oligarchy

George Mason and other proponents of the Bill of Rights intended the First Amendment to prevent the emergence of an aristocracy—or what we would today call an oligarchy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026

Typically wearing a traditional Caribbean shirt, Cepeda forgoes a tie, which he considers a symbol of oligarchy.

From Barron's ● May 25, 2026

Rakoff is a complicated guy, but he is as committed as anyone to standing up to the oligarchy.

From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2025

As historian Joseph J. Ellis has noted, John Adams was worried about an oligarchy of wealthy families with little virtue seizing power.

From Salon ● Apr. 14, 2024

The families of the oligarchy forgot all about the barrel organ, and Marcos became the star attraction of the season.

From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende

Immediately following the war, Sparta established oligarchies of local aristocrats in the city-states that had been democracies under the Delian League.

From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023

Global supply chains were supposed to lower costs, boost profits and enable democratic values to seep into the terrain of oligarchies, dictatorships and autocracies.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 11, 2022

Autocracies, unlike oligarchies, make for engaging political theater.

From Salon ● Sep. 28, 2021

“The big Filipino families, the oligarchies, are not able to transition away from agriculture because they can’t transition to manufacturing,” says Lisandro E. Claudio, a Southeast Asian historian at the University of California, Berkeley.

From New York Times ● Dec. 27, 2019

All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grew soft.

From "1984" by George Orwell