Particracy

Particracy, also known as partitocracy or partocracy, is a form of government in which the political parties are the primary basis of rule rather than citizens or individual politicians.

As argued by Italian political scientist Mauro Calise in 1994, the term is often derogatory, implying that parties have too much power—in a similar vein, in premodern times it was often argued that democracy was merely rule by the demos, or a poorly educated and easily misled mob. Efforts to turn particracy into a more precise scholarly concept so far appear partly successful.

Spanish political scientist Antonio García-Trevijano described particracy in 2010 as a form of government where representation and separation of powers are nullified by the way the political party system is organized, turning democracy into an "oligarchy of parties" where voters have little to no actual control over them.