It is a recurrent idea that all forms of government are in the final analysis reducible to the rule of a few. Oligarchs will secure effective control whether the formal authority is vested in the people, a , the , or a . Thus, and insisted that, throughout the history of , the key capitalists had controlled the government; they coined the dictum, “the state is the committee of the exploiting class.” The Italian political scientist likewise insisted that a “ruling class” always constituted the effective oligarchic control. elaborated the idea in his doctrine of the “elite.” The modern tendency to analyze social patterns in terms of an elite, though greatly reinforced by Pareto’s theory, goes further back than Marx and Engels, who employed elite to describe the class-conscious , the leading group within the proletariat.One of the most famous modern uses of the term oligarchy occurs in “,” a concept devised by the German sociologist to refer to the allegedly inevitable tendency of and to become bureaucratized, centralized, and conservative. His reasoning was that, no matter how egalitarian or even radical the original ideology and goals of a party or union may be, there must emerge a limited group of leaders at the centre who can direct power efficiently, get things done through an administrative staff, and evolve some kind of rigorous order and to ensure the survival of the organization when faced by internal division and external opposition. Subsequent writers of various persuasions have attempted either to expand on Michels’s thesis, extending it to legislatures, religious orders, and other organizations, or to restrict or criticize the thesis, charging that the iron law of oligarchy is not universal and that some unions and parties do maintain a viable system of democratic expression and governance. and have differentiated more carefully between various types of control and power. The type of power held by a party boss in a , while overwhelming in relation to any single member of the party, is very different from that wielded by the boss of the single party in a or system. Likewise, the controlling group within an organization does not occupy the same position under democratic conditions (which allows for effective challenges to the group by outsiders at regular intervals) as it does under an authoritarian plan. If effective control changes hands as rapidly as it does in a city of the United States or a British trade union, it is doubtful that those exercising it should be spoken of as a “class” or an “elite.” The expression “the few” is too abstract to convey much information., Oligarchy (from Ancient Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía) 'rule by few'; from ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few' and ἄρχω (árkhō) 'to rule, command') [1][2][3] is a form of government in which power rests with a small number of people., Oligarchy is one of numerous English words for a type of rule or government. Some of these words, such as plutocracy, have an exceedingly similar meaning (both may be used to refer to rule by an economic elite, but oligarchy often has the additional connotation of corruption)..