Who Says Networks, Says Oligarchy? Oligarchies as "Rich Club" Networks

Abstract

Departing from Roberto Michels's classic analysis of oligarchy, we provide a structural analysis of the concept based on social network analysis. We de ne oligarchy as a social network that exhibits three structural properties: tight interconnections among a small group of prominent actors who form an the organization of other actors in the network through the intermediation of this inner circle; and weak direct connections among the actors outside the inner circle. We treat oligarchy as a global property of social networks and offer an approach for measuring the oligarchical tendencies of any social network. Our main contribution is to operationalize this idea using a rich club approach. We demonstrate the ef cacy of this approach by analyzing and comparing several urban networks: Sao Paulo urban infrastructure networks and Los Angeles and Chicago transportation policy networks.