A system of governance or political control based on the authority of caciques or local strongmen; regional political patronage.
English coinage: cacique + -ism (suffix for systems or doctrines). Developed in 19th-20th century political analysis to describe real patterns in Latin American governance.
Caciquism describes actual power structures in many Latin American regions where local strongmen hold more real authority than national governments—it's a political term invented to capture a genuine historical phenomenon.
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