In many cases, the affluent may influence decision-makers by legal and illegal means, such as lobbying, bribing, and funding election campaigns.īoth terms, plutocracy and oligarchy, represent the voice of a concentrated minority. In a plutocracy, the wealthy rule, but not always by being the elected leaders of the government. The group is chosen because of favorable factors such as military capability, wealth, race, political connections, religion, and education.

This was reflected by the increased ability of the wealthy to significantly affect the nation's law-making and election processes, in tandem with the existence of the powerful oil, steel, and railroad monopolies.Īn oligarchy is a system of government in which a small group runs the government. Some modern economists and historians suggest that the United States was effectively plutocratic for the periods between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the start of the Great Depression (1929). Plutocracy Examplesįamous examples of plutocracies include Ancient Rome, the pre-World War II Empire of Japan, and the pre-Revolutionary Kingdom of France. The democratic concern of a plutocracy is that the wealthy will wish to maintain their power and, therefore, only represent the interests of the wealthy as opposed to people of all levels of education and income. Instead, plutocracies can gradually form by allowing sole access to essential political and educational resources that only the rich can afford. A plutocracy may not be the result of a planned system of government.

Plutocracy define