Oligarchy
Rule by the few — not as a slur, but as a measurable description of how concentrated wealth distorts political power.
The short version
- Oligarchy describes a political system where a small group of wealthy elites exercises disproportionate control over political outcomes — not necessarily through formal office-holding, but through money, media, and institutional capture.
- A 2014 Princeton study of 1,779 U.S. policy outcomes found that economic elites and organized business interests have substantial impact on government policy, while average citizens have near-zero independent influence when their preferences conflict with elite preferences.
- The concentration of wealth in the U.S. has accelerated sharply since the 1970s: the top 1% now holds more wealth than the bottom 90% combined, a ratio that translates directly into political inequality.
- Oligarchic systems are self-reinforcing: wealth buys political influence, which shapes the rules governing wealth accumulation, which further concentrates wealth — a feedback loop that democracies struggle to interrupt.
What it is
Oligarchy derives from the Greek oligoi (few) and arkhein (to rule) and entered political philosophy through Aristotle's typology of governments. In the Politics, Aristotle distinguished oligarchy from aristocracy on moral grounds: aristocracy was rule by those with superior virtue; oligarchy was rule by those with superior wealth. The distinction was about merit versus money. Aristotle identified oligarchy as a corrupt form of government alongside tyranny, both of which he contrasted with their healthy equivalents — aristocracy and kingship — and with the more participatory polity. For Aristotle, the problem with oligarchy was not merely that the rich governed but that they governed in their own interest rather than the common good.
Modern political science uses the term more precisely and empirically, stripped of the moral framing. Political scientists apply 'oligarchy' to describe systems where economic elites exercise disproportionate influence over political outcomes — not necessarily through formal office-holding, but through the indirect mechanisms available to wealth: campaign finance, lobbying, control of media and information, funding of think tanks and advocacy organizations, and the revolving door between industry and the regulatory agencies overseeing it. The Russian context gave the word its most vivid contemporary application: the privatization of Soviet state assets after 1991 created a class of billionaires — Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, Abramovich, Deripaska, and others — who acquired political power alongside their economic holdings. When Vladimir Putin consolidated control of the Russian state, he systematically subordinated or expropriated those who challenged him and preserved those who submitted. The term 'oligarch' in that context describes a specific historical phenomenon; its broader application to other political systems requires care but is analytically defensible.
The most rigorous empirical test of oligarchic influence in the United States was published in 2014 by political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern) in the journal Perspectives on Politics. Their study analyzed 1,779 policy questions over twenty years, measuring the correspondence between the preferences of different groups — average citizens, economic elites, and organized interest groups — and actual policy outcomes. Their finding: 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of average Americans appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on public policy.' Economic elites and business-oriented interest groups, by contrast, showed substantial independent influence. The paper's title — 'Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens' — is deliberately dry. Its conclusion is not.
Oligarchy should be distinguished from plutocracy, with which it overlaps. Plutocracy (from ploutos, wealth) emphasizes formal domination — the wealthy literally hold office or directly command the state. Oligarchy in the modern sense describes a more diffuse arrangement: formal democratic institutions persist, elections occur, but policy outcomes systematically favor elite economic interests regardless of electoral results. It also differs from the normal political inequality present in all democracies, where organized groups have more influence than unorganized publics and engaged minorities outperform disengaged majorities. The question is whether the gap has grown large enough — and the feedback loops self-reinforcing enough — to make democratic accountability structurally limited rather than merely imperfect.
Why it matters
The Gilens-Page study remains the most cited empirical evidence that the United States functions more like an oligarchy than a democracy in the classical sense. Subsequent scholarship has refined and contested specific aspects of their methodology — the measurement of 'average citizen preferences' from national polls and the causal claims that can be drawn from correlational data — but the core finding has proven robust. When economic elites and average citizens disagree about a policy, the policy tends to reflect what elites prefer. When they agree, policy tends to follow — but because elites have different average preferences than the general public, agreement is less common than polling on individual issues might suggest.
The wealth concentration that enables political inequality has accelerated sharply in recent decades. In 1978, the top 1% of Americans held roughly 22% of national wealth; by 2023, that share had risen to approximately 33%, according to Federal Reserve data. The bottom 50% holds approximately 2.5%. Wealth translates into political influence through multiple channels: direct campaign contributions (limited to individuals, but amplified through Super PACs and dark money), lobbying expenditures ($4.1 billion in 2022, the highest on record), ownership of media outlets that shape public discourse, funding of think tanks and academic programs that produce the policy ideas that populate legislation, and employment of former government officials through the revolving door. Each of these channels individually has precedent and justification; in combination and at scale, they constitute a structurally weighted system.
The self-reinforcing quality of oligarchic dynamics is what makes them particularly durable. Wealth enables political influence; political influence shapes the rules governing wealth accumulation — tax policy, antitrust enforcement, labor law, financial regulation, patent protection, trade agreements, corporate governance standards. Rules shaped to benefit existing wealth-holders tend to allow further concentration, which further extends political influence, which further shapes rules. This dynamic does not require corruption in a legal sense — it operates primarily through legal channels. The revolving door is legal. Lobbying is legal. Funding think tanks is legal. Citizens United made unlimited outside political spending legal. The system as a whole creates oligarchic outcomes through individually sanctioned mechanisms.
Identifying the United States as oligarchic is contested in mainstream political discourse in ways it would not be if the label were applied to Hungary or Russia. This reflects both genuine disagreement about the evidence and the natural tendency of established orders to resist characterizations that would delegitimize them. The most careful scholars on this question — Gilens, Page, Larry Bartels (whose 'Unequal Democracy' documented similar patterns), and Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson ('Winner-Take-All Politics') — do not claim the U.S. is an oligarchy in the classical sense but that its political economy has drifted far enough from responsive democratic governance that oligarchy is a more accurate description than democracy of how policy is actually made. That is an empirical claim, not a partisan one, and the evidence for it is substantial.
Sources & Further Reading
- Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
- Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age
- Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
- Wealth Inequality in the United States
- Lobbying Database