Anglican churches are governed under episcopal polity: authority and oversight run through bishops, each responsible for a diocese made up of a number of parishes. Dioceses are grouped into provinces, each of which is self-governing.
Within a province, major decisions are usually made through a synod — a governing body that typically brings together bishops, clergy, and lay representatives, rather than leaving decisions to bishops alone. This synodical pattern, combining ordained and lay voices, is a defining feature of how Anglican churches govern themselves at parish, diocesan, and provincial level.
There is no single global authority over the whole Anglican Communion, and no equivalent of the Pope. Instead, the roughly 40 provinces are held together informally through four Instruments of Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury, who acts as a symbolic “focus of unity”; the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of the Communion's bishops roughly every ten years; the Primates' Meeting, bringing together the senior archbishop or primate of each province; and the Anglican Consultative Council, which includes bishops, clergy, and laity. None of these bodies has binding legal authority over an individual province — each province remains free to govern its own affairs, which is also why different provinces can, and do, reach different decisions on some matters.