If I was forced to answer this question, I would say that what are today called ‘representative democracies’ are elective oligarchies. Our rulers constitute a distinct sub-class, and we have an occasional and limited capacity to choose between one set of them and another, but we have no real capacity to reject them as a whole. Our rulers jockey for position by serving the interests of their clients, whether those clients are corporate welfare recipients [banks, big business, the military] or social welfare recipients.
