The term minotarianism refers to a structure of leadership or rule in which a minority of the group holds outsized power over the majority.

So you could technically slide various sorts of authoritarian governing models into this concept,

but more typically, it's used to refer to an ostensibly balanced democratic system of governance

that by design or accident allows a relative

minority of the people within that system to hold outsized power. Within the United States,

historically, for instance, there were policies that gave landowners outsized power and rules baked into law that gave white people

outsized power over that of black people and other people of color or recent immigrants who were

considered to be less than according to the dominant norms of the day Italians, Irish, Asians of

various origins, all sorts of people have fallen into this category

over the past few hundred years, and all have, via various legal or norms-based mechanisms,

either been excluded from or nudged out of positions of power as a consequence.

In some cases, and this has been true globally and across

history, there are groups of people delineated by belief, ethnic background, or economic class

who hold more power within a governing system, not because they themselves sit in positions

of power within that system, but because they control resources, money, or other sorts of influence

that shape the thinking and behavior of the folks who do, the people in government.

At times, this influence is overt, and everyone knows about it.

In other cases, it's more subtle, a tacit understanding,

or perhaps even a completely covert effort by one group to lord over everyone else

via a conspiracy or background set of tit-for-tat relationships. Whatever the case, this is generally

not considered to be ideal, at least through the lens of modern democratic values,

because it implies the wants and needs and priorities of a relatively small group are allowed to supersede those of everyone else, a relatively larger majority.

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