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Oligarchy (from Ancient Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía) 'rule by few'; from ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few' and ἄρχω (árkhō) 'to rule, command') [1] [2] [3] is a form of government in which power rests with a small number of people.
Those few—the oligarchy—will use all means necessary to preserve and further increase their power. [ 6 ] According to Michels, this process is further compounded as delegation is necessary in any large organization, as thousands—sometimes hundreds of thousands—of members cannot make decisions via participatory democracy .
A form of government where the monarch is elected, a modern example being the King of Cambodia, who is chosen by the Royal Council of the Throne; Vatican City is also often considered a modern elective monarchy. Self-proclaimed monarchy: A form of government where the monarch claims a monarch title without a nexus to the previous monarch dynasty.
Solon introduced the ideas of timokratia as a graded oligarchy in his Solonian Constitution for Athens in the early 6th century BC. His was the first known deliberately implemented form of timocracy, allocating political rights and economic responsibility depending on membership of one of four tiers of the population.
Meritocracy (merit, from Latin mereō, and -cracy, from Ancient Greek κράτος kratos 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods or political power are vested in individual people based on ability and talent, rather than wealth or social class. [1]
oligarchy: government by the few; timocracy: government by the honored or valued; tyranny: government by one for himself; aristocracy: government by the best (Plato's ideal form of government) Plato found flaws with all existing forms of government and thus concluded that aristocracy, which emphasizes virtue and wisdom, is the purest form of ...
Aristocracy (from Ancient Greek ἀριστοκρατίᾱ (aristokratíā) 'rule of the best'; from ἄριστος (áristos) 'best' and κράτος (krátos) 'power, strength') is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. [1]
More generally, an oligarch (from Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (oligos) 'few' and ἄρχειν (archein) 'rule') is a "member of an oligarchy; a person who is part of a small group holding power in a state". [3]