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Oligarchy (from Greek Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few' and ἄρχω (arkho) 'to rule or to command') is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, or military control. Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who typically pass their influence from one generation to the next, but inheritance is not a necessary condition for the application of this term.

Throughout history, oligarchies have often been tyrannical (relying on public obedience and/or oppression to exist) though others have been seen as relatively benign. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy. However, oligarchy is not always rule by the wealthy, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group, and do not have to be connected by either wealth or by bloodlines - as in a monarchy.

History

Athenian techniques to prevent the rise of oligarchy

Especially during the fourth century BC, after the restoration of democracy from oligarchical coups, the Athenians used the drawing of lots for selecting government officers in order to counteract what the Athenians acutely saw as a tendency toward oligarchy in government if a professional governing class were allowed to use their skills for their own benefit. They drew lots from large groups of adult volunteers as a selection technique for civil servants performing judicial, executive, and administrative functions (archai, boulē, and hēliastai). They even used lots for very important posts, such as judges and jurors in the political courts (nomothetai), which had the power to overrule the Assembly.

Manifestations

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Forms of government and other political structures associated with oligarchy can include aristocracy, meritocracy, military junta, plutocracy, stratocracy, technocracy, theocracy and timocracy.

Corporate oligarchy

Corporate oligarchy is a form of power, governmental or operational, where such power effectively rests with a small, elite group of inside individuals, sometimes from a small group of educational institutions, or influential economic entities or devices, such as banks, commercial entities, lobbyists that act in complicity with, or at the whim of the oligarchy, often with little or no regard for constitutionally protected prerogative. Monopolies are sometimes granted to state-controlled entities, such as the Royal Charter granted to the East India Company. Today's multinational corporations function as corporate oligarchies with influence over democratically elected officials.

Specific examples

China

Currently, the central authority of the Chinese government is concentrated in the Politburo Standing Committee, which is composed of 7-members, of the Communist Party of China headed by the General Secretary of the Central Committee. China's powers have been distributed from the office of General Secretary of the Communist Party and shared with the Politburo Standing Committee.

Russian Federation

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991, privately owned Russia-based multinational corporations, including producers of petroleum, natural gas, and metal have, in the view of some analysts, become oligarchs. In May 2004, the Russian edition of Forbes identified 36 of these oligarchs as being worth at least $1 billion each. A report by Credit Suisse in 2013 states that :Russia has the highest level of wealth inequality in the world, apart from small Caribbean nations with resident billionaires. Worldwide, there is one billionaire for every USD 170 billion in household wealth; Russia has one for every USD 11 billion. Worldwide, billionaires collectively account for 1%– 2% of total household wealth; in Russia today 110 billionaires own 35% of all wealth."

South Africa

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A modern example of oligarchy could be seen in South Africa during much of the twentieth century. Here, the basic characteristics of oligarchy are particularly easy to observe, since the South African form of oligarchy was based on an oligos (few) clearly defined by race. After the Second Boer War, a tacit agreement or understanding was reached between English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites. Together, they made up about twenty percent of the population, but this small percentage ruled the vast non-white and mixed-race population. Whites had access to virtually all the educational and trade opportunities, and they proceeded to deny this to the black majority even further than before.

Although this process had been going on since the mid-17th to 18th century, after 1948 it became official Afrikaner National Party government policy and was known as apartheid. This lasted until the arrival of majority rule in South Africa in 1994, punctuated by the transition to a democratically-elected government dominated by the black majority.

United States

This section may be unbalanced toward certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page. (May 2014)

Some contemporary authors have characterized current conditions in the United States as being oligarchic in nature. Simon Johnson wrote that "the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent," a structure which he delineated as being the "most advanced" in the world. Jeffrey A. Winters says that "oligarchy and democracy operate within a single system, and American politics is a daily display of their interplay." Bernie Sanders (I-VT) opined in a 2010 The Nation article that an "upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country."

French economist Thomas Piketty states in his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century that "the risk of a drift towards oligarchy is real and gives little reason for optimism about where the United States is headed."

A study conducted by political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern University) was released in April 2014, which stated that their "analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts." It also suggested that "Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise."" Gilens and Page do not characterize the US as an "oligarchy" per se; however, they do apply the concept of "civil oligarchy" as used by Winters with respect to the US.

Most recently, Jeffrey Winters has posited a comparative theory of “Oligarchy,” in which the wealthiest citizens – even in a “civil oligarchy” like the United States – dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth- and income-protection.

