Can anybody give a reasonable explanation?

[Democratus]

Why? Do monarchies replace all civil servants with kings?

Yes, typically.

They aren't given the name 'king' in deference to the ruler. Usually they are a grand minister, a esteemed councilman, a high advisor, and so forth. And each is the king of his own little bureaucratic kingdom. And their underlings are kings of their respective areas, and so forth.

[AdAstra]

Yes, typically.

They aren't given the name 'king' in deference to the ruler. Usually they are a grand minister, a esteemed councilman, a high advisor, and so forth. And each is the king of his own little bureaucratic kingdom. And their underlings are kings of their respective areas, and so forth.

Not sure if I really get this explanation, but you're referring to titles of lesser nobility right? Like barons and lords and other feudal vassals? In which case, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly.

It's not really much of a magocracy if there's only one high-level caster around. At that point your government probably has less magic power than most DnD nations, which usually have substantial numbers of mages of varying power in non-leadership roles. A magocracy implies not just that a single mage is in charge, but that the government places a greater emphasis on magical power than say, martial prowess, administrative skill, or bloodline when it comes to selecting its leaders.

[BlacKnight]

Yes, typically.

They aren't given the name 'king' in deference to the ruler. Usually they are a grand minister, a esteemed councilman, a high advisor, and so forth. And each is the king of his own little bureaucratic kingdom. And their underlings are kings of their respective areas, and so forth.

So... Ministers in modern democratic nations are kings of their own ministry.
Thus such nations are actually monarchies.

But wait, wizards are just people that knows magic, which is just a knowledge like any other. So any technician is a wizard, and any public position for which one is selected by merit of its skill is a wizard position.
So modern bureacracies are actually magocracies.

See, I can twist words and reach non sensical conclusions too.

[Cluedrew]

It does depend on the setting a lot of course, for instance I know at least one world where the answer is "Because you can't win a war without the support of the martial schools." This is not a setting based in D&D and since we are talking about those settings I will not say much on that.

Next is, what do you mean by magocracy or theocracy? If a monarchy uses the nobility to form government, a theocracy uses the church and a magocracy uses... the wizard's guild? So I guess a magocracy it a type of corporate state/trade empire except its magic users instead of general merchants. I'm not sure what that actually looks like, do you just have to be a magic user to hold a public office? Do you have to pass harder and harder tests for higher and higher offices?

Regardless of you answer an important issue occurred to me. I think a bit one D&D magic is a academic pursuit and that does not imply a united political agenda. Even among the ones who A) want to participate in politics and B) aren't just want to be tyrant wizard-kings, there are a lot of different ways they thing the world could be run. So you probably have wizards and other magic-users in all the existing political forces already. In a feudal system you probably have a lot of noble wizards who don't take power themselves but help their family's power base and benefit from that while others in the family do a lot of the actual political wrangling.

Spoiler: Off topic

Show

*Power Levels: A Typical D&D world is full of people and creatures of power levels from 1 to 20. Even if a wizard was to get to 10th level, and then decide they would want to rule the world, HALF of the world would still be more powerful them them. There is a good chance someone will oppose the wizard, and a good chance they will be more powerful.

GM: You go up to the city gates, there is a guard keeping watch.
Player: Can I scope them out? Get a feel for how strong the guard is?
GM: She is a fighter. {Rolls d20} And she is level 16.

Is that really how you run your games? Did you mean something more like "You are still only half as powerful as others out there in the world."?

[King of Nowhere]

Why? Do monarchies replace all civil servants with kings?

if most of the civil servants are not wizards, then it's not a magocracy. it's just a normal government where the top guy just happens to be a wizard.

if you consider it, in a monarchy all top level positions are filled with nobles. if you go down the line enough you'll find commoners, but you cannot get a position of high power without being a noble. or sometimes a member of the clergy.
in order to be a magocracy you need some similar system where you must be a wizard to access top tier positions. everyone above a certain title is a wizard, and the law itself says if you are not a wizard you cannot be anything more than major of a small town.
of course, just like real world nobles, many wizards would not really do anything, they'd have underlings to take care of the day-to-day administration. and people would start wondering why they get so much money and power since they don't seem to be useful for anything. except a revolution would be much more difficult when every single noble can cast fireballs and every non-noble cannot.

