In their statistical analysis of 1,779 policy issues professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The Rise of the Roman Empire: Book 6. II, p. 155-156). Primarily, it relates to the ability of an organised minority to force its will upon the disorganised majoritya characteristic that can be found in any political regime. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09794-1, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09794-1. Criticism of Elite Theory It's been criticized for being too simplistic, particularly for not distinguishing between different types of political systems. There are two versions of the critique of the elitists to the Marxist conception of the dominant class. Braslia, Editora da UnB. From the rhetorical point of view, the description of elitism as reactionary is clear in the light of the heavy use that the elitists made of metaphors such as the mask, the veil, and the disguise. Within this frame of reference, both the people and the elite express a conception of the univocal will and of the homogeneous interest of two collective bodiesa conception that often hinges on fiction. referred to what we call today Elite Theory as simply "autocracy". Legitimation may not necessarily be strategical or even conscious since human beings have a spontaneous inclination to cover their actions irrational (and frequently egotistic) motives with the varnish of ex post and apparently rational justification. According to both, the concept of elite is useful insofar as it explains some social realities to which the concept of class cannot be applied to or cannot be adjusted to adequately. Elmer Eric Schattschneider offered a strong critique of the American political theory of pluralism: Rather than an essentially democratic system in which the many competing interests of citizens are amply represented, if not advanced, by equally many competing interest groups, Schattschneider argued the pressure system is biased in favor of "the POULANTZAS, Nicos. In contrast, the Pluralist model suggest that the power is distributed among interest groups that compete to control public policy. The theoretical critique to elite theory. However, the economic freedoms that form the basis of capitalism appear not to be included. 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. Even though both Salvemini and Schumpeter underline the importance of the bureaucratic organisation of mass parties, Salvemini insists that competitive democracy has to do mainly with the possibility of controlling the ruling class through the electoral machinery. The final essay combines the contemporary-focused approach of the first four essays and the historically-charged approach of the following three essays by focusing on a specific national experience: elite recruitment in Italy from 1919 to 1994. C. Wright Mills is counted among prominent social thinkers of twentieth century. The second variant - Marxism contra social science - requires one to think of the former as a warranty for scientificity and objectiveness against the widespread diffusion of theories which, in the guise of "sociology" or "political science," are, in reality, more or less competent ideological rationalizations of partial points of view and/or undisclosed vested social interests. According to both Mosca and Pareto, there is a clear distinction between the faade legitimation, represented by political programs, ideologies, public declarations, and even laws and constitutions, and the real motives for political action. Schumpeter was the last great political writer to explicitly marry empirical elitism to normative elitism. Rio de Janeiro, Campus. Elite (elitist) theory. In philosophy, political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the State that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in contemporary society. Adherents of this view have argued that the existence of elites can be terminated either by removing the social advantages that some people enjoy or by abolishing the power concentrations that spur competitions among them remedies that often go hand-in-hand. The study was promoted to debunk current concepts of any "democracy" present within urban politics and reaffirm the arguments for a true representative democracy. A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy. BOTTOMORE, Tom. Adding up these two shortcomings and pushing them to the limit, the "politically active minorities" seem to act in something of a social void. Secondly, there is the problem of the state bureaucracy, one that implies an array of additional problems: i) what is the connection between the state bureaucracy and the dominant class? Both Karl Marx (1883) and C. Wright Mills (1956) are famous for their views on the . This is because in the real political process there might be a wide range of available alternatives. There are, in this regard, three mutually excluding possibilities: Marxism as social science; Marxism against "bourgeois" social science; and Marxism as a parallel, revolutionary, and superior science/philosophy/ideology as compared to conventional social science1. The affirmative answer goes back to ancient Greece, where the disproportionate influence of distinguished minorities was defended by reference to their superior wisdom or virtue, as in Platos guardian class of rulers. 