A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
Oligarchy is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.
A plutocracy or plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. The first known use of the term in English dates from 1631. Unlike most political systems, plutocracy is not rooted in any established political philosophy.
Aristocracy is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. The term derives from the Greek: αριστοκρατία, meaning 'rule of the best'.
Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is a type of democracy where elected delegates represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy: for example, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the United States. Representative democracy places power in the hands of representatives who are elected by the people. Political parties often become central to this form of democracy if electoral systems require or encourage voters to vote for political parties or for candidates associated with political parties. Some political theorists have described representative democracy as polyarchy.
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American author. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). The Virgin Suicides served as the basis of a feature film, while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Médicis.
A military junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term junta means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808. The term is now used to refer to an authoritarian form of government characterized by oligarchic military dictatorship, as distinguished from other categories of authoritarian rule, specifically strongman ; machine ; and bossism.
The Iron Heel is a political novel in the form of science fiction by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.
The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory first developed by the German-born Italian sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book Political Parties. It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of the organization.
Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by the German-born Italian sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy. It is considered one of the classics of social sciences, in particular sociology and political science.
Politics is a work of political philosophy by Aristotle, a 4th-century BC Greek philosopher.
Seymour Martin Lipset was an American sociologist and political scientist. He was the president of the American Political Science Association. His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective. A socialist in his early life, Lipset later moved to the right, and was considered to be one of the first neoconservatives.
Thomas R. Dye is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Florida State University and was formerly a McKenzie Professor of Government. Dye has described politics as being about who gets scarce governmental resources, where, when, why and how.
In philosophy, political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the State that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in contemporary society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections.
John Foster "Chip" Berlet is an American investigative journalist, research analyst, photojournalist, scholar, and activist specializing in the study of extreme right-wing movements in the United States. He also studies the spread of conspiracy theories. Since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Berlet has regularly appeared in the media to discuss extremist news stories. He was a senior analyst at Political Research Associates (PRA), a non-profit group that tracks right-wing networks.
Jeffrey I. Herbst is an American political scientist, specializing in comparative politics, and in July 2018 became the president of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California. Herbst was previously the 16th president of Colgate University, and president and CEO of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. He resigned from his post at the Newseum in 2017 as the museum announced financial issues. Prior to assuming the presidency of Colgate in 2010, he was provost, executive vice president for academic affairs, and professor of political science at Miami University. He received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1983, M.A., MPhil from Yale University in 1985, and Ph.D. in 1987 also from Yale. He is married to Sharon Polansky, with whom he has three children, Matthew, Spencer, and Alana.
Criticism of democracy has been a key part of democracy and its functions. Democracy has been criticized both by internal critics and external ones who reject the values embraced and nurtured by constitutional democracy.
Barbara Geddes is an American political scientist. One of the main important theorists of authoritarianism and empirical catalogers of authoritarian regimes, she is currently a full professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her 2003 book Paradigms and Sand Castles is an influential research design book in comparative politics.
Jeffrey K. Tulis is an American political scientist known for work that conjoins the fields of American politics, political theory, and public law.
