Oligarchy

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The word “oligarchy” and the concepts which it symbolizes originated in ancient Greece. In its basic use, the word identified one of the general forms of government recognized by the Greeks: that in which political government is conducted by a few persons or families. It was also used more narrowly, by Aristotle for example, to refer to the debased form of aristocracy, that is, to government by the few or by a faction. The term “oligarchy” was also used to refer to the small group of persons who enjoyed a monopoly of political control in oligarchic governments; the term usually had the added sense that the oligarchy ruled in its own rather than in the public interest. For Aristotle, classification of governments rested on two independent variables: the number of persons who ruled and the purposes served by their rule. Oligarchy was present when a few persons ruled for their own satisfaction.

Development of the concept. The original uses of the term were associated with particular social and political regimes and with intellectual modes of analyzing them. Typically, societies were small and traditional and rested on established classes, including a slave class. Within Greek cities citizenship status often identified a large but still minority class that could at least claim to participate in political decisions. Whatever the changes in political forms, this “upper class” was relatively stable by reason of property holding, authority relations with other classes, social position, and so on, and oligarchy could reasonably be expected to be succeeded by other known forms of government. Classical analysts found oligarchies to be endemic among ancient states, but they viewed them as unstable since they rested on military, economic, and leadership factors which were transitory as compared with the continuing forces which supported the relatively large upper classes in traditionalist societies.

In the modern view, these classical conceptions, including oligarchy and the ideas associated with it, are far too simple for effective analysis. Indeed, classical writing makes it clear that the conceptions based on the formal structure of governments were not adequate even then, in spite of the particular emphasis given to form. Greek analysts dealt with the phenomena of power, with the importance of procedures, and, of course, with the paramount role of values. These matters were merged with discussions of political form, but the elements were not clearly discriminated. The subtleties and complexities of Greek political thought do not appear to good advantage in this particular classificatory system.

To the extent that the word “oligarchy” was employed in the Roman and medieval periods, it appears to have been used in the Aristotelian sense of a perverted form of government. However, the emphasis on ideas and values of citizenship and law during the long period of Roman stability turned analytical attention away from forms of government as such. Even though the instabilities of feudalism did generate oligarchs, many of the writers of the early Middle Ages were more preoccupied with problems of legitimacy, since these problems had been given new urgency by the complexities of church-state relationships. Nevertheless, the word itself was coupled to its classical meaning and became an active term in political vocabularies following the rediscovery of Aristotle. In the late Middle Ages and early modern times, political instability among renascent states and a revival of secular realism restored earlier classificatory tools in significant measure. Machiavelli, for example, stipulated and used the Aristotelian classification of the types of government, including that of oligarchy, even though his political analyses could not be contained by them.

Significant use of the term “oligarchy” by students of sociopolitical phenomena has lessened in recent centuries. This is not to say that the term has been wholly abandoned or that notable efforts have not been made to adapt the concept of oligarchy to modern circumstances. Indeed, until relatively recently, general treatises on government have usually given some degree of credence to the classification of governments which contains oligarchy as one form (see, for example, Sidgwick 1891, or Wilson 1889). Some more specialized treatments have also sought to adapt the classical formula to new analyses. In 1832 George C. Lewis, mindful of parliamentary claims, adapted the classical scheme, including its oligarchical component, to the new realities of political sovereignty in his Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Some Political Terms.

However, these adaptations were, at best, difficult to maintain in the context of the most important social phenomena among Western nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: industrialization and urbanization; the radical intensification of nationalism; the improvement and spread of representative parliamentarianism and of parliamentary democracy; warfare conducted as the total effort of national populations; autocracy redefined by twentieth-century totalitarianism; and political leadership vastly heightened by new technological and organizational resources.

In contrast to students of politics, spokesmen for ideological movements frequently used the concept of oligarchy to proclaim against degenerate oligarchs. Liberal and democratic reformers did the same thing in their works. Similarly, socialists discovered ruling coteries within the capitalist class. Their protests were in the language of opinion rather than systematic analysis. However, the scale of experience in which the classical concept of oligarchy was formulated could not produce, even for the socialist movements, ideas comprehensive enough to account for nationalism, or the complex semiegalitarianism of liberal societies, or the dynamism of historical necessity expressed through the warfare of classes.

