Mosca was a conservative whose theories aimed at falsifying the belief in universal suffrage as a government of the majority; Michels was a deluded socialist who became a vocal supporter of the fascist regime in the 1930s as a result of a lifelong reaction against the false democracy of the social-democratic movement; and Paretos reputation as liberal-conservative was reinforced by the infamous political act of publicly supporting Mussolinis march on Rome. During the electoral campaign, each party tries to convince voters it is the most suitable for managing the state business. On the other one, this theory is excessively focused upon the self-interests of "politically active minorities" and thus tend to shy away from choosing the possible (and in fact frequent) relationship between the behavior of the elites and certain outside interests as the object of analysis. The ruling class is composed of the ruling elite and the sub-elites. It is possible to interpret elite theory as a periodical reaction to social revolution. There are at least three questions to be dealt with in this regard. etc. They tend to explain political phenomena and the power of elites based only on factors internal to the political universe. Elite Theory: Philosophical Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09794-1. Political Science. (ii) The concept of "elite" cannot effectively account for the problem of domination since it does not take into consideration the problem of society's class structure. Each of these theories is briefly discussed. This observation comes with a caveat. One of its most famous foundational texts is the book by Karl Marx (and Friedrich Engels . In the seventh essay, Pedro T. Magalhes calls the readers attention to a towering political and sociological theory figure that is seldom associated with elite theory, but which should be so: Max Weber. He identified a triumvirate of power groupspolitical, economic and militarywhich form a distinguishable, although not unified, power-wielding body in the United States. C. Wright Mills Power Elite Theory. CODATO, Adriano. However, this conceptual framing only solves the problem by eliminating it arbitrarily. Today, one of the most insidious and damaging of these phenomena is the move by the power elite to privatize our nation's public education system. Therefore, my focus Those defenses of elite rule are the more notable because, in some cases, their authors ostensibly rejected the ancient assumption of unequally distributed capacities in favour of some notion of natural equality. It could be said that these problems were either hidden or forgotten by the political sociology of the twentieth century as a result of the widespread use of the "political class" formula and whatever term later came as a substitute - power elites, governing class, ruling class - although never resolved. Mots-cls: Marxisme; Thorie des lites; Thorie sociale; Nicos Poulantzas; Analyse de classe. Contemporary commentators believe that Mills was an outstanding social critic but not necessarily a first-rate social scientist. [14], Putnam saw the development of technical and exclusive knowledge among administrators and other specialist groups as a mechanism that strips power from the democratic process and slips it to the advisors and specialists who influence the decision process. Nevertheless, rational-choice theory strengthened empirical elitism by offering new arguments for the inevitability of elite rule. Salveminis theory has an apparent democratic penchant for accountability, in sharp contrast with Schumpeters later and famous view that the role of the people boils down to the election of a government and nothing more. This is to be done through a theoretical exposition placing this perspective in the spectrum of the main theories on the same topic , with special reference to the classical democratic-elite theories of Max Weber, Gaetano Mosca, Joseph (1971), Mas alla de la clase dirigente. [7], In The Semisovereign People, Schattschneider argued the scope of the pressure system is really quite small: The "range of organized, identifiable, known groups is amazingly narrow; there is nothing remotely universal about it" and the "business or upper-class bias of the pressure system shows up everywhere". (1974), As elites e a sociedade. [4] Polybius effectively said this is due to a failure to properly apply checks and balances between the three mentioned forms as well as subsequent political institutions. PUTNAM, Robert D. (1976), The comparative study of political elites. Paris, Mouton. He interpreted the social world from Weberian and Marxist perspective though, he never admitted . Topoi 41, 15 (2022). II, p. 154-155). Schumpeter was the last great political writer to explicitly marry empirical elitism to normative elitism. Altogether, they seem three perfect examples of a rhetoric of reaction (Hirschman 1991). Let us recall the starting point of this article: if it is in any way possible to establish an interrelation between the nature of political/state elites (or the "class in charge of'") and their decisions, and, on the other hand, between these decisions and the effects they produce upon the social system (are they reproducing effect or not; anticipating or nor; in favor or not of the hegemonic fraction), therefore one must acknowledge the importance of elites as an object of study, which includes its importance in the analysis (or "proof") of the reproduction/transformation of class domination relationships. During