I'd never heard this term before (of course there's a wikipedia site about it): politicide: a gradual but systematic attempt to cause the annihilation of an independent political and social entity.
Here's a story about politicide from NPR that illustrates the difficulty of holding competitive elections in a totalitarian country. In 2301 we discussed the recent elections in Zimbabwe where an opposition candidate won the elections, but Robert Mugabe (who makes most top ten evil dictator lists) engineered a second round, but not before literally killing off the opposition. The story is told in a book titled The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe:
. . . three years ago, the nation held supposedly "free and fair" elections. Although Mugabe tried to rig them, he was defeated. Godwin raced home, he writes, "to dance on Robert Mugabe's political grave."
But Mugabe wasn't going anywhere. For weeks, he suppressed election results, then insisted on a runoff between himself and winning opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. While Mugabe stalled, he mobilized militias to unleash a wholesale campaign of torture, imprisonment and death against the opposition party, known as the MDC.
Everyone was targeted. Candidates elected to Parliament. Voting organizers. A couple who painted a pro-MDC sign on the side of their store. Farmers, housewives — even children and babies who simply lived in villages where the MDC won a majority — were tortured and killed. Mugabe launched a scorched earth policy against his own people.
Dubbed "Operation Let Us Finish Them Off," there was nothing covert or nuanced about it.
Instead of writing a political obituary, Godwin found himself keeping a body count in the midst of a "politicide."