2 Poulantzas was not, to be sure, the only one to deal with these theoretical problems in the Marxist camp. Campinas, tese de doutorado em Cincia Poltica, Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Unicamp. Bearing in mind Poulantzas's critique of the theory of elites, our main goal in this article is to discuss these aforementioned propositions and advance an argumentation that can be used to verify to which extent it is possible to conduct social analysis in such a way that combines these two theoretical traditions, in spite of their remarkable ideological differences. For example: a group can be recruited from a class (thus fulfilling the requirement of social origin), but can adopt a discourse and behavior that is guided by the ideology of another social group; in another scenario, the presence of action that is manifestly and consciously guided toward the accomplishment of class objectives would be enough to establish the relationship of representation, even if the members of the minority were not recruited by the benefited class and if they profess to uphold the ideology of a third social group. Elite Theory Elite theory developed in part as a reaction to Marxism. This assumption does not, however, take into account the separation, postulated by classical Marxism, between state power (i.e. According to classical elite theory, all political systems are essentially the same, which means that the rial genuine differences between democracies and authoritarian regimes are dismissed. They then use this power to make decisions and allocate resources in ways that benefit them. 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. At bottom, we are trying to pin down the elite . The elitist tradition strongly affected the analysis of political phenomena during the twentieth century by developing a democratic elitism that interpreted liberal-democratic regimes according to a model of institutionalised competition between ruling elites. However, certain political practices are associated with the democratic formula. Where is power derived from? In fact, classes have always acted through "mouthpieces," that is, through parties, unions, civil associations and other institutions capable of speaking on behalf of classes. Kaplan e Lasswell, 1998, pp. 2. In the face of his iron law, Michels concluded, in evident despair, that democracy is the end but not the means.. We have divided this article into four sections. This is, as it happens, the analytical strategy adopted by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. An elite is anyone who falls into the top ten percentile of the nation's wealth. A main influence for the study was Franz Leopold Neumann's book, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 19331944, a study of how Nazism came to power in the German democratic state. Paris, PUF. Published 1 June 1966. Este artigo contrape-se s proposies sobre poder, classe e dominao poltica de classe elaboradas por uma vertente particular do marxismo - o marxismo estruturalista -, por meio de um dilogo crtico com um de seus autores paradigmticos: Nicos Poulantzas. Let us consider, first of all, the problem of the dominant class, which, on its turn, can be subdivided into two enigmas: i) is there in fact a politically dominant class, or is political life simply the result of the clash between countless interest and pressure groups who detain more or less equivalent portions of power? In the end, the ruling minority always seeks to justify and legitimise its rule through ideological formulae, without which the social structure would disintegrate. Elite cannot control the whole sphere of political activity: The advocates of elite theories wrongly believe that elite can control the whole sphere of political, social and economic activity. CARVALHO, Jose Murilo de. 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 . Adinolfi concludes that the political field is formed through waves of new forces (e.g., via elections) that are tightened by impermeable bounds. By liberty, Mosca has in mind juridical defence, that is, a measure of security for the individual which protects him from the arbitrary and irresponsible of personally held power. 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. Altogether, they seem three perfect examples of a rhetoric of reaction (Hirschman 1991). Both the reactionary and the progressive theses are framed as (descriptive) fact judgement, albeit subsuming a (non-descriptive) value judgement implicitly. What are these mistakes? Definition. The theoretical approaches include elite theory, group theory, political systems theory and institutionalism, policy output analysis, incremental theory and rational-choice theory which are primarily concerned with public policy-making as a process. The economic elite consists of the same people as the political elite, wealth equals power. His starting point is that transition processes during critical junctures are negotiated inside the ministerial elite. Defendemos que, ao contrrio do que sugere Poulantzas, a introduo do conceito de "elite" no interior do marxismo terico pode ser produtiva para o desenvolvimento dessa perspectiva de anlise social, tornando a abordagem classista da poltica operacionalizvel cientificamente. Paris, Maspero. According to Hirschman, the classical use of the futility argument is based on the idea that any progressive action aimed at changing structural characteristics is doomed to failure; the typical progressive-friendly counterargument is based on the opposing statement that the same action is backed up by powerful historical forces that are already on the march and that opposing these forces would be utterly futile (Hirschman 1991, p. 167). 