For centuries, oligarchs were viewed as empowered by wealth, an idea muddled by elite theory early in the twentieth century. The common thread for oligarchs across history is that wealth defines them, empowers them, and inherently exposes them to threats. The existential motive of all oligarchs is wealth defense. How they respond varies with the threats they confront, including how directly involved they are in supplying the coercion underlying all property claims, and whether they act separately or collectively. These variations yield four types of oligarchy: warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil. Oligarchy is not displaced by democracy but rather is fused with it. Moreover, the rule of law problem in many societies is a matter of taming oligarchs. Cases studied in this book include the United States, ancient Athens and Rome, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, medieval Venice and Siena, mafia commissions in the United States and Italy, feuding Appalachian families, and early chiefs cum oligarchs dating from 2300 BCE.
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"Jeffrey Winters ranges across the world and through history in this fascinating and illuminating work on an ancient, and yet surprisingly contemporary phenomenon: oligarchy. A model of comparative politics and history, this book is particularly impressive in its deft analysis of how democracy is often quite congenial for oligarchs."
-Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago, author of Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power
"It is hard to imagine anyone writing about the concept of oligarchy in the future without drawing on the rich and nuanced discussion in this book."
-William Gamson, Boston College
"This is a breath of fresh air that takes the study of politics back to the core questions of how power is constructed and defended and who rules. In this book, Jeffrey Winters argues that the concentration and protection of wealth by oligarchies is central in understanding the operation of politics throughout history. This is an intellectually ambitious work that is backed up by sophisticated theory, by command of a vast literature and some incisive empirical work. It is also highly interesting as we move through the complex manifestations of oligarchy from ancient Rome and the mediaeval city states of Europe to the dictators of contemporary Indonesia and the Philippines. And in case we think of oligarchy as a pre-modern form of politics or that oligarchs are not important if they are not in actual possession of the state, the author demonstrates how oligarchy is also at the heart of modern capitalist politics in places such as US and Singapore."
-Richard Robison, Murdoch University
"An elegant work in comparative politics, Oligarchy returns to an ancient political category to challenge our ways of thinking about political power. This book changes the conceptual and theoretical landscape for political theorists, political scientists, and everyone who thinks seriously about democracy. This is a great book, a model of scholarship and bold thinking."
-Joan C. Tronto, University of Minnesota
"Known for his serious critiques of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, Jeffrey Winters has now built on his in-depth knowledge of Suharto's manner of ruling to construct a system for categorizing oligarchies that he shows to be useful for understanding other states in Southeast Asia, but also for the United States and for governments in ancient and Renaissance times. This book should lead international business managers to new ways of thinking about politics."
-Louis T. Wells, Harvard Business School
"Jeffrey A. Winters's Oligarchy is.... ambitious in its historical range and the boldness of its argument. In a fascinating synthesis, Winters shows how seemingly disparate historical cases fit into a coherent analysis of the political struggles involving concentrated wealth."
-Paul Starr, Princeton University, The New Republic
-Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago, author of Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power
"It is hard to imagine anyone writing about the concept of oligarchy in the future without drawing on the rich and nuanced discussion in this book."
-William Gamson, Boston College
"This is a breath of fresh air that takes the study of politics back to the core questions of how power is constructed and defended and who rules. In this book, Jeffrey Winters argues that the concentration and protection of wealth by oligarchies is central in understanding the operation of politics throughout history. This is an intellectually ambitious work that is backed up by sophisticated theory, by command of a vast literature and some incisive empirical work. It is also highly interesting as we move through the complex manifestations of oligarchy from ancient Rome and the mediaeval city states of Europe to the dictators of contemporary Indonesia and the Philippines. And in case we think of oligarchy as a pre-modern form of politics or that oligarchs are not important if they are not in actual possession of the state, the author demonstrates how oligarchy is also at the heart of modern capitalist politics in places such as US and Singapore."
-Richard Robison, Murdoch University
"An elegant work in comparative politics, Oligarchy returns to an ancient political category to challenge our ways of thinking about political power. This book changes the conceptual and theoretical landscape for political theorists, political scientists, and everyone who thinks seriously about democracy. This is a great book, a model of scholarship and bold thinking."
-Joan C. Tronto, University of Minnesota
"Known for his serious critiques of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, Jeffrey Winters has now built on his in-depth knowledge of Suharto's manner of ruling to construct a system for categorizing oligarchies that he shows to be useful for understanding other states in Southeast Asia, but also for the United States and for governments in ancient and Renaissance times. This book should lead international business managers to new ways of thinking about politics."
-Louis T. Wells, Harvard Business School
"Jeffrey A. Winters's Oligarchy is.... ambitious in its historical range and the boldness of its argument. In a fascinating synthesis, Winters shows how seemingly disparate historical cases fit into a coherent analysis of the political struggles involving concentrated wealth."
