Making Sense of Oligarchy. Capitalism and Oligarchic Power in Western Democracies

In the face of its rapidly increasing influence in both academic and political debates, oligarchy remains a poorly understood notion, especially when applied to contemporary representative democracies. In this article, I argue for a new conceptualization of oligarchy as oligarchic power by focusing on the latter’s relationship with capitalism in Western democracies, with particular attention devoted to the United States. In order to do so, I critically analyze both the recent political science literature on affluence and influence and Jeffrey Winters’s theory of oligarchy – the only substantial attempt to come to terms with this notion in the last decades. While both provide significant insights, I show that none of them is able to make sense of oligarchy in democratic contexts, as they do not recognize the constitutive relationship between contemporary oligarchic power and (the transformations of) capitalism.