This paper proposes a novel military philosophy inspired meta-heuristic algorithm called democratic joint operations algorithm (DJOA), which attempts to find the optimal parameters of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers of permanent magnetic synchronous generator (PMSG) based wind energy conversion system (WECS), such that a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) under different wind speed profiles can be achieved. In order to realize a deeper optimum search, an additional deputy officer is introduced into the democratic defensive operations of each military unit, in which the soldiers can wisely seek a more optimal defensive position following the consensus/compromise of the officer and deputy officer. Furthermore, the shuffling strategy of shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) is employed for the shuffling regroup operations of DJOA, which effectively avoids the local optimum trapping by sharing the global position information among all the soldiers. Three case studies are carried out, e.g., step change of wind speed, low-turbulence stochastic wind speed variation, and high-turbulence stochastic wind speed variation, respectively. Simulation results verify that an improved optimal power extraction can be realized by DJOA compared with that of other five typical meta heuristic algorithms.