Gilens says that average citizens only get what they want if economic elites or interest groups also want it, that is economic elites and interest groups are influential. When Fed chair Janet Yellen was questioned by Bernie Sanders about the study at a congressional hearing in May 2014, she responded “There’s no question that we’ve had a trend toward growing inequality” and that this trend “can shape determine the ability of different groups to participate equally in a democracy and have grave effects on social stability over time.”

In fiction

A well-known fictional oligarchy is represented by the Inner Party in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The socialists in the Jack London novel The Iron Heel fight a rebellion against the oligarchy ruling in the United States. In the Ender's Quartet, by Orson Scott Card - specifically Xenocide, Speaker for the Dead, and Children of The Mind - there is an Oligarchy of the Starways Congress which rules by controlling communication by the Ansible. The nation Panem, controlled by its Capitol, in The Hunger Games trilogy is also a form of oligarchy, as is the nation of Tear (ruled by a group of High Lords, until the appointment of High Lord Darlin as King of Tear) in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.

See also

References

1. "ὀλίγος", Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
2. "ἄρχω", Liddell/Scott.
3. "ὀλιγαρχία". Liddell/Scott.
4. Winters (2011) p. 37
5. M.H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes 97, 308, et al. (Oxford, 1991)
6. Bernard Manin. Principles of Representative Government. p. 11-24 (1997).
7. Manin (1997), p. 19-23.
8. "New Politburo Standing Committee decided: Mingjing News". Want China Times. 18 October 2012. Retrieved 2 January 2013.
9. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/60263/marshall-i-goldman/putin-and-the-oligarchs, Putin and the Oligarchs, Foreign Affairs. November/December 2004
10. Global Wealth Report Credit Suisse, p October 2013 page 53
11. Kroll, Andy (2 December 2010). "The New American Oligarchy". TomDispatch. Truthout. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
12. America on the Brink of Oligarchy 24 August 2012 The New Republic
13. Johnson, Simon (May 2009). "The Quiet Coup". The Atlantic. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
14. Winters, Jeffrey A. (November–December 2011) . "Oligarchy and Democracy". The American Interest. 7 (2). Retrieved 17 August 2012.
15. Sanders, Bernie (22 July 2010). "No To Oligarchy". The Nation. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
16. Piketty, Thomas (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Belknap Press. ISBN 067443000X p. 514
17. Gilens, Martin (9 April 2016). "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF): 6. Most recently, Jeffrey Winters has posited a comparative theory of 'Oligarchy,' in which the wealthiest citizens—even in a 'civil oligarchy' like the United States—dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth- and income-protection. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
18. Prokop, A. (April 18, 2014) "The new study about oligarchy that's blowing up the Internet, explained" Vox
19. John Nichols (7 May 2014). Bernie Sanders Asks Fed Chair Whether the US Is an Oligarchy. The Nation. Retrieved 7 May 2014.

Further reading

• Aslund, Anders (2005), "Comparative Oligarchy: Russia, Ukraine and the United States" (PDF), CASE Network Studies and Analyses No. 296, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, doi:10.2139/ssrn.1441910 {{citation}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
• Gordon, Daniel (2010). "Hiring Law Professors: Breaking the Back of an American Plutocratic Oligarchy". Widener Law Journal. 19. Harrisburg, PA: Widener University School of Law: 1–29.
• Hollingsworth, Mark; Lansley, Stewart (12 August 2010). Londongrad: From Russia with Cash: The Inside Story of the Oligarchs. Fourth Estate. ISBN 978-0007356379. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• J. M. Moore, ed. (1986). Aristotle and Xenophon on democracy and oligarchy. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02909-7.
• Ostwald, M. Oligarchia: The Development of a Constitutional Form in Ancient Greece (Historia Einzelschirften; 144). Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000 (ISBN 3-515-07680-8).
• Ramseyer, J. Mark; Rosenbluth, Frances McCall (28 March 1998). The Politics of Oligarchy: Institutional Choice in Imperial Japan. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521636490. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Tabachnick, David; Koivukoski, Toivu (20 January 2012). On Oligarchy: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1442661165. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Whibley, Leonard (1896). Greek oligarchies, their character and organisations. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
• Winters, Jeffrey A. (2011). Oligarchy. Northwestern University, Illinois: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107005280. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

External links

• Use dmy dates from March 2011
• Oligarchy
• Political culture
• Political philosophy
• Political corruption