Welcome to the ‘Imperial Populist Oligarchy’

Paul D. Miller

Tuesday, September 01, 2026

 

The 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this summer offered an occasion to reflect with gratitude on the American achievement: an experiment in ordered liberty that has not just persisted but improved, a nation that became an inspiration for equality and liberty the world over, a republic that has tried to balance the people’s voice with the wisdom of history.

 

But the anniversary is also an occasion for us to reflect on our current moment and its challenges. We live in a fraught time, and it is no longer clear that the things we have admired—our persistence, our inspiration, or our republic—will endure.

 

In fact, the American republic has declined in ways that may be hard for Americans to see, as the decline involves institutional changes, not hot-button issues of race or religion. The American regime has become less republican, more democratic; less federalist, more nationalized; less citizen-owned, more executive-led; less aristocratic, more oligarchic.

 

In short, the American regime today is not a republic so much as an imperial populist oligarchy.

 

A republic, if you can keep it.

 

It has become a cliché to insist that the American founders built a republic, not a democracy. The cliché is true: James Madison, the drafter of the Constitution, clearly identified the new government as a republic throughout The Federalist, repeatedly distinguished it from a democracy, and spoke of “the pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans” in Federalist 10.^⁠ Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” which presumes the Constitution’s self-understanding as a republican document.

 

The Constitution did not establish an Athenian direct democracy in which every citizen could gather in person to legislate, judge, and oversee public affairs, which would have been both impractical and a recipe for mob rule. Rather, the Constitution established a representative regime among coequal citizens in which the people elected delegates who formed only one part of an elaborate architecture of offices designed to operate under the rule of law and protect their natural rights.

 

It was this combination—popular sovereignty and coequal citizenship exercised through representation; the division of government into distinct branches, each with checks and balances on the others; all governed and limited by a constitution, the rule of law, and natural rights—that made the new government a republic, not a pure democracy. Alexander Hamilton argued that these modern institutions would guard the American republic against the tumult and upheaval of the ancient experiments in liberty. He wrote in Federalist 9 that they are “powerful means, by which the excellencies of republican government may be retained.”

 

Populism.

 

We do not live in that republic anymore. Consider the ways the United States has grown less republican and more purely democratic, even populist, since the early 20^th century.

 

The 17^th Amendment (ratified in 1913) made senators directly elected by the people rather than by state legislators, turning the Senate into a second House. The Senate’s apportionment of two senators per state, regardless of population, went from being a safeguard of states’ rights to an easy target for anyone—like the Democratic Socialists of America—who wants to complain that the Senate is antidemocratic.

 

At the same time, the political parties instituted party primaries rather than party caucuses (i.e., smoke-filled back rooms) to select nominees for office—for statewide office by the early 20^th century and for the presidency in the 1970s. That empowered individual politicians at the parties’ expense, fragmenting party cohesion and undermining their mediating influence.

 

And since the early 20^th century, most states have adopted citizen initiatives and referenda, bringing American democracy much closer to direct, Athenian-style participatory democracy but without the face-to-face relationships of a city-state. While initiatives and referendums improve state governments’ responsiveness to voters, they also make laws without the benefit of legislative compromise and, often, without legal expertise.

 

As the American regime has grown more democratic, it has also become, as the founders would have warned, more volatile, more prone to extremism, more dominated by the passion of the masses and the politicians who would manipulate them. Much of our polarization and division today likely stems from the ways our regime has become more democratic and less republican.

 

The imperial executive.

 

Over the same time frame, the U.S. government has seen a decisive shift in power, both formally and informally, from the legislature to the executive.

 

Informally, the presidency has assumed the cultural authority to set the agenda, from Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit” to Barack Obama’s “pen and phone.” The work of the American government orbits around the president’s wishes, either for or against, in a way that would have been foreign and scandalous to the presidents of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

 

Formally, presidents have accreted extraordinary powers. They rule the executive branch by decree, and with a vast array of departments and agencies at their disposal, and they exercise considerable market power within the American economy. In short, the executive branch has become the single largest, richest, and most powerful institution ever created in the history of mankind, creating a concentration of power in its chief executive officer that should alarm any republican.

