Kakistocracy

Government by the execrable.

The word kak­istoc­ra­cy popped up in John­son, the Econ­o­mist’s lan­guage blog. Nor­mal­ly I don’t include words unless I have to look them up for some rea­son oth­er than idle curios­i­ty or see­ing them on a word of the day site or the like. In the spe­cif­ic case of word of the day sites, it would feel a lit­tle like pla­gia­rism to every day post the word I’d «looked up» by see­ing it as the word of the day.

But Kak­istoc­ra­cy is such a gem that I had to lift it. Grant­ed that the term itself is a redun­dan­cy, it ele­gant­ly describes the nat­ur­al com­bined result of the Peter prin­ci­ple and the Dil­bert prin­ci­ple, and prob­a­bly a few oth­ers as well. When the word entered my con­scious­ness, I had a moment of dis­be­lief. Does that real­ly mean what it sounds like it means? To my delight, it real­ly does.