the last thirty years, there have been numerous attempts to revise or reconstitute the "classical" theory of democracy: the familiar doctrine of popular rule, patterned after the New England town . In fact, individual liberty is presented as its primary or sole goal. 60-61). Robert Michels would later delineate this principle in the so-called iron law of oligarchy: political parties, trade unions, and other mass organisations are invariably ruled by largely self-serving and self-perpetuating oligarchies, which defy attempts at democratic control or participation (Michels 1962; Hirschman 1991, p. 57). His most recent work, Energy and Empire: The Politics of Nuclear and Solar Power in the United States demonstrates that economic elites tied their advocacy of the nuclear energy option to post-1945 American foreign policy goals, while at the same time these elites opposed government support for other forms of energy, such as solar, that cannot be dominated by one nation. In sum, it is necessary to know whether the members of the minority at stake act in a way that is coordinated and convenient for the interests of the class they supposedly "represent"; whether they explicitly speak "on its behalf" and whether they belong to the class in question. elite theory, in political science, theoretical perspective according to which (1) a community's affairs are best handled by a small subset of its members and (2) in modern societies such an arrangement is in fact inevitable. It is necessary, before moving on, to present the backdrop to this discussion concerning "elite" and "class." With their emphasis on history, contexts and agents, they ushered into the debate of their time some arguments that realist epistemology fully developed, emphasising the role of context-specific and not directly observable explanatory features. This is power in the structural sense. The inevitability of elite rule could not be taken for granted, however, as attested by the fact that ancient, medieval, and early modern political writers undertook a constant struggle against rule by ordinary people, or democracy, which was often equated with the absence of order, or anarchy. Professor and Kaliste Saloom Endowed Chair in Political Science, University Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. The power elite theory, in short, claims that a single elite, not a multiplicity of competing groups, decides the life-and-death issues for the nation as a whole, leaving relatively minor matters for the middle level and almost nothing for the common person. PERISSINOTTO, Renato M. (2000), Estado e capital cafeeiro em So Paulo (1889-1930). Thus, the elitists do not go beyond the analysis of either the elite-mass relationship (latter never being rigorously defined beyond conventional preconceptions), or intra-elite relationships. (1990) attack on "the new elite paradigm" provides a welcome opportunity to engage his criticisms and clarify our version of elite theory. The basic characteristics of this theory are that power is concentrated, the elites are unified, the non-elites are diverse and powerless, elites' interests are unified due to common backgrounds and positions and the defining characteristic of power is institutional position.[2]. Critical theory is presented as seeking freedom from domination. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. What is more, its non-coincidence can only be explained by Marxism as a result of a thorough understanding of this problem based on the variations promoted by class struggle, by the forms of the state and by the forms of regimes in concrete social formations (Idem, p. 161-162). How do we explain them? SAES, Dcio. It therefore follows that the central problem for any researcher of Marxist bent ought to be "what are the social relations of domination being reproduced by the state? CARVALHO, Jose Murilo de. In summary, the papers presented in this issue allow new analyses of the contemporary political landscape through the lens of the study of the elites. (1975), La crise des dictatures: Portugal, Grce, Espagne. Poulantzas, 1971, vol. 154ss). Once can easily notice that this move, instead of settling the score for good, just adds another term to the equation, as now we have an additional empirical problem: how then can it be proved that such institutions in fact represent or serve as a vehicle for the interests of the class in question? The vertical and the horizontal dynamics together generate a political system in which mass bureaucratic parties play a pivotal role. II, p. 155-156). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09794-1, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09794-1. Bogardus has described, "The theory of elite is that in every society there are people who possess in a marked degree, the qualities of intelligence, character, skill, capacity, whatever kind, that there are two classes of elite, that the two groups are disjunctive at any given time, that there is an up and down circulation of elite." 7. The upshot is that contemporary democratic theory can draw on Weber to sink into the ambiguities of transformative democratic politics. (1978), L'Etat, le pouvoir, le socialisme. Elite Theory: Philosophical Challenges. