ochlocraticadj.

1835 T. Walker Original No. 1. 3 By the Ochlocratic principle, I mean the principle of mob government, or government by too large masses.

1858 Rotteck's Hist. World 81 With equal wisdom and moderation they kept down the efforts of ochlocratic terrorism, as well as those of aristocratic re-action.

1873 W. R. Greg Enigmas 46 Ochlocratic institutions (those giving political power to the mere masses, the numerical majority).

1908 Westm. Gaz. 14 Dec. 3/1 Each class is oligarchic against the classes below it, which are pressing on its place of privilege, and ochlocratic against the classes above it, whose privileges it desires to destroy.

1943 Amer. Sociol. Rev. 8 483/1 Under this system the political fate of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom our author prefers as an ‘aristocratic’ type of leader over the more ‘democratic or ochlocratic’.

1978 Daily Tel. 23 Mar. 16/4 In an age as atrocious as ours, when every sort of plebeian and ochlocratic oligarchy—nay, basest and cruellest tyranny—may be seen to have sprung directly, in other nations, from the abandonment..of the hereditary principle.