(n.) Independent or self-derived power; absolute or controlling authority; supremacy.
(n.) Supreme, uncontrolled, unlimited authority, or right of governing in a single person, as of an autocrat.
(n.) Political independence or absolute sovereignty (of a state); autonomy.
(n.) The action of the vital principle, or of the instinctive powers, toward the preservation of the individual; also, the vital principle.
Example Sentences:
(1) The Copts stand to lose more than any other group in Egypt's current drift following the fall of an unpopular autocracy, and now face an uncertain future with a wide spectrum of possible outcomes, from a liberal democracy to an Islamic republic, or most likely of all, a continuation of army rule with different window-dressing.
(2) At the beginning, David Cameron spoke respectfully of "President Mubarak" and the "Egyptian government"; by this weekend, the prime minister is using the much more pejorative "regime" to describe the crumbling autocracy.
(3) The privy council only provides the flummery which camouflages their autocracy.
(4) Without question, the increased access to people's lives that the data revolution brings will give some repressive autocracies a dangerous advantage in targeting their citizens.
(5) The leader of the world’s largest autocracy will enjoy a 103-gun royal salute and a sumptuous, white-tie state banquet attended by three generations of the royal family; he will address the houses of parliament and at night will sleep in the palace’s Belgian Suite, in the very same bed that Duke and Duchess of Cambridge used on their wedding night .
(6) After five days away from his homeland, Abu Majid is convinced that the four decades of unshakable autocracy he left behind are now steadily unravelling.
(7) A toy autocracy may easily invite a real one; it was recently revealed that nuclear war would have made the monarch a genuine tyrant with the power to appoint a prime minister without an election, although it is hard to imagine Elizabeth II – with her rugs bearing a knitted royal crest, and her tiny dogs – as Gaius Julius Caesar.
(8) The book’s success was celebrated by the entry of a new word into the Russian lexicon: oblomovism, which became a term of abuse for the class that helped the autocracy survive for so long.
(9) The Kremlin, whose long slide into autocracy shows no sign of relenting, made deals with several of them, knowing it would be easier to keep them on side than to open up Russia's economy to proper procedures, competition, and fair trade.
(10) All of which confirms a country slipping from democracy back towards autocracy.
(11) The relentless expansion of markets over recent decades has generated a growing disconnect between citizens and states, be they military autocracies or august procedural democracies; for better or for worse, from the rise of maverick politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to institutional chaos in southern Europe and the dissolution of national borders in the Middle East, existing political models are buckling under the strain.
(12) A chaotic session of parliament before Christmas saw the annual budget voted through outside the main chamber without opposition support, while the outgoing president of Poland’s highest constitutional court accused Law and Justice of setting the country “on the road to autocracy”.
(13) An arrogant assumption, of course, to imply she spoke for all her people – and exactly the question that is impossible to answer in such a repressive autocracy.
(14) No more regressive form of taxation has been devised on this continent since the old autocracies were overthrown.
(15) For instance, in his speech, Jeb called for strengthening Egypt, the sclerotic autocracy the United States propped up for decades and whose torture and repression birthed Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood (out from under whose robes al-Qaida scuttled into the world); its current president took power in a coup and is hardly known for his weakness on anything but human rights and press freedoms .
(16) "So when Sisi stepped forward and did what he did, it was seen as a heroic act, taking a last-step measure to save the country from an ailing economy and a religious autocracy."
(17) True, he played a significant role in steering his country from pariah autocracy to a democracy embraced by the international community.
(18) In the conservative autocracies of the middle east, Qatar, a wealthy gas-rich emirate, has built up a reputation as a maverick, epitomised by its ownership of the al-Jazeera satellite television channel, which has often infuriated many Arab leaders.
(19) "This is not going to be an autocracy," Egypt's foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, told the Guardian on Sunday.
(20) During the 2011-12 fiscal year, under President Bingu wa Mutharika (the current president’s older brother) donors withdrew budgetary support because of poor governance and the then president’s increasing autocracy.
Oligarchy
Definition:
(n.) A form of government in which the supreme power is placed in the hands of a few persons; also, those who form the ruling few.
Example Sentences:
(1) Once neither painfully elitist nor patronisingly populist, Edinburgh in August now threatens to become an oligarchy, a Chipping Norton of the arts, its sluices greased by Foster's lager, rather than by country suppers and police horses.
(2) Coleridge, denouncing “a contemptible democratical oligarchy of glib economists”, asked: “Is the increasing number of wealthy individuals that which ought to be understood by the wealth of the nation?” Dickens did much with Carlyle’s despairing insight into cash payment as the “sole nexus” between human beings.
(3) Nor is the Vermont senator only attracting the usual leftwing suspects, such as those attendees who wore “Oligarchy Response Team” T-shirts.
(4) He promised to raise the minimum wage, rehire fired workers and to fight a Greek oligarchy well-known for its corruption and tax evasion.
(5) "Those who are responsible should pay for the crisis: the bankers, industrialists, ship-owners, big merchants, the oligarchy of this country."
(6) Hence the real question that Scots have to decide: will independence shift the balance of power away from oligarchy and towards democracy?
(7) If there is a “generational struggle to defend the principles of the free market”, it’s a struggle against the corporations, which have replaced the market with a state-endorsed oligarchy .
(8) Voting for the oligarchy is not how you get rid of the oligarchy,” said Carlos Martinez, 40, an activist from Texas who creates social media content .
(9) And that way is that today in America, we are living in a country that is moving quite rapidly toward an economic oligarchy and a political oligarchy.
(10) Thus politics in Russia , the one common denominator in the Litvinenko enigma, may have nothing to do with evolving democracy or our old friend market forces, but rather is a murderous clash of oligarchies over wealth, like Machiavelli's Borgias, or a Hollywood Godfather IV view of events.
(11) Jakarta’s politics – and Indonesia’s – is entrenched in an elitist oligarchy, in which party bosses or their corporate backers are the main financiers.
(12) Liberating individualism was transformed into exploitable atomisation, creative self-expression replaced by a depoliticised, desocialising consumerism that enabled the rise of a new oligarchy.
(13) That is called an oligarchy.” Sanders congratulated the crowd for “making history” by taking part in what the campaign believes is the largest online organizing event of the 2016 campaign so far.
(14) If they still come down we will need to take some sort of action.” “I’m still looking at legal action from the supreme court to stop them coming anyway.” The Party for Freedom posted on its website: “Today we face a battle against a corrupt political oligarchy that wants to restrict freedom of speech, and deny patriotic Australians the right to mark the 10nth Cronulla Riots anniversary in Cronulla.
(15) But in other cases, it has come with serious problems such as powerful oligarchies that wipe out competition, prevent local innovation, fuel corruption and seek rents.
(16) In the 1990s we encountered both anarchy and oligarchy.
(17) They desired, rather, that it be lived on a higher level than that of a serf, treated as an inconvenience by a moribund oligarchy.
(18) Jeremy Clarkson: big mouth strikes again BBC seeks to limit damage over Clarkson rant Jeremy Clarkson's One Show strike outburst - full text The Jeremy Clarkson moment: populism or oligarchy?
(19) And when they say competition, what you're actually left with is four or five – sometimes only three – companies, who barely compete with one another at all but instead operate as an unelected oligarchy.
(20) "If management and an existing board take on this power to hire and fire this ceases to be a co-operative and instead becomes little more than a self perpetuating, management-led, oligarchy," said Eyre.