A Word Used More Often Than the Thing Exists

In contemporary political usage, theocracy is applied loosely to any state where religious law or religious authorities hold significant formal power, a usage broader than the strict Josephan sense of a polity with no human ruler at all. Modern Iran is frequently called a theocracy for the constitutional authority its Supreme Leader and Guardian Council hold over legislation and elections, though the state also has an elected president and parliament operating within those bounds, illustrating how modern theocratic states in practice usually combine clerical authority with other institutions rather than dispensing with human government entirely.

Political scientists distinguish theocracy proper, where religious authorities directly hold political office and rule, from a religious establishment, where a state formally endorses a religion without clergy directly governing, a distinction that matters because the word theocracy is often used polemically, applied to states its critics wish to characterize as authoritarian, more often than as a precise technical classification agreed on by the states so described. Afghanistan under Taliban rule and Saudi Arabia's combination of monarchy with a constitution built on Islamic law are also regularly discussed in this looser sense, each combining religious and political authority differently from the others.