Cycles of Oligarchy, Democracy, and Authoritarianism: Lessons from the United States

After its quasi-disappearance as a concept in modern political theory, oligarchy is becoming a key word in contemporary diagnoses about what ails liberal constitutional democracy. It is now used by activists railing against the inordinate influence of the super-rich in the politics of long-established democracies. It is also invoked to explain the emergence of angry populist movements on the left and on the right challenging the “corrupt establishment” in politics, economics, and culture. The term is no longer restricted to “insufficiently modern” post-colonial societies in Latin America, Asia, and Africa and/or to post-communist countries, to account for the cycles between democracy and dictatorship (or oligarchy and populism) plaguing them. Moreover, recent theorists of oligarchy no longer deem it synonymous with rule by elites, or rule by the few (Michels, 1962; Mosca, 1939). Nor do they dissolve it into the theory of elite democracy as was done during the mid-20th century vis a vis representative, constitutional systems (Schumpeter, 1950, 232–303). Instead, contemporary analysts stress the class dimension, first articulated by the ancients and adhered to consistently by political theorists though Machiavelli and early modern thinkers. In this tradition, oligarchy is a political economic concept that links social class with number and political rule. It means the rule of the rich who, typically are the few, but assuredly not identical with “the best” (also a numerical minority) as per the ancient concept of aristocracy. Because oligarchs rule in their particular class interest, rather than for the public good, oligarchy was always deemed a flawed form of political regime (Urbinati, 2010, 985–989; Kalyvas, 2019; Winters, 2011). Why resurrect this version of the concept today? Clearly the point is to bring class and socio-economic factors back into the analysis of political regimes. The concept allows theorists to give an account of the staggering inequalities of wealth and power, extreme injustice, and inordinate influence over politics that the corporate, financial, and super-rich have in contemporary liberal democracies. Put differently, by foregrounding oligarchy and bringing class analysis back in, we can move beyond the standard focus on formal constitutional political systems and political actors typical of contemporary regime theory, and illuminate the soft underbelly of liberal democracy. 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