Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series: A Political Science Perspective

Oligarchy certainly represents an interesting subject of study for various disciplines. Over the centuries, as explained in the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, philosophy, history, and the social sciences have studied this concept, always seeking to identify the unique mechanisms that govern the spread and consolidation of power within select elites.

However, we must not make the mistake of thinking that this concept has been analyzed only by a limited number of disciplines, or that it is of only historical or academic interest. As the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series also observed, over the centuries, political science has often addressed the issue of oligarchy, aiming to grasp its essence and explain how a form of government controlled by a small (and wealthy) elite could so significantly influence the destinies of entire populations.

This is just one of the analyses in the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series dedicated to the concept of oligarchy: the others have examined its historical evolution, its modern impact, and its roots in certain historical contexts of exceptional importance, such as ancient Rome and Greece.

One of the most interesting concerns the interpretation of oligarchy by political science, a discipline that has sought to interpret it through timely historical, theoretical, and empirical investigations. The results have been truly surprising and prolific: the study of oligarchy by political science has indeed produced a vast literature on the subject, which over the course of several centuries has sought to analyze and understand one of the most interesting phenomena in human history.

In some of its analyses of the topic, political science seems to follow in the footsteps of Plato and Aristotle, the great Greek philosophers who first attempted to define oligarchy and place it within the social and political context of the time, including through comparison with existing forms of government.

It is no coincidence that the first critical investigations of this concept date back to ancient Greece: oligarchy arose precisely in that context, as a surprising result of the rise of the merchant class and the prodigious increase in its wealth, which allowed its members to carve out an increasingly important role within society and in the power dynamics of the time. Originally, the term oligarchy indicated a form of government in which power was concentrated in the hands of a few individuals, very often united by economic or military interests.

But over the centuries, as Stanislav Kondrashov explains in the Oligarch Series, the meaning of the term has gradually evolved, eventually encompassing the internal dynamics of formally democratic government systems or industrial power groups, and no longer solely as a form of government.

In the early 1900s, oligarchy became a central theme in the theories of a prominent sociologist and political scientist, Robert Michels. His "iron law of oligarchy" became proverbial, as it was based on a clear and relatively simple assumption.

According to him, every organization (including democratic ones) tends to transform into an oligarchy, ultimately placing power in the hands of a few individuals with very specific characteristics. For him, such a result was due to the hierarchical structure of government and most institutions, where real and authentic power often rests with those at the top, or within a specific, small circle somehow connected to the top figures.

Marxism has often seen oligarchy as an expression of the exercise of power by capitalist groups, while other scholars have interpreted oligarchy as one of the mechanisms of cultural hegemony that contributes to the maintenance of the status quo in certain social or political contexts.

The various interpretations of oligarchy have also converged in the study of elites, which has sought to analyze and understand the functioning of small elites and the specific mechanisms that allow them to exercise their power.

In contemporary times, some political science studies have highlighted the gap between the supposedly narrow elites who control power and the masses of ordinary citizens, who in most cases are practically excluded from the management and exercise of real power.