Since the 2024 US presidential election and the growing political influence of tech entrepreneurs in the US and around the world, oligarchy has once again become a topic of public debate. Yet despite the term’s renewed prominence, its conceptual and historical dimensions warrant further exploration. Only by attending to these dimensions can we ask more fully: What can the concept of ‘oligarchy’ reveal about our present political moment?
Andreas Kalyvas, political theorist, will revisit the relatively overlooked concept of “liberal oligarchy.” The term was originally coined by Cornelius Castoriadis in the early 1980s to describe the political system of Western capitalist societies. About a decade later, in the late 1990s, Jacques Rancière adopted the concept to describe the logic of post-democracy, rendering it central to his distinctive critique of liberalism.
The conversation between Andreas Kalyvas and political economist Andrea Binder will trace how the concept of ‘oligarchy’ emerged in the work of both thinkers and explore the political and intellectual contexts in which different understandings of oligarchy took shape. This history will be brought into conversation with recent debates on the oligarchic structures of contemporary politics, asking what the concept can tell us today. In particular, the speakers will consider the potential contribution of the concept to a radical, democratically grounded critique of capitalist modernity.
The event is part of the workshop The Return of Oligarchy. Conceptual and Historical Dimensions of a Powerful Phenomenon, which will take place from September 10–11, 2026 in Berlin.
The workshop is the first event in the series Oligarchy XXI, organized by the Federal Agency for Civic Education and the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL). The workshop will adopt an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to examining the historical trajectories and conceptual foundations of oligarchic rule and power. How does oligarchy intersect with democracy and state-building, imperialism and decolonization, late capitalism, accelerationism, and extractivism? What kinds of social structures and institutions are produced by oligarchic forms of power? Can societies or social norms themselves be described as oligarchic?
Both the workshop and the evening event are open to the public.