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). Poulantzas emphasized that the criticism the elitists inveighed against Marxist theory either refer to or are an outcome of "poor interpretations of Marxism." 7 Formalism is the outcome of the "internalist" perspective, adopted by some elite theory thinkers. The assumption that every investigator which chooses political elites as an object of study is doomed to commit the sin of formalism is not accurate. Its most general point is that there is not a dominant class or a set of institutionally based elites that has predominant power. The cohesion of the social group who composes this new political group is conceived of distinctly (and erroneously) by Mosca, Michels, Meynaud, Wright Mills - either in terms of a unifying center, or in terms of the ascension of a new social group (the "administrators"), or, not least, in terms of the domination of one elite in particular over others. All these differentiations are all the more important when we become aware of the misconceptions that can arise from not knowing them. Download The Three Founding Fathers Of Elite S Theory Mosca Pareto And Michels full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Another crucial shortcoming has to do with the fact it does not take into account the unity of political power and the centrality of the power of the state (and not of any other "powers") in capitalistic social formations. The elite theory analysis of power was also applied on the micro scale in community power studies such as that by Floyd Hunter (1953). (2007), Poltica, cultura e classe na Revoluo Francesa. C. Wright Mills Power Elite Theory. Department of Sociology Gothenburg University"), Putnam, R. D. (1977) Elite Transformation in Advance Industrial Societies: An Empirical Assessment of the Theory of Technocracy in, This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 06:20. The following three articles redirect their attention to the fundamental elements of elite theory, following the assumption that the history of classical and democratic elitism requires a constant re-reading in order to have some utility for analyses about the present. 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). 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. Whatever is the case, the specific problems these critiques raise - that of the dominant class, the state bureaucracy, the relationship between them and their sources of power - are far from being resolved by the "ideological perspectives" of classical elitism (1971, vol. _________. Marx believed that conflict between groups struggling to either attain wealth and power or keep the wealth and power they had was inevitable in a capitalist society, and conflict was the only way for the underprivileged to eventually gain some measure of equality. The conclusion of this research was that there is a strong, linear correlation between the income of voters and how often their policy preferences become reality. (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. Negotiations between such disenfranchised groups and the state can be analyzed as negotiations between elites and counter-elites. Pluralists put forward the idea that power is not a physical quality that people have or do not have but yet it flows from a variety of sources. Less attention has been paid to the other element of the contrapositionthe elite. However, there is the possibility, for instance, of a class of fraction in the bloc of power that does not necessarily have its own party-style organization or that does not make itself present in the political scene in this way; a class or fraction of a class can disappear from the political scene yet continue to exist in the power bloc; there can possibly be a class of hegemonic fraction in the political scene that is different from the class or hegemonic class in power bloc; "the ruling class or fraction [] [in the political scene] can not only not be [the class of hegemonic faction], but can even, at times, be absent from the power bloc" (Idem, p. 76). (1994), Les sommets de l'tat: essai sur l'lite du pouvoir em France. The Greek precursor to the English aristocracy (aristokratia) referred to rule by the best men (the aristoi). The Three Founding Fathers Of Elite S Theory Mosca Pareto And Michels. (1984), Los Estados y las revoluciones sociales. In this stud wily I worl okn the classic elite theories Pareto', namels y Circulation of Elites Mosca', s theories o Rulinf g Class, and Michels' theory of Iron law of Oligarch anyd I will not ge intt o neither the subject of Power Elite nor elites roles in today's societie particularls iyn developing countries. the social power exercised through the institutions of the capitalist state), effectively held by