116 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: Are there examples of oligarchic governments being removed peacefully?
I think you are blurring the lines between *oligarchy* and *authoritarianism*. These are distinct concepts and should not be confused. It is perfectly possible for oligarchy to exist in an electoral democracy (e.g. the US). Indeed, neo-Marxist scholarship tends to argue that modern liberal democracy is designed to protect oligarchies. I recommend Winters (2011) as an excellent definitional and comparative work.
To take a couple of your examples, Indonesia and the Philippines both became electoral democracies after their respective periods of popular mobilisation, *but remained oligarchies*.
Indeed, most scholars of Indonesian politics would accept that Suharto’s fall was guaranteed not due to the student protests, but because the bulk of the country’s military and politico-business elite abandoned him to ensure their own survival in a new, highly unequal electoral democracy. Robison and Hadiz (2004) set out the most influential version of this argument.
In short, the popular mobilisations you cite achieved democratic reforms but *did not topple oligarchies*.
Comment by artisticthrowaway123 at 22/01/2025 at 01:54 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What about the Carnation Revolution? Would it count?
Same with the Spanish transition to democracy. The Argentine democratic process in the 80's should technically count too, as the military oligarchy was largely overthrown. Uruguay went through the same process too. You can also make the point that a lot of ex-Communist countries largely created a new oligarchy while getting rid of the previous one through privatization.
Comment by deezee72 at 24/01/2025 at 22:31 UTC*
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How does Winters define "Oligarchy"? I think part of the issue here is that, as far as I'm aware, there isn't really a widely accepted definition of what an "Oligarchy" is, which is part of why we have so much debate about whether we Americans are living in an oligarchy right now.
If you can't define an oligarchy, it becomes very difficult to rigorously and/or systematically study past oligarchies and look at whether/how the oligarchy ended. Nearly every major transition of power - even most violent revolutions - includes some continuity amongst economic elites. At what point do we say that the oligarchy "ended" versus saying that it continued even under another government.
However, with those caveats in mind, I'd like to submit the example of Sweden from the 1911 onwards, drawing primarily from Piketty's Capital and Ideology. Piketty writes that Sweden prior to 1911 was relatively unique in that the number of votes each voter could cast depended on that voter's wealth, in terms of tax payments, property, and income. This resulting in a system that was astonishingly oligarchic - there were 54 towns in Sweden where a single voter cast more than 50% of the votes, most famously that of Count Arvid Posse, who controlled a majority of votes in his hometown, elected himself to parliament, and went on to become prime minister.
However, per Piketty's data, the top 1% wealthiest people in Sweden went from owning >60% of private property in 1910 (in the US today, the top 1% own ~30% of private property) to ~20% today, and Sweden today is widely seen as one of the most egalitarian countries in the world today. Furthermore, that process was almost entirely peaceful, driven by the electoral reforms of 1911 which culminated in the advent of universal suffrage in 1921; this in turn led to the election of the social democrats in the 1920s who implemented an egalitarian social democracy.
Even though definitions are a little fuzzy, I personally think it's pretty clear that Sweden was an oligarchy in 1910 and it is very hard to argue that it is an oligarchy today. Moreover, the process was extremely peaceful, with no major political violence or civil wars, and with Sweden even remaining neutral in most external wars over that period. With that said, the transition was extremely gradual - it took 40 years for wealth inequality in Sweden to reduce to the level seen in the US today, and was largely driven by a committed and unified voter base that consistently re-elected the same political party and pursued a coherent political agenda for almost 60 years: the SAP held power continuously from 1936-1976, as well as 11/19 years from 1917-1932. There was not a single dramatic moment where the oligarchy was "overthrown".
Comment by [deleted] at 23/01/2025 at 06:14 UTC
0 upvotes, 1 direct replies
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