Nuts and Bolts: words ending -archy.

 One ring to rule them all,

One ring to find them

One ring to bring them all

And in the darkness bind them.

...which would, I suppose, make Sauron's projected rule of Middle Earth a dactylethronarchy, or rule by a ring, but as far as I know no one in this world has ever tried it.

Rule by many kinds of other authorities have been tried, though. Autocracy is rule by a single rapidly-degenerating-into-madness person (though if they're selected by a lottery system then that's demarchy; and if the system is hereditary then that's a monarchy); biarchy is the same thing, but with two people rapidly degenerating into mutual hatred; decarchy has a committee of ten people in charge, and there are also words for rules by other numbers of people: octarchy, pentarchy, polyarchy. tetrarchy, and triarchy. Endarchy is any centralised system of rule (unless you're a botanist, when it's a system where fluids spread out from the centre of the plant). Futarchy is a system devised by Robin Hanson where people are ruled by principles that will tend to make them happy; gynarchy is rule by women; hierarchy is the system where the rulers are ranked in order of importance; holarchy is rule by...well. people are still arguing about that, but the basic idea seems to be that everyone is valuable for themselves; kritarchy is rule by judges.

Then we have rule by:

children - paedoarchy 

male head of family/group/everything - patriarchy

female head of family/group/everything - matriarchy

tribe/class - phylarchy

saints - hagiarchy

groups that take it in turns, depending - heterarchy

more or less anyone, but they're all horrible - kyriarchy

a group - oligarchy

the church - ecclesiarchy

someone the church hates - heresiarchy

rich people - plutarchy

poor people - ptochocarchy (except that this word doesn't actually seem to exist, which is no surprise at all. However, there is a word ptochocracy).

And, finally, depressingly, anarchy is rule by no one.

Personally, I just wish to know as little as possible about any of them.

Word To Use Today: one ending -archy. In Greek, arkhein means to rule.