The oligarchy (female name) of the Greek oligos (not very many) and arkhê (command) - is a Forme of government in which the majority of the capacities are held by a small portion of the company (typically most powerful, which it is by richness, military force, cruelty or political influence).
Subjective character of this concept
The political analysts say that any company is inevitably an oligarchy whatever the asserted political system. The number of members of oligarchy (absolute or relative number) does not seem a very sure criterion either. It is thus necessary to more finely analyze the criteria of membership of oligarchy: how one enters there, there remains, and in fate. All kinds of criteria, more or less official and more or less stable time, can enter concerned.Oligarchies are complex political systems, with often several circles (more or less formal) of To be able S increasingly concentrated, of specializations according to the field of being able (commercial, legal, religious, military, technological, etc), and a exercise of the often discrete and collegial capacity. Dominant families are generally found there, for which the political position is an element of Patrimoine transmitted to the children, whose education is organized from this point of view. One can find there, or not, of the systems of caste.
Dynamics of the oligarchical government
An oligarchical company is unstable, the capacity is diffused or concentrated during time, the phenomenon being complicated by the foreign influences:- the situations of war make it possible an individual to concentrate great capacities, so that oligarchy is subjected to the risk to disappear as well by the defeat (case from Carthage, which disappears fault of having supported enough the family of Barca (Hamilcar then Hannibal) as by the victory (case of Rome, which dissolves in the Empire of the Julio-Claudien). Many European monarchies was established of this manner to the Moyen-âge.
- the international business and very concentrated enrichment that it allows also leads to a concentration (from which profited for example the Médicis with Florence)
- Inversement, oligarchies can impose to the monarch or to the dictator the division of his capacities with other layers of the company. An example of this process is the union of noble of England, forcing, in 1215, the king Jean of England to sign the Magna Carta, tacit recognition of the existence of a countervailing power and weakening of the royal capacity. Magna Carta was then revised, guaranteeing more rights to more world posing the bases of future the Constitutional monarchy.
Historical examples
- the Roman République is a traditional example of oligarchy.
- the tyranny of the Thirty with Athens (404 av. J. Chr.)
- the political system Spartan has an oligarchical component with the Gérousie
- the Lignages of Brussels
- the Énarchie in France of today
- the installation of oligarchy in the economies post-Communists (for example with the Russian Oligarque S)
See too
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