the dominant classes or fractions, and the state apparatus, which is where this power is exercised, and which can be occupied and operated by any other social category (the middle strata, the petit bourgeoisie etc.). - 178.88.168.55. According to Birnbaum, only with "the study of French politico-administrative personnel" can one arrive at a "better understanding of the nature of the State in France" (1994, p. 11). So Paulo, Annablume/Fapesp, vol. In order to strengthen this argument, it was crucial to translate it into a scientific law that would have shown the impossibility of genuine political change. Paris, Maspero, 2 vols. However, a peculiar version of democratic elitism arose in the late 1930s and 1940s at the crossroad between classical elitism and the debates about the possible conciliation of liberalism and democracy. C.Wright Mills och hans sociologiska vision Om hans syn p makt och metod och vetenskap,. which serve the purpose of restraining decision-makers from acting according to their whims. From this viewpoint, the suffrage machinery tends to favour those individuals who are more apt to use the machinery (Burnham 1943, p. 185). DeKalb, Northern Illinois University Press. KAPLAN, Abraham & LASSWELL, Harold. However, this framework (and its practical effects) has been challenged recently not only by populist political movements but also by theories of deliberative and participatory democracy, which emphasise the direct involvement of citizens in informed processes of collective decision-making, thereby accusing democratic elitism of being either a perversion of democracy or no democracy at all. We have three points particularly in mind, laid out and discussed below. Salvemini overcomes this setting by making the implicit value judgment explicit. ): The primary object of every elite or ruling class is to preserve power and privilege. In the years following World War II, however, the classic elitists writings were much in vogue among American social scientists committed to a kind of liberal constitutionalism. 5) Elite Theory. Professor and Kaliste Saloom Endowed Chair in Political Science Professor and Kaliste Saloom Endowed Chair in Political Science So Paulo, Companhia das Letras. Most often, Marxism is perceived as economicism, that is, a theory according to which political agents act at the behest of "economic interests" or, more appropriately, of economic agents. 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. The outlook of the Italian school of elitism is based on two ideas: Pareto emphasized the psychological and intellectual superiority of elites, believing that they were the highest accomplishers in any field. It thus paints a dark picture. Criticisms levelled against populism typically focus on the way populist-friendly discourse distorts the values and ends of democratic procedures, and especially on how it misconstrues the people through polarisations based on social, political or nationalistic characteristics. MILIBAND, Ralph. Great attention has been paid in the last few years to the contraposition between people and elite, perceived as a fundamental character of the populist discourse. This aim, however, in no manner implies a simple refusal of these critiques. 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 20th-century American economist Joseph Schumpeter used the elitists less conspicuously but also redefined democracy in terms congenial to the elite legacy as nothing more than electoral competition between elites vying for popular authorization to rule. For example, the freedom to start a business and retain the value created by that business would create the same elite . Are these flaws reason enough to suspend the dialogue between and elitism? Let us remember that the broader goal of this article is to (re)establish a dialogue between Marxism and elitism, which was interrupted after Nicos Poulantzas advanced his critique of elite theory (summarized above) and the reproaches to its uncritical incorporation by Ralph Miliband in The State in Capitalist Society (cf., in particular, Poulantzas, 1969). 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. They then argue that recognition of celebrity epistemic power can be a valuable resource for supporting the legitimacy and practice of democratic elitism, though these benefits carry certain risks to which elite theories are particularly vulnerable. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Calvinists referred to the superior personal characteristics of aristocrats in order to justify armed resistance against illegitimate monarchs; John Miltons defense of the regicide in England in 1649 and subsequent rule by Puritan saints represents one instance of that type of ideology. https://www.britannica.com/topic/elite-theory. It essentially concerns how must we come to grips with the affinity (or divorce) between Marxism, as a theoretical system, and the social sciences, as a diverse ensemble of theories, methods and research techniques. These formulations, stresses Poulantzas, not only do not avoid escaping determinism - a common accusation aimed at Marxism - but also restore in its explanations economic overdeterminism (Idem, p. 158-159). For example, the American economist Kenneth Arrows impossibility theorem