The ruler may or may not be present in economic or social life, and thus there may be pluralism in these areas, but this is never true of political power.
In modern scholarly usage, sultanism is not limited to Muslim or Middle Eastern societies.
In 1996, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan listed the clearest examples of sultanism as "Haiti under the Duvaliers, the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, the Central African Republic under Bokassa, the Philippines under Marcos, Romania under Ceauşescu, and North Korea under Kim Il Sung".
The sultan may also use whatever forces he can to exercise his personal will, such as para-militaries or gangs as stated by Max Weber in Economy and Society: [I]n the extreme case, Sultanism tend[s] to arise whenever traditional domination develops an administration and a military force which are purely instruments of the master.
[...] The non-traditional element is not, however, rationalized in impersonal terms, but consists only in the extreme development of the ruler's discretion.