The increasing skewness of the distribution of wealth and income has been debated intensely over the last few decades. Our SDG takes a novel perspective. We focus on the connections between economic and political oligarchy, across multiple countries and over time. The common thread binding oligarchs through history is that wealth defines them, empowers them, and inherently exposes them to threat. The existential nature of all oligarchs is wealth defense. How they respond varies with the threats they confront and how directly they are involved in supporting the coercion underlying property claims. Their response also depends on their capacity, or lack thereof, of collective action. These variations yield four types of oligarchy: warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil.
Oligarchy may, at times, be displaced by democracy or fused with it. The award winning book concentrates on the United States but also considers ancient Athens and Rome, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, medieval Venice and Sienna, mafia organizations and feuding Appalachian families. The author Jeffrey A. Winters argues that the concentration and protection of wealth are central in understanding politics throughout history.
