corridors of power

Idioms  

1. The offices of powerful leaders. For example, As clerk to a Supreme Court justice, Jim thought he'd get his foot inside the corridors of power. This term was first used by C.P. Snow in his novel Homecomings (1956) for the ministries of Britain's Whitehall, with their top-ranking civil servants. Later it was broadened to any high officials.

---

Example Sentences

The companies have been working the corridors of power in Washington seeking sanctions relief that would allow Venezuela’s state energy company to pay up.

From The Wall Street Journal

Nor do you hear it in the West’s corridors of power.

From The Wall Street Journal

This has now become a trust issue between Ratcliffe, the others who occupy Old Trafford's corridors of power and United's vast global fanbase.

From BBC

But if the episode is meant as a moral fork in the road, in which the hero refuses a Faustian bargain, Varoufakis nonetheless seems a bit too impressed with himself over this intimate encounter with the ultimate insider, a man who had haunted the capitalist world’s corridors of power for more than 30 years.

From Salon

Many in Tehran’s corridors of power, obviously scared of another American or Israeli attack, dangle offers of diplomatic mediation.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• hierarchy
• ruling class