political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

, sultanism is a form of authoritarian government characterized by the extreme personal presence of the ruler in all elements of governance. The ruler may or may not be present in economic or social life, and thus there may be pluralism in these areas, but this is never true of political power. The term sultanism is derived from

sultan Sultan (; ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be use ...

, a title used in

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

societies for a secular sovereign or monarch, often in contrast with the religious title of

caliph A caliphate ( ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with Khalifa, the title of caliph (; , ), a person considered a political–religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of ...

. In modern scholarly usage, sultanism is not limited to Muslim or

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

ern societies. In 1996,

Juan Linz ''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. The name is of Hebrew origin and has the meaning "God has been gracious." It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking countries around the world and in the Philipp ...

and Alfred Stepan listed the clearest examples of sultanism as "

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

under the Duvaliers, the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

under Trujillo, the

Central African Republic The Central African Republic (CAR) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to Central African Republic–Chad border, the north, Sudan to Central African Republic–Sudan border, the northeast, South Sudan to Central ...

under Bokassa, the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

under

Marcos Marcos may refer to: People with the given name ''Marcos'' *Marcos (given name) * Marcos family Sports ;Surnamed * Dayton Marcos, Negro league baseball team from Dayton, Ohio (early twentieth-century) * Dimitris Markos, Greek footballer * Né ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

under Ceauşescu, and

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

under

Kim Il Sung Kim Il Sung (born Kim Song Ju; 15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean politician and the founder of North Korea, which he led as its first Supreme Leader (North Korean title), supreme leader from North Korea#Founding, its establishm ...

". Linz, Juan J.; Stepan, Alfred (1996). "Modern Nondemocratic Regimes". ''Problems of Democratic Transition & Consolidation''. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore. According to Linz and Stepan:

e essential reality in a sultanistic regime is that all individuals, groups and institutions are permanently subject to the unpredictable and despotic intervention of the sultan, and thus all pluralism is precarious

In sultanism, the sultan may or may not adopt a ruling

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

, but he is never bound by any rules or given ideology, even his own. The sultan may also use whatever forces he can to exercise his personal will, such as para-militaries or

gangs A gang is a group or society of associates, friends, or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collecti ...

as stated by

Max Weber Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...

in ''

Economy and Society ''Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology'' (1921; ; or simply ''Economy and Society'') is a book by political economist and sociologist Max Weber, published posthumously in Germany by his wife Marianne. Alongside ''The Prot ...

'':

the extreme case, ''Sultanism'' tend to arise whenever traditional domination develops an administration and a military force which are purely instruments of the master. ..Where domination ..operates primarily on the basis of discretion, it will be called ''sultanism''. ..The non-traditional element is not, however, rationalized in impersonal terms, but consists only in the extreme development of the ruler's discretion. It is this which distinguishes it from every form of rational authority. Weber, Max (1978). ''Economy and Society''. University of California Press: Berkeley.

See also

References

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