Bureaucracy has a tendency to degenerate into an oligarchy. It is a form of government, in which power is vested in a limited number of people: rich, military and officials. The first such regularity was discovered and analyzed by the German sociologist, economist and historian, one of the founders of political sociology Robert Michels, who called this phenomenon the “iron law of oligarchy”. Under this law, democracy – in order to save itself and to achieve stability — is forced to create organizations, which lead to the separation of the elite – the active minority. People have to trust this minority as they cannot exercise direct control over it. Democracy and a large-scale formal organization are not antagonists, and two sides of the same phenomenon. They are not only compatible, but inevitably arise from one another.
Individuals can occupy leadership positions because of their own unusual political qualities. They know how to achieve their goals and to convince other people in their importance. Once obtained a high position, they are constantly increasing their prestige, power and influence. For this reason, they are able to control the flows of the organizational information by directing them to the stream, which is beneficial for them. Leaders have the exaggerated motivation to maintain their own positions. They use all means in order, firstly, to convince others of the correctness of their own view of things, and secondly, to legitimize it and make it the norm. Finally, the leaders promote young officials.
Oligarchy can be possible in any field of collective and mass activity and on any of its levels – political, military, economic, financial, party, scientific, industrial or administrative. The original meaning of the term “oligarchy” is governing of few. As these few were associated with rich people, oligarchy was seen as governing of rich. Rich people rule and poor people cannot participate in power. A negative attitude to oligarchy became traditional. According to Aristotle’s typology of regimes, oligarchy was viewed as a crashed form of the aristocracy (pure form) – governing of the best. Jean Bodin wrote in 1576, “the aristocracy can be oppressive, unlawful, corruption, and this last type was known as an oligarchy in ancient times, that is, the rule of a small number of lords”. In political history of modern time, opposition of oligarchy to aristocracy disappeared. The creators of the theory of elites attempted to eliminate a negative assessment of oligarchy. From the fact that a minority always rules, they made a conclusion that every collective rule including democratic one had the oligarchic form. “Despite all the confusion oligarchy is extremely important for understanding politics, whether ancient or contemporary, poor or advanced-industrial”.
In the 20th century, every European country had its own national oligarchy of leading aristocrats and big national bourgeoisie. In the 21st century, the national oligarchy disappeared, and only global oligarchy left. It is believed that the center of the global shadow government, known as the “World Government” is a tip of the international financial oligarchy, consisting of about 300 of the world’s wealthiest families. They control about the same amount of money as the other 6 billion people have. Practically, this means that the financial turnover of each of the 300 families is the average income of 20 million people (the average state), working for them and depending on them – although by globalization, these people may be scattered around the world, and their dependence can be partial and distributed, which masks its presence.