The FP Power Map

Is it possible to identify the 500 most powerful individuals on the planet — one in 14 million? That’s what we tried to do with the inaugural FP Power Map, our inventory of the people who control the commanding heights of the industries that run the world, from politics to high finance, media to energy, warfare to religion. Think of it as a list of all the most important other lists. Here’s how they stack up — and why (sorry, declinists!) Americans are still No. 1 in pretty much everything that matters. For now.

Sources and Methods: Where possible, we took a “list of lists” approach, consulting the authoritative rankings for a given industry and substituting judgment where quantitative assessments do not exist. Among our sources: Box Office Mojo Yearly Box Office, Citypopulation.de by Thomas Brinkoff, Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women, Forbes World’s Most Powerful People, Global Finance World’s 50 Biggest Banks, Fortune Global 500, Global Journal Top 100 NGOs, Institute of Media and Communications Policy International Media Corporations, Pensions & Investments/Towers Watson World 500, PFC Energy 50, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database and SIPRI Top 100 companies, Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute Fund Rankings, Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Thomson Reuters, Vanity Fair New Establishment List, Wall Street Journal MarketWatch World’s Largest Mutual Funds.