anocracy
UK/əˈnɒk.ɹə.si/
anocracy noun: a political system which is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, often being vulnerable to political instability.
Noun
anocracy (countable and uncountable, plural anocracies)
- A political system which is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, often being vulnerable to political instability.
- As the number of autocracies in the world began to decline in the late 1980s, the number of anocracies began to increase.2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, published 2012, page 374
- She notes that on the scale researchers in her field employ, the US in the last few years has slipped into the range of anocracy.2022 January 13, HW Brands, “How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F Walter review – sounding the alarm”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 19 Jul 2022
- A government not lacking governmental power but absent of political domination.
Examples of anocracy in a sentence
- When a country moves into the anocracy zone, the risk of political violence reaches its peak; citizens feel uncertain about their government’s power and legitimacy.2022 January 24, Barbara F. Walter, “Why should we worry that the U.S. could become an ‘anocracy’ again? Because of the threat of civil...
- Prof Barbara Walter notes in her book How Civil Wars Start that two conditions are key: ethnic factionalism and anocracy – when a country is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic.2023 June 16, “The Guardian view on Trump and political violence: more than words”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 01 Aug...
Forms of anocracy
| plural | anocracies |
|---|
Origin of anocracy
Apparently from an- + -ocracy, representing German Akratie.
Questions about anocracy
- What does anocracy mean?
- Anocracy means a political system which is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, often being vulnerable to political instability.
- How do you use anocracy in a sentence?
- When a country moves into the anocracy zone, the risk of political violence reaches its peak; citizens feel uncertain about their government’s power and legitimacy.
- What part of speech is anocracy?
- Anocracy is a noun.
- How do you pronounce anocracy?
- Anocracy is pronounced /əˈnɒk.ɹə.si/ (UK).
- What is the plural of anocracy?
- The plural of anocracy is anocracies.
Words near anocracy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: anocracy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “anocracy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anocracy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.