[Zarrgon]

GM: You go up to the city gates, there is a guard keeping watch.
Player: Can I scope them out? Get a feel for how strong the guard is?
GM: She is a fighter. {Rolls d20} And she is level 16.

Is that really how you run your games? Did you mean something more like "You are still only half as powerful as others out there in the world."?

Off Topic? Trust me that a multiple leveled high magic world stops "spellcaster take overs".

I go by the idea that NPCs gain a level about every 3-5 years if they lead a mundane life. If they are involved in more danger or combat, that rate will be much faster. So yes, most guards level faster then say cooks. Also, I run the Status Que World where the bouncer at the underdark tavern is a 13th level fighter when the PCs go there, no matter what level the PCs are(when they 2nd level PCs start a cool bar fight to be annoying they are in for a surprise).

[TeChameleon]

Short answer, at least from my point of view?

The personality traits that would tend to drive you towards devoting your life to the magical equivalent of lifelong academia aren't the ones that would generally tend to drive you towards seeking domination over large groups of people. Nor, for that matter, are they the traits that would typically lend themselves towards extensive co-operation.

Sure, there will be wizards here and there who decide to Show Them, Show Them ALL!, or whatever, but there's a pretty good reason for the 'wizard in a lone tower' stereotype. The mindset that leads to spending your days pondering the mysteries of the infinite in order to violate the laws of reality on a regular basis isn't one that would generally derive any real satisfaction from dealing with the problems of the great unwashed. There's probably a pretty good reason we don't have more cosmologists in politics, after all

[Kelb_Panthera]

Re: governance.

Again, we are conflating “I can think of reasons some wizards may not be optimal governors” with “clearly wizards can’t govern (because they aren’t my idea of an optimal governor.” To use someone else’s example, you may may need to be this tall to stay on the ride, but the theoretical existence of a seven foot man doesn’t mean no one else can get on the roller coaster.

We have seen men ranging from merchants to priests to illiterate warrior castes to ruthless ideologues all govern societies and manage to stay in power. We have also seen a trend in more modern societies for lawyers to take an active role as leaders. Plenty of family dynasties as well.

They haven’t all fallen apart for lack of being the perfect governor, and indeed for having their primary skill set be something other than governance, is it really practical to believe that although we literally had hundreds of years of superstitious, often illiterate, warrior castes stay in positions of power somehow mages couldn’t do it? That even though a bunch of Greek demagogues could govern with little qualification besides agricultural wealth and a talent for stirring up the public - that somehow mages would have zero chance to do what rabble rousing gentlemen farmers did just fine?

Frankly, it’s grasping at straws. Can we just admit the writers either screwed up but we don’t care because that’s not the game we want, or that the writers really do want magicracjes everywhere but we want to rationalize it away because that’s not the game we want?

As you said, the existence of a seven foot man doesn't mean no one else can get on the rollercoaster. The mere fact that a mage is -not- a perfect ruler is exactly why you can't presume magocracies would overtake societies' highest rungs with any reliability.

Even with all of the tools that a mage -may- have at his disposal, you can't presume his perfect use of them anymore than you could presume an architect or engineer would never make a mistake in building whatever structure they're working on. There's no doubt a ruler with access to the wealth of information available through divination would be able to govern a bit better than average and would be irritatingly difficult to unseat with a surgical coup but it wouldn't protect him from his own failings or the people's response to them.

Would there be -some- magocracies from time to time? Sure, of course. Would that be all there ever was? No, of course not. For all the same reasons that not all RL governments are or were the same; people, especially powerful people, just don't make a reliably stable system. Not even magic can fix that.

