Regency
A
regency is the period of rule of a regent or regents. A regent, from the Latin
regens, " reigning", or
regency council is a person or group of persons selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Occasionally, the term regent refers to positions lower than the ruler of a country. In the Republic of the United Provinces, the members of the ruling class, not formally hereditary but de facto patricians, were known collectively as
regenten. In the Dutch East Indies, a regent was a native prince allowed to rule de facto colonized 'state' as a regentschap. Consequently, in the successor state of Indonesia, the term regent is used in English to mean a
bupati. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Kedah.