired politician, judge or military commander; however, some countries have also appointed prominent academics, members of the clergy, philanthropists, or figures from the news media to the office.
In most Commonwealth realms, the flag of the governor-general has been the standard pattern of a blue field with the royal crest (a lion standing on a crown) above a scroll with the name of the jurisdiction.
In the Solomon Islands, the scroll was replaced with a two-headed frigate bird motif, while in Fiji, the former governor general's flag featured a whale's tooth.
Following the changes to the structure of the Commonwealth in the late 1920s, in 1929, the Australian prime minister James Scullin established the right of a Dominion prime minister to advise the monarch directly on the appointment of a governor-general, by insisting that his choice (Isaac Isaacs, an Australian) prevail over the recommendation of the British government.
In Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the prime minister's advice is based on the result of a vote in the national parliament.
In Brazil, after a few governors, from 1578 until its promotion in 1763 to a viceroyalty (though various members of the nobility since 1640 had assumed, without sovereign authority, the title of Viceroy).
In most of the colonies, lower titles, mainly governador (governor) or formerly captain-major (capitão-mor), prevailed The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 led to the Greek acquisition of the so-called "New Lands" (Epirus, Macedonia, Crete and the islands of the eastern Aegean), almost doubling the country's territory.
Instead of fully incorporating these new lands into Greece by dividing them into prefectures, the Ottoman administrative system continued in existence for a while, and Law ΔΡΛΔ΄ of 1913 established five governorates-general (Γενικαὶ Διοικήσεις, sing.
The extensive but hitherto legally rather undefined powers of the governors-general created friction and confusion with other government branches, until their remit was exactly delineated in 1925.
The governorates-general, except for that of Thessaloniki, were abolished in 1928, but re-established in December 1929—for Crete, Epirus, Thrace, and Macedonia—and delegated practically all ministerial authorities for their respective areas.
Over the next decade, however, in a see-saw of legislative measures that in turn gave and took away authority, they gradually lost most of their powers in favour of the prefectures and the central government in Athens.
This awkward arrangement lasted until 1950, when the administration of Macedonia was streamlined, the junior governorates abolished and only the Governorate-General of Northern Greece retained.
