Governance type plays a prominent role in the effective management of protected areas. Appropriate type of governance is essential to maximize the ecological, social, economic and cultural benefits of these areas. Nonetheless, existing studies on the institutional mechanisms of protected areas primarily focused on the theoretical system analysis, institutional mechanism construction, and experience summaries of specific governance types. These studies overlooked the need to analyze governance types on a global scale, especially the current governance structure of the global protected area network, and understand the correlations between different governance types. To this end, current study analyzed the IUCN global protected area database, and found that the global protected area governance types are quite diverse. In general, the "governance by government" serves as the dominant governance type, while other governance types act as the supplement. The governance types vary with the spatial distribution and management categories of protected areas. To evaluate the structure of the global protected area governance type, a social network analysis involving both qualitative and quantitative features was conducted. It revealed that the current structure of the global protected area governance type is a dual-center ‘core-edge’ network structure, which consists of a core circle with the ‘federal or national ministry or agency in charge’ and ‘sub-national ministry or agency in charge’ as the main center. It is supplemented by the ‘collaborative governance’; and an independent center based on the ‘established and run by local communities’ governance type at the edge, indicating that community governance type cannot be ignored. Present study also found that the governance types within the two groups show certain relevance. The first group includes the ‘sub-national ministry or agency in charge’ and ‘conserved areas established and run by non-profit organizations’, while the second group includes the ‘established and run by local communities’ and ‘established and run by indigenous peoples’ or ‘government-delegated management’. These imply that the same country/region tends to adopt these associated governance types simultaneously.