oligarchy
/ˈɒlɪɡɑːki
/noun (plural oligarchies)
1A small group of people having control of a country or organization: the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president...
- Whether at home or overseas, the US government serves the interests of the financial oligarchy that controls both the Democrats and the Republicans.
- No longer will this planet be controlled by financier oligarchies controlling central banking systems, and dictating to governments, what governments can and can not do.
- You organize the world into different religions, and then set the religions to fight each other, as a way a small power, an oligarchy, can control the world: setting one group of people against the other.
1.1A country governed by an oligarchy: he believed that Britain was an oligarchy...
- The result of short-term royal success in eviscerating local government was a system of degenerate petty oligarchies dependent on government initiative.
- For more than a millennium, until its fall in 1797, the Republic of Venice was governed by an oligarchy, comprising a limited number of patrician families.
- The Roman Republic was an oligarchy but there was some element of political participation by the lower classes - the votes were weighted so those of the rich counted for more than those of the poor, but there was voting nevertheless.
1.2 [mass noun] Government by an oligarchy.Generations of people around the world have endured autocracy and dictatorship, totalitarianism, fascism, monarchy, oligarchy and even anarchy without knowing freedom....
- The Spartan constitution was mixed, containing elements of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy.
- As you all know, General Fabyein has made plans to abolish the oligarchy and take control of Hilajinn.
Derivatives
oligarchic
/ adjective ...- He was defending the mixed system that existed in the Britain of his day - a combination of aristocratic, commercial, oligarchic, and democratic elements.
- These new private capitalists developed into oligarchic clans to protect their members and compete with the others.
- In so far as we can infer the Buddha's own preferences, they were for the sort of oligarchic egalitarian or republican political organization that seems to have held among his own people.
oligarchical
- It has been dominated by the IMF and the Anglo-Americans, by the English-speaking oligarchical factions, financial oligarchical factions of the world.
- The central institution of that oligarchical power, in the continent of Europe, is the central banking system.
- Yes, you had right-wing forces, you called them, or the oligarchical or wealthy forces.
oligarchically
- From its birth to the present, capitalism has faced three imperatives: to exploit, to expand, and to rule oligarchically.
Origin
Late 15th century: from Greek oligarkhia, from oligoi 'few' and arkhein 'to rule'.
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