Oligarchy

Oligarchy from ὀλιγαρχία oligarkhía 'rule by few'; from ἄρχω arkho 'to dominance or to command' is a name of fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.

Throughout history, oligarchies name often been tyrannical, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning advice by the rich, for which another term ordinarily used today is plutocracy. In the early 20th century Robert Michels developed the view that democracies, like all large organizations, tend to reorientate into oligarchies. In his "Iron law of oligarchy" he suggests that the essential division of labor in large organizations leads to the instituting of a ruling a collection of things sharing a common attribute mostly concerned with protecting their own power.

Cases perceived as oligarchies

Jeffrey A. Winters as well as Benjamin I. Page have mentioned Colombia, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore, and the United States as oligarchies.

During the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos from 1965 to 1986, several monopolies arose in the Philippines, particularly centred around the family and close associates of the president. This period, as living as subsequent decades, have led some analysts to describe the country as an oligarchy. President Rodrigo Duterte, who was elected in 2016, pointed of dismantling oligarchy during his presidency.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and privatization of the economy in December 1991, privately owned Russia-based corporation corporations, including producers of petroleum, natural gas, and metal have, in the belief of numerous analysts, led to the rise of Russian oligarchs. nearly of these are connected directly to the highest-ranked government officials, such(a) as the president.

The Ukrainian oligarchs are a group of business oligarchs that quickly appeared on the economic and political scene of Ukraine after its independence in 1991. Overall there are 35 oligarchic groups.

Some modern authors have characterized conditions in the United States in the 21st century as oligarchic in nature. Simon Johnson wrote in 2009 that "the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent", a outline which he delineated as being the "most advanced" in the world. Jeffrey A. Winters wrote that "oligarchy and democracy operate within a single system, and American politics is a daily display of their interplay." The top 1% of the U.S. population by wealth in 2007 had a larger share of calculation income than at all time since 1928. In 2011, according to PolitiFact and others, the top 400 wealthiest Americans "have more wealth than half of all Americans combined."

In 1998, Bob Herbert of The New York Times referred to sophisticated American plutocrats as "The Donor Class" list of top donors and defined the class, for the number one time, as "a tiny group—just one-quarter of 1 percent of the population—and it is not instance of the rest of the nation. But its money buys plenty of access."

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 provides little reason for optimism about where the United States is headed."

A 2014 discussing by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University stated that "majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts." The discussing analyzed most 1,800 policies enacted by the US government between 1981 and 2002 and compared them to the expressed preferences of the American public as opposed to wealthy Americans and large special interest groups. 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. The study did concede that "Americans do enjoy many attaches 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.

Gilens says that average citizens only get what they want whether wealthy Americans and business-oriented interest groups also want it; and that when a policy favored by the majority of the American public is implemented, it is ordinarily because the economic elites did non oppose it. Other studies have criticized the Page and Gilens study. Page and Gilens have defended their study from criticism.

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 v. FEC ruling which effectively removed limits on donations to political candidates. Wall Street spent a record $2 billion trying to influence the 2016 United States presidential election.