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oligarchy

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oligarchy

1. government by a small group of people
2. a state or organization so governed
3. a small body of individuals ruling such a state
4. Chiefly US a small clique of private citizens who exert a strong influence on government
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

oligarchy

see IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY.
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Oligarchy

 

a form of government in which state power belongs to a small group of people, as a rule, the most powerful economically (hence the term “financial oligarchy”). The ruling group itself is also called an oligarchy.

The term “oligarchy” first appeared in the works of a number of ancient Greek authors, including Aristotle’s Politics (book IV) and The Constitution of Athens and Polybius’ The Histories (book VI). In these works it designated a form of state structure that arises as a result of the degeneration of the aristocracy.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Nabors's answer arrives in one word: oligarchy. Which is to say, the same phenomenon William Howard Russell encountered in Charleston.
In From Oligarchy to Republicanism, a stimulating, if often cantankerous, history of the Civil War and Reconstruction, political scientist Forrest Nabors argues that the problem of plutocracy and the fate of the Confederacy were always deeply intertwined.
Meanwhile, Endo remains because the allies in the oligarchy say so.
It was oligarchy -- the cozy relationship between money, media and politics.
Manfred Sapper, editor-in-chief of the German magazine Osteuropa (Eastern Europe), is convinced that the merging of politics and oligarchy that began in 1996 set a "decisive course" for today's Russia.
We build a specific-factor trade model of an oligarchy, where the nature of the ruling political elites and the comparative advantage determine the economy's long-term performance.
TEHRAN (FNA)- The need of at least $200 million for any would-be Presidential candidate in the US marks the transformation of the country from a democracy to an oligarchy, Nobel Peace Prize winner and 39th US President Jimmy Carter said, adding that this irrecoverably undermines the country's moral and ethical basis.
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