Gerontocracy

Near-synonyms: senilocracy, graocracy (archaic)

It would come as no surprise to find that optimum science policy is apt to be developed neither by gerontocracy nor by juvenocracy but, like the community of scientists itself, by age-diversified meritocracy.

But in his 1996 novel, Holy Fire, [Bruce] Sterling imagines a rather different future: a world ruled by an all-powerful gerontocracy, which appropriates most of the world's wealth to pay for ever more costly life-extension techniques.

Young people who are close to writing off the Democratic Party as a dinosaur, as a gerontocracy of prudish abuelos who gave birth by immaculate conception, may be in for a pleasant surprise.

He [Koizumi] was what would pass for a political maverick among Japan's faceless gray gerontocracy.