[Gnoman]

One key idea is that much of thr caster disparity is built on a "spherical wizard in a vacuum" model. Meanimg that players have access to every spell and can plausibly build their casters to use them. In-universe NPCs do not have that knowledge.

[Democratus]

So... Ministers in modern democratic nations are kings of their own ministry.
Thus such nations are actually monarchies.

True. This has been a problem in many countries throughout history. The bureaucracy becomes more powerful than even the leaders and ends up being de facto rulers. A monarchy with the illusion of democracy.

[Telok]

One key idea is that much of thr caster disparity is built on a "spherical wizard in a vacuum" model. Meanimg that players have access to every spell and can plausibly build their casters to use them. In-universe NPCs do not have that knowledge.

How do we know? In AD&D, yes. Because of the limits on learning spells and 3d6 stats paradigm. After that, what rules are there that say any casters don't have to option to know any particular spell on their list? I can't find any rules in the last couple D&Ds for NPCs or PCs saying they don't have the option of taking particular spells on their lists (3.5 specialists excepted).

[Silly Name]

How do we know? In AD&D, yes. Because of the limits on learning spells and 3d6 stats paradigm. After that, what rules are there that say any casters don't have to option to know any particular spell on their list? I can't find any rules in the last couple D&Ds for NPCs or PCs saying they don't have the option of taking particular spells on their lists (3.5 specialists excepted).

This a case of the rules and the logical assumptions built on the fluff not coinciding, for the player's benefit.

If we go by what the books tell us, among primary casters, only Wizards actually learn their spells. Clerics, druid and warlocks are all granted spells by some higher power, who in theory could dictate what spells are actually accessible for the character in question. Sorcerers don't really learn spells as much as they discover powers that already existed in their bloodline and learn how to better manipulate them, but still have an hard limit on how many spells they will ever known.

Wizards are the only ones who actually study and learn magic, training themselves in how to correctly cast a spell rather than having their brains imbued with that knowledge by a god or a demon or by virtue of having a dragon somewhere in their family tree. But, this also implies that, contrary to game mechanics, wizards can't just pick up any spell that is written on a splatbook: they need to actually know the spell in question exists and research it, spending their downtime training and collecting the knowledge necessary to use the spell.

It's similar to how your fighter doesn't suddenly learn new combat maneuvers when they level up: in-fiction, they spent days or weeks training and refining that maneuver, and the level up simply represents having acquired sufficient mastery of this combat technique that it can be used in actual battles.

Now, all of this doesn't apply to the players, for their benefit: you don't need to announce early what new skills you want to acquire at level up, it is retroactively assumed you spent the necessary time training; the DM doesn't act as a stand-in for gods and patrons and dictate what spells warlocks and clerics get, and neither do they act as arbiters of what spells the wizard may learn (keep in mind, of course, that a DM is free to ban or restrict certain spells in their games).

[Mendicant]

IMO, the only plausible reason for spellcasters not to predominate in positions of power is conservation of magic power. Mages need to be some combination of low-power, low-efficiency, and rare, or they're going to be the default military and social elite. Even then, they're unlikely to be far from the halls of power.

The combination of raw personal power and greater learning and wisdom would over time distribute those people into positions of authority, without the need for "Dominate Person"-based coups. Unless magic wielders are a sudden, new introduction, power structures would reflect their existence as obvious sources of authority, knowledge and coercion dating back well before anything we would recognize as a modern or premodern "government". Clan elders with divination that actually works and war leaders that can actually summon monsters would evolve into queens and ministers and generals without any need to overthrow anything. It would just be baked into people's assumptions about who ought to run things. Bonus points if magic works off of charisma, blood ties, divine patronage or exceptional intelligence.

You don't need to be a megalomaniac to seek power and you don't need to be a practiced politician or even particularly competent to wield it. Every objection about magic being insufficient to run a country runs smack into the problem that it doesn't *need* to be. The choice isn't between scrying and a spy network, it's between a spy network + scrying and a spy network by itself.

