What's the difference between autocracy and plutocracy?

Autocracy


Definition:

  • (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.

Plutocracy


Definition:

  • (n.) A form of government in which the supreme power is lodged in the hands of the wealthy classes; government by the rich; also, a controlling or influential class of rich men.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On the other hand, the expectation that authority will be bestowed by market forces following a miraculous ‘‘transfer of wealth’’ does suggest an alternative route to normal democratic processes: theocracy via plutocracy.
  • (2) At the top, the barristers other lawyers most admire have escaped the constraints of the nation state and chase multimillion pound briefs from the global plutocracy.
  • (3) They would see that their sacrifice has, paradoxically, contributed to their economic insecurity by allowing for a glut of money in trade surpluses to be built up in a banking system that has developed innovative techniques of financial engineering which only reward the plutocracy in corporate boardrooms and banks, and contribute to the instability of the economic edifice that delivers jobs and prosperity to the masses.
  • (4) The pampered plutocracy Last year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies looked at an ever-worsening financial crisis, which will see the amount of public debt owed per person rise from its 2010 level of £15,000 to £23,000 in 2017.
  • (5) Serbia is a plutocracy and humour is the best way to fight this.
  • (6) The plutocracy that governs us is simply throwing more and more red meat into a shark pool, populated by public school buddies and party donors.
  • (7) Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it."
  • (8) One of the outstanding features of the new plutocracy is that they are working rich: corporate bosses, talented traders, hedge-funders.
  • (9) It is a threat of the loss of grip on the narrative of the financial crisis, that the crisis is caused by the profligacy of the poor, in the hands of the plutocracy of global finance.
  • (10) Corporations have grown so big that they are overwhelming democracies and building a global plutocracy to serve their own interests.
  • (11) Can you hear him saying he wants higher inheritance taxes because he believes Britain should be a meritocracy rather than a plutocracy?
  • (12) "There should be no sacrifice for the plutocracy," said Vasiillis Stamoulis, one union leader as he took to the podium erected in front of Athens' sandstone parliament.
  • (13) They place all the burden on the have-nots to pay the price of this crisis and not the plutocracy," said Yannis Papangopoulos who heads the Confederation of Greek Workers.
  • (14) I am not ashamed to admit I am one of those hem-touchers, fascinated to meet the man who changed the face of modern opera with his centenary Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1976, when he infuriated traditionalists by replacing Wagnerian horns and bearskins with the trappings of 19th-century plutocracy.
  • (15) The electoral reality, however, suggests a narrow plutocracy in which the privilege of birth outranks ideology, charisma or achievement.
  • (16) If Syriza is allowed to retain the euro on its own terms, people elsewhere might begin to question the benefit of continuing with the particular programme of poor-bashing austerity, even if they accept the need for austerity, preached by the union leaders, the troika, of this governing plutocracy.
  • (17) "It is the responsibility and duty of workers and the poor to reject the lies of the government, the EU, the plutocracy and to rise up against these measures," it said.
  • (18) It’s refreshing to see two prominent billionaires even paying lip service to upending plutocracy.
  • (19) According to The West End Front , a book by Matthew Sweet about the role of the hotels during the war, men such as César Ritz, who opened the Ritz in 1906, played a central role in persuading “the plutocracy and the aristocracy to do something to which they were unaccustomed – eat, drink, smoke and dance in public”.
  • (20) What had started as a general strike called by unions to protest against deeply unpopular austerity measures turned into a tidal wave of fury as an estimated 100,000 private and public sector workers took to the streets screaming "let the plutocracy pay".