https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ponerology

"Łobaczewski adopted the term 'ponerology', which is derived from the Greek word poneros, from the branch of theology dealing with the study of evil. According to Łobaczewski, all societies vacillate between "happy times" and "unhappy times". During happy times the privileged classes enjoy prosperity and suppress advanced psychological knowledge of psychopathological influence in the corridors of power. Though happy, these times are not necessarily morally advanced as the privileged classes' prosperity or happiness may be premised on the oppression or exploitation of others. To block out such inconvenient truths (the voice of conscience) the privileged use 'conversive thinking', which means changing the outcome of the reasoning process to a more convenient outcome. This is accompanied by a rise in egotism and emotionalism. This growing 'hysteria' of the privileged classes (emotionalism, egotism and conversive thinking) spreads across society over several generations. National hysteria is a natural cycle and forms a sine-wave almost 200 years long. Hysteria causes people to lose the ability to differentiate between psychologically healthy and pathological individuals. In this environment the behavior of 'characteropaths', or individuals with slight brain tissue damage (e.g. from toxins, viruses, difficult births, pathological parenting) is accepted as normal and this acts as a gateway to normalizing the behavior of those with genetic deviations, including psychopathy. Finally, near the point of maximum hysteria society becomes polarized and paralyzed and the most pathologically egotistical of all 'spellbinders' can come to power. The spellbinder worsens the psychological health of those under his or her influence. This may be the beginning of a 'pathocracy' (though it's not inevitable) in which individuals with biologically based psychopathology, including personality disorders (especially psychopathy) occupy positions of power and influence.

The spellbinder hides behind an 'ideological mask', a belief system that he uses to gain power. Any belief system can be used as an ideological mask including religion. Psychopaths have no problems wearing personal masks or ideological masks and are accepted as normal within the spellbinder's movement. A network of psychopaths gradually begins to dominate, and they begin to eliminate the brain-tissue damaged and those who genuinely believe in the ideology. At a certain point the minority block of psychopaths has a showdown with all those they've usurped.

A full blown-pathocracy is known as a totalitarian state and characterized by a government turned against its own people. A pathocracy may emerge when a society is insufficiently guarded against the typical and inevitable minority of such abnormal pathology, which Łobaczewski asserts is caused by biology or genetics. He argues that in such cases these individuals infiltrate an institution or state, prevailing moral values are perverted into their opposite, and a coded language like Orwell's doublethink circulates into the mainstream, using paralogic and paramoralism in place of genuine logic and morality.

There are various identifiable stages of pathocracy described by Łobaczewski. Ultimately pathocracy dies because the pathological are promoted to positions of power, even though they have little or no talent or abilities.

The root of healthy social morality, according to Łobaczewski, is contained in the congenital instinctive infrastructure in the vast majority of the population, and while some in the normal population are more susceptible to pathocratic influence and become its lackeys, the majority instinctively resist. During unhappy times the intelligentsia and society at large can recover real values to resolve the new social order along mentally healthier lines."

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We lack a theory of the personality disorders since the personality disorders are adaptive, and since the PD's are adaptive the first thing they do is corrupt the means of detecting them, including fields like theology, psychology, law, and economics. Thus did Freud lead psychology down the garden path, away from the proper psych of the great Helmholtz.

Perhaps the best popular account of the PD's comes from a Christian, self-help perspective, e.g.:

https://www.amazon.com/Sheeps-Clothing-Understanding-Dealing-Manipulative/dp/1935166301

But these works don't speak to the structural dynamics at play. A toy model of these:

1) Divide people into three types: sheep, wolves, and shepherds.

2) Sheep produce wool and meat.

3) Wolves eat sheep.

4) Shepherds protect sheep from wolves.

5) A shepherd may turn into a wolf, and a wolf into a shepherd, but sheep remain sheep.

6) Wolves may disguise themselves as sheep or shepherds, and even produce wool and meat (but not as much).

7) Wolves can eat shepherds.

8) Wolves disguised as sheep or shepherds can induce sheep to disregard or even kill shepherds.

9) Wolves and shepherds may be produced by wolves or sheep, but only sheep produce sheep.

Drawn to the productive capacity of a mass of sheep, the tendency over time is for the shepherds to first be replaced by wolves, and then for the sheep to be wittled down.

Any successful institution attracts the character disordered, who are skilled at rent-seeking and claiming credit but not primary production. The proper sheep morality instilled by shepherds is replaced by sheep morality as taught by wolves, which optimizes for quickly harvesting flocks and leaving moldering bones.

These general dynamics apply to institutions in general. Thus morality is ground down to base consequentialism; the natural law to the Holmesian bad man; homo sapien to homo economicus.

The problem is systemic. The only solutions are evolutionary / game theoretic and temporary. E.g., the wolves may starve and be out-competed by a nation of sheep that is isolated such that wolves can't immigrate. Or, a wise contingent of wolves may convert to (perhaps pseudo-) shepherds and kill a sufficient quantity of wolves that their sheep remain productive.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4972794&forum_id=2#43510327)

This is a shorter write up of most of the same ideas covered in the book

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4972794&forum_id=2#43637242)