[Willie the Duck]

You don't need to be a megalomaniac to seek power and you don't need to be a practiced politician or even particularly competent to wield it. Every objection about magic being insufficient to run a country runs smack into the problem that it doesn't *need* to be. The choice isn't between scrying and a spy network, it's between a spy network + scrying and a spy network by itself.

People have addressed that multiple times already in the thread. No one is saying that wizards couldn't be rulers, only that they will not dominate because (using your example) the overall benefit of ruler doing the scrying compared to the ruler having a wizard to do the scrying for them is small (plus my side point that scrying, and lots of other spells in the books, aren't actually all that useful on a kingdom-ruling level).

EDIT: (noticed hostile sounding tone) which is not to say you can't disagree, of course, I'd just love to know your reasoning if that's the case.

[Telok]

People have addressed that multiple times already in the thread. No one is saying that wizards couldn't be rulers, only that they will not dominate because (using your example) the overall benefit of ruler doing the scrying compared to the ruler having a wizard to do the scrying for them is small (plus my side point that scrying, and lots of other spells in the books, aren't actually all that useful on a kingdom-ruling level).

EDIT: (noticed hostile sounding tone) which is not to say you can't disagree, of course, I'd just love to know your reasoning if that's the case.

I think that the various self only buffs and defenses could help, likewise casters tend to have better save versus mind control. In addition the leaders having particular or custom spells could help ward against dopplegangers and illithid trying to replace people.

Hmm. To-do for my next setting: a kingdom run by a family of dopplegangers. Where they took over a generation or two ago and then turned out to be good at it.

[Mendicant]

People have addressed that multiple times already in the thread. No one is saying that wizards couldn't be rulers, only that they will not dominate because (using your example) the overall benefit of ruler doing the scrying compared to the ruler having a wizard to do the scrying for them is small (plus my side point that scrying, and lots of other spells in the books, aren't actually all that useful on a kingdom-ruling level).

EDIT: (noticed hostile sounding tone) which is not to say you can't disagree, of course, I'd just love to know your reasoning if that's the case.

This hasn't really been addressed, because this paragraph isn't separate from the rest of its post. People who have a direct leg up in acquiring power, hanging onto power, and being perceived to hold a more legitimate right to power are going to filter into positions of power. It will be an accepted norm that is older than the empires and city states it is operating in. "The normal course of things is that we are ruled by a military elite" was a much older norm than, say, Merovingian France.

Long before any kind of system develops where you have specialized ministers like court mages or complex systems of nobility or vassalage or heredity, you're going to have much smaller societies ruled based on personal charisma, personal power, or perceived divine link. Spellcasters are more likely to have all of these, and it's much more likely that by the time more complex governments evolve, it's more likely you'll have a ruler and a court fighter, not a ruler and a court wizard.

The only way this doesn't happen is if there is an active barrier to spellcasters being rulers, ministers, etc. and I haven't seen many good ones.

[Democratus]

In the olden times, when a wizard reached level 10 she built a tower and followers flocked in to follow her.

Eventually the tower could become the center of a community with the wizard at its center.

[KineticDiplomat]

It looks as if the better part of those arguing have conceded that mage-ocracies could exist, and that they aren’t somehow stopped by wishful thinking that “them nerds couldn’t rule”. It’s a good start.

So, then we run into what are the actual basis of government? Fundamentally, force. Oh, you’ll certainly have custom and law and so forth, but none of those work if you don’t have some sort of ability to defend your self/subjects/citizens/property/rights/beliefs/etc. realistically. Both from outside aggression and to serve as a coercive power enabling you government to do whatever it does internally.

When everyone is more or less equal at killing the next guy, that gets channeled through armies, leaders, and so forth. While you don’t need to be personally fluent in force to rule under those conditions, it certainly helps - particularly in smaller bands where often ass-kicking really does equal authority. Even at a larger scale, history is replete with governments that found they weren’t a government anymore when a general disagreed.

D&D isn’t a world where most people are basically equal at killing. It’s a world where you either have magic and therefore trump everything, or you’re pathetic cannon fodder, at best a second ran until a mage supposedly your junior flicks you aside contemptuously.

