In political science, policide describes the intentional destruction of an independent political or social entity. Sometimes, the related word "politicide" is used in this meaning. The term is used with some regularity within political science, generally to refer to a policy of destruction that falls short of genocide or ethnocide.

Origin

Writer Michael Walzer credits the origin of the term "policide" (here, meaning the "destruction of a state's independence") to Abba Eban, Israel's foreign minister in 1967. Similarly, professor Steve J. Stern has adopted "policide" to mean the destruction of political life itself. Stern describes the term as an extension of a family of terms including homicide, patricide, tyrannicide, genocide, democide, and ethnocide. Stern uses the term "policide," rooted in the Greek term polis (πόλις) for "city-state" or "body politic," in order to describe what he characterizes as "a systematic project to destroy an entire way of doing and understanding politics and governance" in Chile under the governance of Augusto Pinochet.

Examples