-Paul Starr, Princeton University, The New Republic
Book Description
The common thread for oligarchs across history is that wealth defines them, empowers them, and inherently exposes them to threats. The existential motive of all oligarchs is wealth defense. These variations yield four types of oligarchy: warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil. Cases studied in this book include the United States, ancient Athens and Rome, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, medieval Venice and Siena, mafia commissions in the United States and Italy, feuding Appalachian families, and early chiefs cum oligarchs dating from 2300 BCE.
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51 of 53 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jeffrey Winters's new book, Oligarchy, is a brilliant comparative study of the role of wealthy elites in politics. He argues that the protection of wealth is a central theme in politics throughout history. He draws on an enormous range of illustrations, from ancient Greece and Rome to medieval city-states to contemporary Indonesia and the Philippines. He also shows its influence in the contemporary United States, in a way that is remarkably timely.
Winters taxonomizes oligarchy, which he defines as "the politics of wealth defense by materially endowed actors," (4) into four broad types. Warring oligarchy, the most primitive form, forces each rich actor to rely on his own private force to protect his wealth. It is familiar from medieval Europe, but he shows that it also drove Appalachian feuds in the 19th and early 20th century, in which elites fought for control of mining and timber wealth. Ruling oligarchies, in which each oligarch is armed but they govern collectively through institutions marked by codes of conduct, are unstable: Mafia dons often war upon each other; Rome and the Philippines succumbed to one-person rule. Sultanistic oligarchy concentrates the means of coercion in one person, who provides property and income defense for the elite. Suharto provided this stability for years in Indonesia, but when looting by his grown children endangered this equilibrium, the wealthy class deserted him and he was driven from power. Civil oligarchy is an impersonal, institutionalized government in which the law is stronger than any individual. Here, Winters thinks, democracy can coexist with oligarchy, as it does in the United States. But even civil oligarchies will collapse if they do not satisfy the need of the rich for property protection. If that happens, oligarchs will arm themselves. Even those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the most civilized forms should be alive to their continuities with the others.
Winters's approach is obviously relevant as American politics shifts resources away from the poor toward the rich, starving infrastructure and public education. He thinks that the oligarchical concentration of wealth, which enables the rich to hire armies of lobbyists and tax lawyers, explains why, since 1970, the gains from the growing U.S. economy have been concentrated at the top, while incomes of the bottom 90 percent stagnated.
Wealth defense is a constant even in civil-oligarchy regimes that have robust welfare states. In Finland, for example, the top 0.5 percent of the population owns 71.6 percent of the capital market, compared with 41.4 percent in the United States. The Scandanavian countries have high taxes, but these are consumption taxes, which burden the entire citizenry rather than concentrating on the rich. The extremely rich have always managed to ensure that they shared their tax burdens with the merely prosperous. Similarly in America, where the top tax bracket starts at $250,000. Bill Gates pays the same nominal rate as his dentist.
Once the various methods of tax avoidance are taken into account, it becomes clear that America's tax system is actually regressive: in 2007, the top 1% of taxpayers paid an effective rate of less than 24%. The top 1/10 of 1% paid less than 22%. The top 400 incomes paid less than 17%. (246) The marginal rate for some hedge fund managers, five of whom earned more than $1 billion in 2007, has been zero, because they operated through offshore partnerships that let them defer taxes. (248)
Oligarchy is a wonderful book. I don't work in comparative politics, but I found it riveting reading, particularly in its detailed treatment of Winters's academic specialty, modern southeast Asian regimes. He focuses attention on an aspect of the big political picture that is too often overlooked. I don't think I'll ever think about politics in the same way again.
There is, however, a cost to looking at the world from such a broad comparative perspective. Local variations that matter can become obscured. Scandanavia has its oligarchs, but these are much better countries to be members of the bottom 90% than the United States, where politics continues to focus on the rate, rather than the direction, of upward redistribution of wealth. America's oligarchs are unusually greedy: the Bush tax cuts, a major source of our huge federal deficit, were spearheaded by rich Republicans who decided that their enormous gains in the 1990s boom just weren't enough for them. Winters can't account for this, because, as he himself shows, oligarchy is a constant across civil regimes. America's fetishizing of the wealthy and powerful, its contempt for the weak and needy, and its eagerness to thwart its own legitimizing narrative of equal opportunity (as I write this, college aid for the poor has just barely escaped the budget ax), needs a different explanation.
Winters's focus on American schemes of tax avoidance also gets distracted by irrelevancies such as whether some of these schemes are illegal. They may be, but why does it matter? The real issue is the protection of concentrated wealth, which he shows has been accomplished very effectively by methods of indisputable legality, such as the steady reduction of the top tax bracket in recent decades. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts cost the treasury more than any trick that sophisticated lawyers could devise. Winters offers a valuable perspective on how inequality persists, but he can't explain the peculiar cruelties of modern American politics.