And that world looks a lot like the same social dynamics that created knight and feudalism. A period where one caste was so much supremely more useful at killing that they became the government.

[Anonymouswizard]

Why? Do monarchies replace all civil servants with kings?

Despite what people have claimed on this thread, no. They don't even replace them all with nobles.

Long story short, and simplifying somewhat, a monarchy can be one of two things, an Absolute Monarchy where power flows from the monarch, or a Constitutional Monarchy where the power flows from the constitution or elected government. In an absolute monarchy the administrators will generally, but not always, be nobles, while in a constitutional monarchy they may or may not be (and are probably more mixed in noble/commoner terms than in an absolute monarchy).

An absolute monarchy is not automatically an autocracy, but I really don't want to get into an in-depth discussion of political systems as I know very little about them. The setting I'm working on at the moment is a feudal principality with occasional spellcaster administrators (mainly city and town administrators, and licenced sorcerers are officially barred from holding direct political power*).

* Which suits most of them fine, they've bargained it into a lot of perks including a country-wide monopoly on nondivine magic. Those that do wield political power do so on behalf of others, or manipulate behind the scenes.

[The Fury]

In honesty, I can think of reasons why a magic user would not want to be a head of state or otherwise running a government. Sure, you have a lot of political clout, especially when your nation is doing well. That said, when you run a nation of some kind, you're responsible for it. Not only do you get credit for when your country does well, but you also take ownership when things get bad. Rival factions and nations will be gunning for you, you need to manage the day-to-day functions to keep your country stable.

However, if you were a court mage on retainer for a noble, minister, or monarch, you get a sizable amount of political power. Probably a very comfortable living and a fair amount of resources too. As a bonus, anyone attempting to overthrow the government you work for will probably prioritize your boss over you. If you were an unscrupulous, clever sort, you could even manipulate your "boss" and effectively run the government while allowing them to take the fall if things go wrong.

TL;DR, Running a nation is very high-risk, high reward. Working for people that run nations is lower risk, but still high reward.

[TeChameleon]

Yeah, my biggest question is still why a wizard would want to be the head/a member of a country-running elite. Sure, it sounds good on paper, but, at least in my experience, a lot of the type of people who want to spend their entire lives studying really don't care that much about the rest of the world as long as they've got someone to wash their socks and make them eat occasionally. If there's anybody they care about impressing, it's their fellow-academics (i.e. other wizards), who likewise don't tend to be all that impressed by things outside their fields (like governing a country). An award given by a group of those they acknowledge as their peers? They'll run the streets red with blood if they have to for a chance at that. Ruling over those whom they do not acknowledge as their peers? 'Who are these stupid people, and why do they keep bothering me with their insignificant little problems?'

I'm not saying that a mageocracy is impossible, or even that unlikely, just that they wouldn't be nearly as common as the OP seems to be positing.

[King of Nowhere]

It looks as if the better part of those arguing have conceded that mage-ocracies could exist

I'm not saying that a mageocracy is impossible, or even that unlikely, just that they wouldn't be nearly as common as the OP seems to be positing.

here is the thing: nobody has ever argued that there would be no magocracies.
the argument is not "wizards can rule" against "wizards cannot rule". no, the argument is "every ruler would be a wizard" against "it is possible to be a muggle and still rule".
if nothing else, the burden of proof would be on demonstrating that a non-caster cannot, possibly, ever be a ruler. which i don't think anyone would argue.

the overall benefit of ruler doing the scrying compared to the ruler having a wizard to do the scrying for them is small (plus my side point that scrying, and lots of other spells in the books, aren't actually all that useful on a kingdom-ruling level).

I think we can all safely agree that no ruler can avoid being outcompeted without access to magic. whether the ruler has access to magic because he himself is a spellcaster, or because he has loial court wizard(s), that will depend. there are certainly many good arguments that can be made both on why the guy with the spell slots would float on top, or why he would stay an employee.

