Until recently, it was authoritarian capitalist regimes such as those in Russia and China that were characterised as plutocratic: Putin’s government, well known to be dominated by powerful oligarchs such as Yuri Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko and the Rotenberg brothers; and China’s Communist Party, which over the last couple of decades has enabled the flourishing of the country’s now famous 1,000 billionaires, including the likes of Zhong Shanshan and Ma Huateng.

But today, it is liberal democratic states that are increasingly taking on this plutocratic feature. Donald Trump’s incoming administration in the United States is the latest specimen – his “billionaire boys club” is stacked with Elon Musk, Howard Lutnick and Vivek Ramaswamy, among several others. Ramaswamy and centibillionaire (with a net worth of $100bn or more) Musk are to be appointed as heads of a new “Department of Government Efficiency” aimed at cutting some $2 trillion in “government waste” and slashing “excess” state regulation.

Similar moves have also been taking place under Narendra Modi’s government in India, which has cosied up to a handful of tycoons such as Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and Sajjan Jindal, with the goal of........

© Al Jazeera