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. From the classical elitist viewpoint, political representation is only indirectly connected to elections by voters. Stated otherwise, adequate use of this concept seems to require that we consider class as a collective entity that is "represented" in the political realm by a "politically active minority," as argued by Therborn (Idem, pp. Lastly, it is undeniable that elitism suffers from two interrelated limitations. That explicitly antidemocratic posture was characteristic of Christian writers such as Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century theologian. The basic normative question underlying elite theory is whether the relative power of any group ought to exceed its relative size. Milton was admired by John Adams, the American revolutionary, and in the 1780s James Madison and Alexander Hamilton defended the new institutions of the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court precisely as good guardiansprivileged agencies more capable of serving the peoples interests than the people themselves. Yet empirical elitism also appealed to Marxian figures such as Vladimir Lenin and Antonio Gramsci. The central question of political research guided by the Marxist problematic would henceforth be: to which extent the strategies adopted by different political elites can be linked to a class base? So Paulo, Editora 34. Confronted with profound changes in the political landscape due to the progressive enlargement of the franchise in Western democracies, authors such as Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels insisted on the inevitable oligarchic nature of any kind of collective organisation, including modern mass parties. So Paulo, Edusp. (1994), Les sommets de l'tat: essai sur l'lite du pouvoir em France. Criticism of the descriptive accuracy of the classical theory has been widespread in recent years. This seems to be the case of Ralph Miliband (1972) and Tom Bottomore (1974). (1989), "A anlise de classe no mundo atual: o marxismo como cincia social", in E. Hobsbawn (org. According to Hirschman, the assertion that any society, regardless of its political structure, is always divided between the elite and the non-elite was tailor-made [by classical elitists] to prove the futility of any move toward true political citizenship via the franchise (Hirschman 1991, p. 51). defenders of freedom. _________. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. . Yet, before listing structural Marxism's theoretical solutions for this agenda of questions we shall briefly turn to Poulantzas's reproaches to elite theory. Paris, Maspero, 2 vols. 3Take as examples Marx on the German Revolution (1848-1849) or on the political reality conveyed by the theoretical notion of "Bonapartism." This research, however, leaves room for the observance of a contrary trend in the last few years that differs from such patterns and according to which the ministerial elite is losing its capacity to reproduce itself and allowing outsiders to occupy the public sphere. Whichever direction is taken, its power can derive both from the control one group has over relations of production, and as the control of the state apparatus itself (which can cumulatively assume control of economic power). In his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe,[17] Ralf Dahrendorf asserts that, due to advanced level of competence required for political activity, a political party tends to become, actually, a provider of "political services", that is, the administration of local and governmental public offices. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. This observation, which combines a realistic viewpoint with the liberal commitment to the limitation of power, sets a new research path for elite theory. Strikingly, a study published in 2014, which correlated voters' preferences to policy outcomes, found that the statistical correlation between the two is heavily dependent on the income brackets of the voting groups. Building on recent re-assessments of Pareto and Mosca, Jackson discusses whether their socio-political orientations contribute to the disfiguration of democracy (in Nadia Urbinatis terminology) or provide a resource for the renewal of democratic institutions. The contributions included in this collection came out of the Topoi conference Elite Theory: Philosophical Challenges, organised by Giovanni Damele and Andre Santos Campos in Lisbon and generously sponsored by Springer. This implies several consequences, the least of which is the risk of sliding into the "ideological" terrain of the opponent. It rejected the Marxian idea that a classless society having an egalitarian structure could be realized after class struggle in every society. From the state itself, in that it is considered the exclusive source of political power (as in Weber and Michels)? Our perspective is that the answer to this question ought to be no. Liberty, judicial defence, and the right of opposition are, thus, the keystones of Burnhams reinterpretation of democracy. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Nicos Poulantzas made the claim in Political Power and Social Classes that political problems, such as those traditionally laid out by the theory of elites (to spell them out: who wields power in a community? While insisting that politics is always a power struggle within the ruling elite, these authors centred their analysis on the unintended political consequences of irrational (or non-completely rational) behaviour, especially by establishing a distinction between the rhetoric of legitimation and true motives, which in turn mirrored a more significant and fundamental social distinction between the ruling class and the ruled (per Mosca) or between the elite and the non-elite (per Pareto). It provided the tools to analyze the structure of a political system and served as a warning of what could happen in a modern capitalistic democracy. The conservative American philosopher James Burnham, a founding editor of the National Review, depicted Mosca, Pareto, and Michels as Machiavellians whose realistic analysis of elite actors and rejection of utopian egalitarianism represented the best hope of democracyas defined in terms of the law-governed liberty that emerges from interelite checks and balances. Adding up these two shortcomings and pushing them to the limit, the "politically active minorities" seem to act in something of a social void. So Paulo, Editora da Unesp. For this reason, this mode of analysis cannot be limited to identifying the morphology of the mode of production (and its stags or phases) with the aim derive, by theoretical deduction, the political effects the class structure supposedly produces. Mosca, Pareto, and Michels accepted that governing elites are usually (albeit not necessarily) friendly to leading economic interests, but they rejected Karl Marxs analysis of historical change as the result of class conflict. Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. When the aristocratic tendency prevails, rapid shifts occur in the composition and structure of elites (e.g., social revolutions). The theoretical critique to elite theory. Perhaps there is room here for applying an analysis similar to the one developed by Hirschman in his Rhetoric of Reaction. In this regard, a quick reading of the typology of political classes set forth by Mosca can help overcoming what can be politely called a misunderstanding (1939, p. 53-60). A major problem, in turn, is the ability of elites to co-opt counter-elites. If, on one hand, it is undeniable that elites act in a structural context which restricts their margin of actions/option and redefine the sense of their strategies despite their initial intentions and "projects," on the other hand, it is not less undeniable that these elites make choices, outline their tactics, redefine decisions and calculate the reach of their possibilities of power and thereby affect the concrete dynamic of the political and social worlds. Marxisme et litisme: deux modles antagoniques d'analyse sociale? This is derived from the works of Karl Marx, who saw society as fragmented into groups that compete for social and economic resources. 1 (2). The concept of "dominant class" is, Poulantzas reminds us, a lot more complex than the caricature outlined by Wright Mills. There we can observe him following the day-to-day decision strategies of several political agents, their calculation, hesitations, and positions in the face of concrete events. With their interpretation of the universal suffrage as an exercise in hypocrisy, the elitists have been considered by Albert Hirschman a perfect example of the rhetoric of futility, one of the three main arguments typical of what he called the rhetoric of reaction (the other two being the perversity and the jeopardy theses) (Hirschman 1991). "7 However, concerning this point, we can initially observe that not only Marxism is deformed by its theoretical enemies, but that Marxists themselves tend to do the same to their ideological adversaries. There is not much doubt concerning the fact that the structure of capitalist society creates several limits to the decisions, strategies and room for action of the political elites. Londres, MacGibbon & Kee. ", and not "who decides?" This is, in summary, the Poulantzian critique of elitism, from which it is already possible to deduce the premises, postulates and principles of this political science and which thwart any possible conceptual exchange with other traditions unwilling to accept this evidence. Michelss account was unusually compelling because of his own egalitarian sympathies and his case studies of German socialist organizations. This is because in the real political process there might be a wide range of available alternatives. He was, however, the one to most explicitly and conscientiously step up to the task of dealing with this issue in theoretical realm. As discussed above, Poulantzas sought to resolve the problem of the relationship between agents of the state (the political and/or bureaucratic "elites") and the political domination of a certain class or fraction based on the conjugation of two concepts: "ruling class" and "hegemonic class (or fraction)." In this sense, the elitist approach is compromised by an excessive degree of voluntariness, being insufficiently able to account for the structural constraints which limit the actions of elite groups. Let us take a closer look at this problem building upon the theoretical solutions proposed by Marxism in order to understand the relationship between social power and political power. After all, it is as dogmatic to believe that classes have no effect whatsoever on political life as supposing that, by definition, they indeed should. Hence, it is a mistake to argue that any elite theoretician cannot identity the "true" basis of political power. This approach can ultimately shed light on the other element of the opposition between the people and the elite, especially by offering the interpretative tools by which to understand how this opposition might sometimes conceal a competition between the ruling minorities or the epiphenomenon of the circulation of the elites (in Paretos words). 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