[Clistenes]

Despite what people have claimed on this thread, no. They don't even replace them all with nobles.

Long story short, and simplifying somewhat, a monarchy can be one of two things, an Absolute Monarchy where power flows from the monarch, or a Constitutional Monarchy where the power flows from the constitution or elected government. In an absolute monarchy the administrators will generally, but not always, be nobles, while in a constitutional monarchy they may or may not be (and are probably more mixed in noble/commoner terms than in an absolute monarchy).

An absolute monarchy is not automatically an autocracy, but I really don't want to get into an in-depth discussion of political systems as I know very little about them. The setting I'm working on at the moment is a feudal principality with occasional spellcaster administrators (mainly city and town administrators, and licenced sorcerers are officially barred from holding direct political power*).

* Which suits most of them fine, they've bargained it into a lot of perks including a country-wide monopoly on nondivine magic. Those that do wield political power do so on behalf of others, or manipulate behind the scenes.

A non-Constitutional Monarchy isn't necessarily an Absolute Monarchy. So long as there are checks to the king's power, like a powerful feudal nobility with traditional rights the king can't overrule and their own armies and fiefdoms they rule and tax, or a church with temporal (judicial, military, administrative) power of their own, or self-governing free cities that choose their own governments and make their own laws the king can't repeal, or medieval type parliaments that can repeal royal taxes not backed by tradition...etc., the monarchy isn't Absolute...

In an Absolute Monarchy the king theoretically can do whatever he wants, at least until he pisses enough people that he provokes a rebellion (which is the reason Absolute Monarchs usually restrain themselves and don't do whatever they want...).

[Drascin]

Again, there's a difference between "magocracy" and "monarchy where the king is a wizard".

To be a something-cracy, that means that the trait in question is important to achieving political power. A plutocracy means that the richer you are the more socially powerful you are. An aristocracy means that the more prestigious your lineage is the more social power you have. And so on. A magocracy, thus, means a place where your magical ability is directly related to your position - a magocracy is something like Thay, where if you're not a wizard you straight up do not matter to the levers of political power. If you have a magocracy that means pretty much all the most prestigious and important civil positions are filled by mages, in the same way you could not expect to be lord of a feud if your family wasn't prestigious as hell (unless the king himself came and made you a new prestigious family, entering you into the system). If you have a wizard-king but most of the civil servants are just dudes, you do not have a magocracy. You have a bog-standard monarchy where the king happens to also be able to summon demons.

So, sure, there could be plenty of places that think magic of a specific type is an important marker of power. Those would be magocracies. There could similarly be a ton of places where the king happens to be a caster but otherwise it's just normal delegation. There could be plenty of places where it's a normal kingdom but the king has a prestigious vizier position that is traditionally always a wizard. You could have aristocracies where it is considered proper that every aristocratic family trains their eldest in wizardry, blurring the line between the two. Etcetera.

(Also this should probably be in the D&D forums, seeing how this is very much not a generic RPG thing).

[Anonymouswizard]

A non-Constitutional Monarchy isn't necessarily an Absolute Monarchy. So long as there are checks to the king's power, like a powerful feudal nobility with traditional rights the king can't overrule and their own armies and fiefdoms they rule and tax, or a church with temporal (judicial, military, administrative) power of their own, or self-governing free cities that choose their own governments and make their own laws the king can't repeal, or medieval type parliaments that can repeal royal taxes not backed by tradition...etc., the monarchy isn't Absolute...

In an Absolute Monarchy the king theoretically can do whatever he wants, at least until he pisses enough people that he provokes a rebellion (which is the reason Absolute Monarchs usually restrain themselves and don't do whatever they want...).

Sure, I was simplifying. And even without written in stone limits an absolute monarch's powers only extend far as his administrators are willing. History has examples of civilians rebelling against their governments, governments rebelling against their monarch, and even monarchs rebelling against their government.

It's a simplification, but it's a gameable simplification.

