KAKISTOCRACY, noun: a form of government in which the least qualified or most unprincipled individuals are in power.

USAGE: Sometimes, in recent years, it has seemed that the world’s largest democracy has in many ways degenerated into a kakistocracy.

Derived from the ancient Greek — the speakers of which were pioneers of democratic practice and knew a thing or two about good governance, or the lack thereof — a kakistocracy is a government by the worst elements in society. The word comes from the Greek ‘kakistos’, which is the superlative form of the word ‘kakos’, meaning ‘bad’; kakistos means ‘as bad as it can possibly get’.