Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.

The combination of both

plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy.
The word plutocracy (Modern Greek: - ploutokratia) is derived from the ancient
Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratos, meaning to rule or to govern.

Contents
[hide]

1 Usage
o 1.1 Modern politics
2 Relative wealth
3 See also
4 References
5 Further reading

[edit] Usage
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The term plutocracy is generally used to describe these two distinct concepts: one of a historical
nature and one of a modern political nature. The former indicates the political control of the state
by an oligarchy of the wealthy. Examples of such plutocracies include the Roman Republic,
some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian city-states/merchant
republics of Venice, Florence, Genoa, and pre-WWII Empire of Japan zaibatsus.
Before the equal voting rights movement managed to end it in the early 20th century, many
countries used a system where rich persons had more votes than poor. A factory owner may for
instance have had 2000 votes while a worker had one, or if they were very poor no right to vote
at all. Even artificial persons such as companies had voting rights. [citation needed]
One modern, perhaps unique, formalised example of a plutocracy is the City of London. The
City (not the whole of modern London but the area of the ancient city, which now mainly
comprises the financial district) has a unique electoral system. Most of its voters are
representatives of businesses and other bodies that occupy premises in the City. Its ancient wards
have very unequal numbers of voters. The principal justification for the non-resident vote is that
about 450,000 non-residents constitute the city's day-time population and use most of its
services, far outnumbering the City's residents, who are fewer than 10,000.

[edit] Modern politics

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The second usage of plutocracy is a reference to a disproportionate influence the wealthy have
on political process in contemporary society: for example, according to Kevin Phillips, author
and political strategist to U.S. President Richard Nixon, the United States is a plutocracy in
which there is a "fusion of money and government."[1]
The wealthy minority exerts influence over the political arena via many methods. Most western
democracies permit partisan organizations to raise funds for politicians, and political parties
frequently accept significant donations from various individuals (either directly or through
corporations or advocacy groups). These donations may be part of a cronyist or patronage
system, in which major contributors and fund-raisers are rewarded with high-ranking
government appointments. While campaign donations need not directly affect the legislative
decisions of elected representatives, politicians have a personal interest in serving the needs of
their campaign contributors: if they fail to do so, those contributors will likely give their money
to candidates who do support their interests in the future. Unless a quid pro quo agreement exists,
it is generally legal for politicians to advocate policies favorable to their contributors, or grant
appointed government positions to them. In some instances, extremely wealthy individuals have
financed their own political campaigns. Many corporations and business interest groups pay
lobbyists to maintain constant contact with elected officials, and press them for favorable
legislation. Owners of mass media outlets, and the advertisement buyers which financially
support them can shape public perception of political issues by controlling the information
available to the population and the manner in which it is presented (see also: fourth estate).
Within government bureaucracy, there is often the problem of a revolving door: the employees
of government regulatory bodies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United
States, often transition to and from employment with the same companies they are supposed to
regulate. This can result in regulations being changed or ignored to suit the needs of business,
since the regulators are more likely to later find employment in the private sector if their
government work was beneficial to their new potential employer.
In the United States, campaign finance reform efforts ostensibly seek to ameliorate this situation.
However, campaign finance reform must successfully challenge officials who are beneficiaries
of the system which allows this dynamic in the first place. This has led many reform advocates to
suggest taxpayer dollars be used to replace private campaign contributions; these reforms are
often called clean money or clean election reform as opposed to simply campaign finance reform
which does not address the conflict of interest involved where most or all of the campaign money
is from private, often for-profit sources. In 2010, Justice Stevens along with Justice Ginsburg,
Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor view Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission as
having drastically weakened efforts to restrain the effect of money in government. In his
dissenting remarks Justice Stevens states:

At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people,
who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the
founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate
electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that
common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court
would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.
Critics of clean elections point out that it allows the sitting government to decide which
candidates would qualify to receive tax dollars - and therefore influence who would be allowed
to win - thus solving one problem by creating another problem; courts in the United States [which?]
have also agreed that some "clean election" legislation has discriminated against independent or
third-party candidates, and has violated the constitution. [citation needed]

[edit] Relative wealth

An individual who is considered wealthy, affluent, or rich is someone who has accumulated
substantial wealth relative to others in their society or reference group. One common measure of
wealth inequality is the Gini Index.

[edit] See also

Advocacy group
Anti-globalization
Chaebol
Corporate abuse
Corporatocracy
Corporate Republic
Megacorporation
Meritocracy
Netocracy
Zaibatsu