[Tanarii]

Why aren't most c-levels engineers or programmers? Why aren't most politicians hard-scientists? Because there's trivial overlap between the successful application to the position of the necessary trained skill, natural talent, and effectively wielded personal power that results.

Also, because the BECMI rules say that only fighters get a domain. As well as a fighter knows how to lead armies, can build strongholds, and naturally attracts a body of followers at name level. All a Wizard knows to do is build a tower with a dungeon beneath it for monsters to inhabit, or work as a court wizard. Incidentally clerics can build strongholds and attract followers, since they're basically a member of a military religious order, but they don't rule domains.

It's worth noting that in older editions of D&D, successfully casting a spell when there were melee combatants around was a non-trivial exercise. And that Fighters and Clerics had amazing saves at high levels, approaching impossible to affect with any save spell at epic levels.

In 3e? Eh, who knows. That edition quickly became viewed as RAW over everything, but also took away most of the things that kept magic in check. I liked it a lot at the time, but looking back it's easy to pick a lot of holes in it.

[Nifft]

Also, because the BECMI rules say that only fighters get a domain.

Therefore, only fighters can be clerics, and all monarchies are theocracies.

[Tanarii]

Therefore, only fighters can be clerics, and all monarchies are theocracies.

And the resulting wave of natural disasters is how they learned never to mix D&D edition terminology again

[Vahnavoi]

Let's look at what happened in history of Praedor's Jaconia:

In ages past, the world was a magocracy. The entire plane-wide society was founded upon everyday use of planar gates and immortality elixir. It was either near or actual post-scarcity society, with wizards at every level of goverment.

The strain the resultant overpopulation and overuse of their technology placed on the multiverse caused an apocalyptic, multiplanar collapse. Only a group of what were essentially wizard luddites survived.

These wizards did rule as a class of wizard-nobles and wizard-kings for ages, but in order to prevent replicating the disaster that destroyed their former society, they had to limit use of planar gates and immortality elixir. This put a cap on their numbers, created a lower class of vulnerable wizard-aspirants, as well as an ever-growing slave-class of mortals.

As the wizard-kings grew increasingly decadent and insane, not only did some of the slaves escape and rebel, demanding for freedom, the internal tensions within the magocracy made the wizards turn against each other. This culminated in yet another, smaller-scale societal collapse followed by a civil war, where some younger wizards openly sided with the revolting slaves and brought the remaining wizard-kings down.

The cost of this was so great that the magocratic wizard society could never recover. They voluntarily retreated into their own, highly-isolationist smaller communities, with the community of now-free mortals creating their own governments in the ruins of the wizards.

Since Jaconia is essentially post-apocalyptic Tippyverse (largely predating Tippyverse, mind you), you can take Praedor's answer and apply it liberally to various D&D settings: not all goverments are magocracies or magical theocracies, because sometimes those fail catastrophically and leave room for non-magical goverments to form. Note that many D&D's settings already have this process as part of their histories, in one form or another.

[NigelWalmsley]

Something like Vahnavoi's point is the best answer. Just because mageocracy dominates in the long run doesn't mean it dominates right now. In the real world, it took thousands of years to go from the emergence of civilization to empires that could even claim to be global in scope. D&D has various trends pushing that number up or down, but seeing as most campaigns last a single-digit number of in-game years (with that digit often being 1), it's entirely plausible to say "this campaign happens before mages take over the world", just as if you want to write a story without guns you can set it before the invention of gunpowder.

Why aren't most c-levels engineers or programmers? Why aren't most politicians hard-scientists? Because there's trivial overlap between the successful application to the position of the necessary trained skill, natural talent, and effectively wielded personal power that results.

That's not really the right analogy. It's not like historically the king was king because we was the best at ruling. He was king because he was descended from the last guy who assembled a large enough army that "look at all these dudes who will stab you if you don't put me in charge" seemed like a compelling reason to have him be in charge. In a world where that's the paradigm for allocating political power, the question "why isn't the guy who can summon an army of demons in charge" becomes a lot less obvious.