Branko Milanović in Agenda Pública:
When income and wealth become highly concentrated, political power tends to move toward those who have money, and the system becomes hypocritical: it is an ostensible democracy but such that the rich rule.
I really like this phrase „ostensible democracy“. Americans and Germans often claim/assume they live in a democracy but the speaker’s affect is tentative, wishful. People aspire to live in a democracy.