Mob rule

Ochlocracy or mob rule is the rule of by mob or a mass of people, or, the  of legitimate authorities. As a pejorative for, it is akin to the Latin phrases mobile vulgus, meaning "the fickle ", from which the English term "mob" originally was derived in the.

Ochlocracy is synonymous in meaning and usage to the modern, informal term "", which arose in the 18th century as a colloquial neologism.

Terminology
appears to have coined the term in his 2nd century BC work  (6.4.6). He uses it to name the "pathological" version of popular rule—in opposition to the good version, which he refers to as democracy. There are numerous mentions of the word "ochlos" in the (where "ochlos" refers to anything from "mob", "populace", to "armed guard"), as well as in, a Jewish commentary on the Bible. The word is recorded in English since 1584, derived from the ochlocratie (1568), which stems from the original Greek okhlokratia, from okhlos ("mob") and kratos (meaning "rule, power, strength").

Ancient Greek political thinkers regarded ochlocracy as one of the three "bad" forms of government (,, and ochlocracy) as opposed to the three "good" forms of government (, , and ). They distinguished "good" and "bad" according to whether the government form would act in the interest of the whole community ("good") or in the exclusive interests of a group or individual at the expense of justice ("bad").

This (Polybian) terminology for forms of state in ancient Greek philosophy has become customary. termed democracy as "" (sometimes translated as "", which confusingly is used by other Aristotle-translators for "", instead) while giving the name of "democracy" to ochlocracy.

An "ochlocrat" is one who is an advocate or partisan of ochlocracy. It also may be used as an adjective ("ochlocratic" or "ochlocratical").

The threat of "mob rule" to a is restrained by ensuring that the  protects  or individuals against short-term  or. Although considering how laws in a democracy are established or repealed by the majority, the protection of minorities by rule of law is questionable. Some authors, like Bosnian political theoretician Hasanović, connect the emergence of ochlocracy in democratic societies with the decadence of democracy in where "the democratic role of the people has been reduced mainly to the electoral process".

Mobs in history
Historians often comment on mob rule as a factor in the and its maintenance, as the city of  itself was large—between 100,000 and 250,000 citizens—while the  and even  was very small by comparison to the citizenry. Lapses in this control often led to loss of official power (and often enough, the lives of the officials)—most notably in the reign of when  unwisely used the  against a mob which had come to call for his head. As historian relates it:

This followed a previous incident in which the had demanded and received the death of, the prior administrator. The mob thus realized that it had every chance of success.

The in  during the 1690s, in which the unified belief of the townspeople overpowered the logic of the law, also has been cited as an example of mob rule.

In 1837 wrote about  and "the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country—the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice".

Mob violence played a prominent role in the early history of the. Examples include the, the , the , the , the murder of , and the. In, gave an address demanding military action against "mobocrats".