showed that ordinary voting procedures could not in principle express a stable collective will, implying that agenda setting and other procedural maneuvers by a few strategically placed actors are indispensable to public choices. Conversely, elite theory can function as a test to different kinds of hypotheses, namely: (1) that the appeal to a will of the people or even to direct democracy or deliberative democracy is nothing but a political formula in Moscas sense of the term; (2) that modern populism is not an exception to Michels iron law of oligarchy; (3) that the new populist drift towards Bonapartism (and against a model of competitive democracy such as the one introduced by Salvemini) does not represent an alternative to the inevitability of government by elites but somewhat weakens the control of the majority over the elite through disintermediation and de-politicisation. (1970), Fascisme et dictature: la Trosime Internationale face au fascisme. These problems would in fact result from a series of mistakes made by the elitists. The upshot is that contemporary democratic theory can draw on Weber to sink into the ambiguities of transformative democratic politics. "Power, hegemony, and world society theory: A critical evaluation. 437-438). _________. He posited a structural-functional approach that mapped hierarchies and webs of interconnection within the citymapping relationships of power between businessmen, politicians, clergy etc. barely have - and therefore do not represent - the same interests, neither do they have any political unity. GUTTSMAN, W. L. (1965), The British political elite. Miliband (1970) was correct in claiming that, for Poulantzas, the state and its agents can only be seen as autonomous (confronted with the hegemonic fraction) under the condition they are mere automatons, that is, they completely lose their autonomy (confronted with the objective imperatives of the "capitalist" system) and, thus, lose, once and for all, their importance as an object of study. [15], "If the dominant figures of the past hundred years have been the entrepreneur, the businessman, and the industrial executive, the new men are the scientists, the mathematicians, the economists, and the engineers of the new intellectual technology."[16]. The choice between the expressions "dominant class" and "political elite" is not, however, merely a matter of terminology. The second mistake is a sequel to the first one. It is possible to interpret elite theory as a periodical reaction to social revolution. New Left Review, 58, nov.-dez. In a nutshell, classical elite theory involves the following items (Burnham 1943: 165 ff. RUBEL, Maximilien. Highlighting the significance of internal tensions within each thinkers work, between the causal primacy of psychic states and the mutual dependence of social factors (Pareto), and between the elite principle and balanced pluralism (Mosca), Jackson develops the hypothesis that the sceptical liberal Pareto or the democratic elitist Mosca elude Urbinatis unpolitical, populist, and plebiscitary disfigurations of democracy. 11. 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. Therefore, my focus The ruling class is the social class or fraction which is predominant in the political scene - and therefore assumes "the role of political representation" - as result of the political party game (Idem, p. 162). Rio de Janeiro, Zahar. Her intention is to reinforce the democratic decision-making process without developing a concept of authority based on an exclusive elite. Researcher and sociologist, Professor Emeritus G. William Domhoff, would further develop and support Mill's power elite theory during his nearly 40-year career in academia. Keep your own beliefs: Everyone has a right to preserve his/her own beliefs. 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)." ", being that these questions are lesser or less important compared to the first one. It regards Marxism as an ideology rather than an objective analysis of social systems. In this sense, the state serves the long-term interests of the dominant class, or, to be specific, the political interests of this class in particular, interests which basically consist of the reproduction of fundamental characteristics/interrelations that constitute the capitalist mode of production. Sets with similar terms Sociology Exam 2 (gov. (1994), "Uma contribuio crtica da teoria das elites". . Mosca emphasized the sociological and personal characteristics of elites. At the time Mills was writing, academic sociology was in the process of proclaiming itself a science. The problem then turns out to be how exactly to detect the relationship of representation of class in day-to-day political struggle, yet without resorting to the "key that opens all doors" of the "objective functions" of the state or the "intrinsic logic of the mode of production.". Paris, Seuil. Elite theory is deep-rooted in classical sociology, especially that of Weber (2005 [1922]), Pareto (1935), Mosca (1939) and Michels (2009 [1915]). This third question is, in sum the question of "representation": whether political, bureaucratic, and scientific elites represent themselves (their own interests) or social class interests. 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