Oligarchy

Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning "few", and ἄρχω (arkho), meaning "to rule or to command")[1][2][3] is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people might be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, religious 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 or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich,[4] for which another term commonly used today is plutocracy.

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 saw as a tendency toward oligarchy in government if a professional governing class were allowed to use their skills for their own benefit.[5] They drew lots from large groups of adult volunteers that pick selection technique for civil servants performing judicial, executive, and administrative functions (archai, boulē, and hēliastai).[6] They even used lots for posts, such as judges and jurors in the political courts (nomothetai), which had the power to overrule the Assembly.[7]

Examples

Russian Federation

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, privately owned Russia-based multinational corporations, including producers of petroleum, natural gas, and metal have, in the view of some analysts, led to the rise of Russian oligarchs.

United States

Some contemporary authors have characterized current conditions in the United States as oligarchic in nature.[8][9] 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.[10] Jeffrey A. Winters wrote that "oligarchy and democracy operate within a single system, and American politics is a daily display of their interplay."[11] The top 1% in 2007 had a larger share of total income than at any time since 1928.[12] In 2011, according to PolitiFact and others, the top 400 wealthiest Americans "have more wealth than half of all Americans combined."[13][14][15][16]

In 1998, Bob Herbert of the The New York Times referred to modern American plutocrats as "The Donor Class"[17][18] (list of top donors)[19] and defined the class, for the first time,[20] as “a tiny group – just one-quarter of 1 percent of the population – and it is not representative of the rest of the nation. But its money buys plenty of access.”[17]

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."[21]

A study conducted by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University, and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, was released in April 2014,[22] which stated that their "analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts." It found that wealthy individuals and organizations representing business interests have substantial political influence, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little to none. 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 Jeffrey Winters with respect to the US. 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.[23]

Gilens says that average citizens only get what they want if wealthy Americans and business-oriented interest groups also want it; that is, economic elites and their interest groups are influential, and that when a policy favored by the majority of the American public is implemented, it is usually because the economic elites did not oppose it.[24] Other studies have questioned the Page and Gilens study.[25][26][27]

In a 2015 interview, former President Jimmy Carter stated that the United States is now "an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery," due to the Citizens United ruling, which effectively removed limits on donations to political candidates.[28]

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 Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, 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. 26-28. "Aristotle writes that 'oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands... wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy'."
  5. ↑ Hansen, Mogens Herman (1991). The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0631180173. OCLC 22809482
  6. ↑ Bernard Manin. Principles of Representative Government. pp. 11-24 (1997).
  7. ↑ Manin (1997), pp. 19-23.
  8. ↑ Kroll, Andy (2 December 2010). "The New American Oligarchy". TomDispatch (Truthout). Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  9. ↑ America on the Brink of Oligarchy 24 August 2012 The New Republic
  10. ↑ Johnson, Simon (May 2009). "The Quiet Coup". The Atlantic. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  11. ↑ Winters, Jeffrey A. (November–December 2011) [28 September 2011]. "Oligarchy and Democracy". The American Interest 7 (2). Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  12. ↑ "Tax Data Show Richest 1 Percent Took a Hit in 2008, But Income Remained Highly Concentrated at the Top. Recent Gains of Bottom 90 Percent Wiped Out". Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 25 May 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2014.
  13. ↑ Kertscher, Tom; Borowski, Greg (10 March 2011). "The Truth-O-Meter Says: True - Michael Moore says 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined". PolitiFact. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
  14. ↑ Moore, Michael (6 March 2011). "America Is Not Broke". Huffington Post. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
  15. ↑ Moore, Michael (7 March 2011). "The Forbes 400 vs. Everybody Else". michaelmoore.com. Archived from the original on 2011-03-09. Retrieved 2014-08-28.
  16. ↑ Pepitone, Julianne (22 September 2010). "Forbes 400: The super-rich get richer". CNN. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
  17. 1 2 Herbert, Bob (July 19, 1998). "The Donor Class". The New York Times. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  18. ↑ Confessore, Nicholas; Cohen, Sarah; Yourish, Karen (October 10, 2015). "The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election". The New York Times. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  19. ↑ Lichtblau, Eric; Confessore, Nicholas (October 10, 2015). "From Fracking to Finance, a Torrent of Campaign Cash - Top Donors List". The New York Times. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  20. ↑ McCutcheon, Chuck (December 26, 2014). "Why the 'donor class' matters, especially in the GOP presidential scrum". "The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  21. ↑ Piketty, Thomas (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Belknap Press. ISBN 067443000X p. 514
  22. ↑ Gilens, Martin; Page, Benjamin (9 April 2016). "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF): 6.
  23. ↑ Gilens & Page (2014) p. 6
  24. ↑ Prokop, A. (18 April 2014) "The new study about oligarchy that's blowing up the Internet, explained" Vox
  25. ↑ Bashir, Omar S. (2015-10-01). "Testing Inferences about American Politics: A Review of the “Oligarchy” Result". Research & Politics 2 (4): 2053168015608896. doi:10.1177/2053168015608896. ISSN 2053-1680.
  26. ↑ Enns, Peter K. (2015-12-01). "Relative Policy Support and Coincidental Representation". Perspectives on Politics 13 (04): 1053–1064. doi:10.1017/S1537592715002315. ISSN 1541-0986.
  27. ↑ Enns, Peter K. (2015-12-01). "Reconsidering the Middle: A Reply to Martin Gilens". Perspectives on Politics 13 (04): 1072–1074. doi:10.1017/S1537592715002339. ISSN 1541-0986.
  28. ↑ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/videos/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-with-unlimited-political-bribery-20150731

Further reading

External links

Look up oligarchy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Oligarchy
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