One group of twentieth-century scholars, including Ostrogorskii, Michels, Pareto, and Mosca, was particularly concerned with a redefinition of oligarchy and its successes and failures. These writers sought an accommodation between forces of social class and of elitism and found it, to a large extent, in the idea of class oligarchies. Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” made the point most explicitly: elitist control within the party structures that are an implementing response to social conflict is as inevitable as class conflict itself. Michels, in company with others, provided a usable new definition of oligarchy, which was distinctive but had obvious kinship with the traditional form-of-government idea. But it is pertinent that these writings and their constituent ideas are now almost always indexed under a heading like “elitism” or “leadership “rather than under the word “oligarchy.”

Uses of the concept. The meanings associated with the word “oligarchy” have remained remarkably stable throughout the centuries. Dictionary definitions accord very closely with the classical uses of the word. As a matter of fact, Webster’s New International Dictionary does indeed recognize a wider range of meanings, including extrapolitical meanings, but “government by the few “remains the primary definition. Several concomitants to this unusual consistency are relevant. First, the word has retained its usefulness as a technical symbol for scholars whose interest in political phenomena is historical and descriptive rather than contemporary and analytical. Unlike many other key words, “oligarchy” does not require an elaborate etymology to establish historically prior uses. Second, the word and its associated ideas have not proved notably useful for nineteenth-century and twentieth-century analysis, and this period has witnessed its declining use by students of current societies. Among many illustrations, it may be noted that in Agger, Goldrich, and Swanson(1964), the authors do not find it necessary to mention oligarchy, although the book is concerned with the power of elites. Nor does the elaborate classification system of the annual International Bibliography of the Social Sciences find room for the word. Finally, the new uses for the term, especially in its application to nonpolitical phenomena(for example, “oligarchy” in school systems) have been largely promoted by lay users. The epithet “oligarch “ is more apt to be found in a novel than in a technical treatise on politics.

The political phenomena associated with what previously was labeled as oligarchy, that is, effective rule by a small and often irresponsible element in a society, have been given great attention by current analysts. However, data assembled for the analyses and the methods used make the inadequacy of the concept of oligarchy apparent almost at once. Some contrasts will make the point. First, traditional treatments of oligarchy tended to restrict the role of the oligarch to simple control relationships based on command. Current analyses of leadership by a minority define a plurality of roles and include conditional responses between leaders and followers. Second, the simple distinction between the few and the many is replaced by a continuum of relationships among members of a polity who display quite different responses at different times and under differing circumstances. Interrelations between different social strata, groups, and organizations, including their leaders, and political leaders are repetitive and contingent. Third, the concept of power runs through a range marked at one end by forced compliance backed by penalties and at the other by the gentleness of influence and persuasion. The formal classical specification of oligarchy as a class of government largely avoided the question of the techniques and other means by which this form of government was maintained. Finally, contemporary analysis of elite leadership is broadly social rather than narrowly political. Politically relevant leadership by “the few “is located at many points in the society and not in the halls of government alone. In conclusion, therefore, what has happened to the concept of oligarchy in recent decades may be taken as an index to what has happened in the social sciences.

Thomas P. Jenkin

[See alsoAutocracy; Dictatorship; Elites; Legitimacy; Monarchy; Totalitarianism; and the biographies ofAristotle; Michels; Mills; Mosca; Ostrogorskii; Pareto.]

bibliography

Agger, Robert E.; Goldrich, Daniel; and Swanson, Bert 1964 The Rulers and the Ruled: Political Power and Impotence in American Communities. New York: Wiley.

American Academy OF Arts AND Sciences 1954 Totalitarianism. Edited with an introduction by Carl J. Friedrich. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press. ?Proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, March 1953.

Barker, Ernest (1918) 1960 Greek Political Theory:Plato and His Predecessors. 5th ed. London: Methuen.

Friedrich, Carl J.; and Brzezinski,Zbigniew K. (1956) 1965 Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. 2d ed., rev. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.

Lewis,George C. (1832) 1877 Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Some Political Terms. New ed. Oxford: Thornton.

Michels, Robert (1911) 1959 Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover. ? First published as Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier.

Sidgwick, Henry (1891) 1908 The Elements of Politics. 4th ed. London: Macmillan.

Wilson, Woodrow (1889) 1918 The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics. Boston: Heath.