Winters taxonomizes oligarchy, which he defines as "the politics of wealth defense by materially endowed actors," (4) into four broad types. Warring oligarchy, the most primitive form, forces each rich actor to rely on his own private force to protect his wealth. It is familiar from medieval Europe, but he shows that it also drove Appalachian feuds in the 19th and early 20th century, in which elites fought for control of mining and timber wealth. Ruling oligarchies, in which each oligarch is armed but they govern collectively through institutions marked by codes of conduct, are unstable: Mafia dons often war upon each other; Rome and the Philippines succumbed to one-person rule. Sultanistic oligarchy concentrates the means of coercion in one person, who provides property and income defense for the elite. Suharto provided this stability for years in Indonesia, but when looting by his grown children endangered this equilibrium, the wealthy class deserted him and he was driven from power. Civil oligarchy is an impersonal, institutionalized government in which the law is stronger than any individual. Here, Winters thinks, democracy can coexist with oligarchy, as it does in the United States. But even civil oligarchies will collapse if they do not satisfy the need of the rich for property protection. If that happens, oligarchs will arm themselves. Even those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the most civilized forms should be alive to their continuities with the others.
Winters's approach is obviously relevant as American politics shifts resources away from the poor toward the rich, starving infrastructure and public education. He thinks that the oligarchical concentration of wealth, which enables the rich to hire armies of lobbyists and tax lawyers, explains why, since 1970, the gains from the growing U.S. economy have been concentrated at the top, while incomes of the bottom 90 percent stagnated.
Wealth defense is a constant even in civil-oligarchy regimes that have robust welfare states. In Finland, for example, the top 0.5 percent of the population owns 71.6 percent of the capital market, compared with 41.4 percent in the United States. The Scandanavian countries have high taxes, but these are consumption taxes, which burden the entire citizenry rather than concentrating on the rich. The extremely rich have always managed to ensure that they shared their tax burdens with the merely prosperous. Similarly in America, where the top tax bracket starts at $250,000. Bill Gates pays the same nominal rate as his dentist.
Once the various methods of tax avoidance are taken into account, it becomes clear that America's tax system is actually regressive: in 2007, the top 1% of taxpayers paid an effective rate of less than 24%. The top 1/10 of 1% paid less than 22%. The top 400 incomes paid less than 17%. (246) The marginal rate for some hedge fund managers, five of whom earned more than $1 billion in 2007, has been zero, because they operated through offshore partnerships that let them defer taxes. (248)
Oligarchy is a wonderful book. I don't work in comparative politics, but I found it riveting reading, particularly in its detailed treatment of Winters's academic specialty, modern southeast Asian regimes. He focuses attention on an aspect of the big political picture that is too often overlooked. I don't think I'll ever think about politics in the same way again.
There is, however, a cost to looking at the world from such a broad comparative perspective. Local variations that matter can become obscured. Scandanavia has its oligarchs, but these are much better countries to be members of the bottom 90% than the United States, where politics continues to focus on the rate, rather than the direction, of upward redistribution of wealth. America's oligarchs are unusually greedy: the Bush tax cuts, a major source of our huge federal deficit, were spearheaded by rich Republicans who decided that their enormous gains in the 1990s boom just weren't enough for them. Winters can't account for this, because, as he himself shows, oligarchy is a constant across civil regimes. America's fetishizing of the wealthy and powerful, its contempt for the weak and needy, and its eagerness to thwart its own legitimizing narrative of equal opportunity (as I write this, college aid for the poor has just barely escaped the budget ax), needs a different explanation.
Winters's focus on American schemes of tax avoidance also gets distracted by irrelevancies such as whether some of these schemes are illegal. They may be, but why does it matter? The real issue is the protection of concentrated wealth, which he shows has been accomplished very effectively by methods of indisputable legality, such as the steady reduction of the top tax bracket in recent decades. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts cost the treasury more than any trick that sophisticated lawyers could devise. Winters offers a valuable perspective on how inequality persists, but he can't explain the peculiar cruelties of modern American politics.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By Tom Bomadil
Format:Paperback
Provides useful distinctions between elite theories and theories of oligarchy. Demonstrates that wealth-defense is a common feature of oligarchies throughout history, regardless of culture, the manner in which wealth is obtained, or the degree to which societies have civil frameworks for property rights. Histories will be re-written with this theory as a cornerstone. It is a must-read for the interpretation of current events.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Marie Lutz
Format:Paperback
This is a scholarly work and not an easy read (some fascinating information is located in extensive footnotes). But it's very worthwhile. A major theme is that oligarchs have often ruled nations in one way or another throughout history and across all continents. Winters contends that this pattern of oligarchic rule is continuing in the US and Western Europe today. In the US, Winters believes democracy matters in some ways, but in other ways the US has been increasingly dominated by the ultra rich under both the Democrats and Republicans. He sees no easy fixes and maybe no fix at all. One aside, you can get a lot out of this book even if you don't read every word.
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