kratocracy

plural kratocracies

1. political scienceA government established by the forceful or cunning seizure of power and maintained by strength.

   For, without its feeling of compassion, a kratocracy, […]

   In Praise of a Roman-American Rhapsody in 2013 (originally 1997), Francis Boni, A Life Song Between Two Worlds: Revised and Expanded, iUniverse LLC, page 37

   2 more examples

   […] as the cover for plutocracy is replaced by timocracy and by the one-man kratocracy which we call dictatorship.

   1950, Wm. Pepperell Montague, Great Visions of Philosophy: Varieties of Speculative Thought in the West from the Greeks to Bergson, page 109

   To many outside observers, Turkey is a unique country that seems perpetually balancing on a steep precipice between kratocracy and democracy, between Islam and capitalism, or even more melodramatically, between East and West.

   2012, Cory Blad, Banu Koçer, Political Islam and State Legitimacy in Turkey: The Role of National Culture in Neoliberal State-Building in International Political Sociology, volume 6, page 36

   Synonyms: kraterocracy