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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.