 

Add to that the president’s emergency and national security powers, under which Congress has granted the president wide latitude and discretionary authority (there are 51 declared national “emergencies” in 2026, the oldest dating to 1979). Congress reined in some of the “imperial presidency” after Richard Nixon’s flagrant abuses of power and criminality, but Donald Trump has pushed the boundaries back out again. He has relied on “acting” appointees without Senate confirmation, centralized control over independent agencies, unilaterally reorganized and shrunk executive agencies without congressional authorization, and broken norms against leveraging the presidency for private business deals. In 2024 the Supreme Court formally staked out a doctrine of presidential immunity protecting presidents from prosecution for official acts.

 

And the president’s war powers, always the area in which he has had the greatest latitude, are slipping away from Congress’ lone attempt to rein them in. The 1973 War Powers Resolution tried to set reasonable timetables by which presidents must receive congressional authorization for military operations. Every president rejected the constitutionality of the WPR but obeyed it anyway—until Obama’s war in Libya and Trump’s war in Iran. We now have a commander in chief who can wage war unilaterally, indefinitely, with little oversight or accountability.

 

Oligarchy.

 

Thomas Jefferson hoped the new government would be led by a “natural aristocracy,” men of recognized “virtue and talents.” The founders hoped their republican machinery would screen out demagogues and select natural aristocrats for leadership. That was their hope for the House, the Senate, and the Electoral College.

 

Madison wrote in Federalist 10 that electing representatives to the House would “refine and enlarge the public views” by entrusting the government to those “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country,” men of superior “patriotism and love of justice.”

 

Similarly, during the Constitutional Convention, he anticipated the Senate would be composed of “enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness might seasonably interpose [against] impetuous councils.” The Senate would be the body “sufficiently respectable for its wisdom & virtue” to be a bulwark against the dangers of populism and democracy.

 

And Hamilton hoped the Electoral College, as a small, dedicated body, would be more likely “to possess the information and discernment requisite” for choosing a president, as he explained in The Federalist. This body would be directly accountable to the people but, unlike them, would be able to act “under circumstances favorable to deliberation.” Such a process would avoid the “tumult and disorder” of a national plebiscite. The Electoral College would protect the process from the “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” and instead elevate men “preeminent for ability and virtue,” he wrote in Federalist 68.

 

I hope it is not too controversial for me to assert that the U.S. Congress today is not a bastion of the “natural aristocracy” of merit. Most members are millionaires, and all are beholden to the fundraisers and donors who keep their perpetual campaigns afloat. The problem of money in politics is not new, but we have shifted the center of gravity from the elected officials themselves—where at least we have some transparency and diffusion—to donors and super PACs increasingly dominated by a very small elite of exceptionally wealthy individuals. Instead of an aristocracy of virtue, we have Elon Musk.

 

Regime change.

 

Every change in American politics has increased concentrations of power—in the mob, the presidency, the oligarchy, the federal bureaucracy—at the expense of mediating republican institutions (Congress, the states, and political parties). The American regime today is not a mixed constitution with elements of benevolent monarchy, aristocracy, and republicanism; it is becoming a mixed constitution of imperial populist oligarchy.

 

I mean that in a very precise sense. The founders were self-consciously following the political archetypes laid out in antiquity. As they knew, Aristotle had developed a typology of regimes: rule by the one, few, or many; and regimes that govern for the common good or private good. That yields six regime types. Regimes that govern for the common good include monarchies, aristocracies, and republics (the one, the few, and the many, respectively); and those that govern for private gain include tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.

 

The political thinkers of the ancient world, like Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, counseled a mixed constitution as the best regime. The American founders deliberately created a mixed regime that included elements of the one (the presidency), the few (the Senate), and the many (the House). They hoped to capitalize on the benefits of monarchy, aristocracy, and republicanism while using each regime type to offset the dangers of the others.

 

Much of the story of the past century is the deterioration of each part into its degenerate counterpart. The executive is not monarchal but increasingly imperial. Our leading citizens are not true aristocrats (leaders in virtue) but oligarchs, a mere cabal of wealthy tech bros. And whatever republic we had threatens to turn into mob rule. The result is an extraordinarily strong executive office that rotates among oligarchs who compete for demagogic sway over the mob that elects them. This is not the republicanism that Cicero or Jefferson envisioned.

 

The upshot is that we continue to ape the forms of American democracy, to go through the motions, while everyone knows they have been hollowed out and are approaching meaninglessness. Trump is not the cause of everything, but unlike most past American statesmen, he saw our degeneration not as a threat but as an opportunity. His success has set a precedent others will follow in ways that bode ill for the future. Americans continue to have extraordinary personal freedom, but dangerously little sense of citizenship.