Questioning the concept of regime through the rise of new oligarchies

The type of relation among political and economic elites may have a significant impact on the nature of a political regime. Recent literature brings back to the fore the exponential influence of powerful economic actors over political institutions by exercising state power or capturing governance structures; and this is regardless of whether the regime in question is classified in ideal type terms as democracy or autocracy. First, we discuss recent studies on the fusion of wealth and power and we analyse the political, institutional and procedural consequences of the rising phenomenon of new forms of oligarchy in regime theory. Second, we explore oligarchies’ relevant repertoires of action (regulatory capture, governance under conditionality, government outsourcing, neo-patrimonialism etc.) while seeking to find whether and how they disrupt regime typologies’ normative characteristics, whether state-led or EU-led. Third, we look if new classifications are emerging by combining elements of different approaches to regime.