The social structure is sustained by a political formula that typically correlates with a generally accepted religion, ideology or myth. (1989), "A anlise de classe no mundo atual: o marxismo como cincia social", in E. Hobsbawn (org. This is, as it happens, the analytical strategy adopted by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Yet I believe that The Power Elite survives better as a work of social science than of social criticism. They tend to explain political phenomena and the power of elites based only on factors internal to the political universe. 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. (2009, no prelo). However, certain political practices are associated with the democratic formula. Revista de Sociologia e Poltica, 3, nov. SKOCPOL, Theda. 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. Google Scholar, Michels R (1962) Political parties: a sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy. Consequently, no social structure is permanent, and no stable utopia is possible. Poulantzas, 1971, vol. Both in Political Power and Social Classes, published in 1968, and in the polemic which thereafter he engaged in with Ralph Miliband in the pages of the New Left Review, Poulantzas criticized the analytical, political and ideological impertinence that was bringing in the problematic of political elites into Marxist theory (cf. Some critics disagree with Gilens and Pages' headline conclusion, but do believe that the dataset confirms "the rich and middle (class) are effective at blocking policies that the poor want".[20]. Another distinction between Marxist, Pluralist, and Elite theory's is that the Pluralist and Marxist theories are led by structure functionalism and they both have specific functions in society while Elite are not controlled by interest groups. On one hand, exaggerated weight is given to the autonomous power of the political elites, seen as a group responsible for the conducting of human communities. MOSCA, Gaetano. 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. Her argumentative path leads her to an interpretation of the role that intellectuals might undertake of connecting civil society and the government, of fortifying or even restoring the trust between the individuals and their representatives, thereby strengthening the levels of legitimacy in contemporary democracies. During the 1940s, democratic elitism was used as a theoretical weapon against neo-Bonapartism and fascist dictatorships. The first variant - Marxism as a "normal" social science - is the point of view which allows for a true dialogical relationship with other non-Marxist or explicitly anti-Marxist social theories. . Democratic elitism accepts the main premise of elite theory: no societies are governed by the people, by a majority; all societies, including societies called democratic, are ruled by a minority (Burnham 1943, p. 184). (2008), Elites e instituies no Brasil: uma anlise contextual do Estado Novo. 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. With this said, there is no reason - other than those beyond the theoretical domain - to consider these conceptions of power mutually exclusive. Who holds power is, by definition, the dominant classes. 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. A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy. 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). II, p. 155-156). Yet, before listing structural Marxism's theoretical solutions for this agenda of questions we shall briefly turn to Poulantzas's reproaches to elite theory. As a general rule, the actions of the ruling class or fraction disguise its role as the hegemonic class or fraction in the political scene. 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). 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? The three functions that Meisel identifies Mosca's elite must have . POULANTZAS, Nicos. This is derived from the works of Karl Marx, who saw society as fragmented into groups that compete for social and economic resources. The ruling class is composed of the ruling elite and the sub-elites. Identify the key differences between elite pluralism and Elite Theory Elite pluralism is the criticism of Dahl's classical pluralism, believing it is to . 2 Poulantzas was not, to be sure, the only one to deal with these theoretical problems in the Marxist camp. 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.". SAES, Dcio. Part of Springer Nature. 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. We should not imagine that the concept of elite and its many specializations - political, economic, intellectual etc. 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. 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). This implies several consequences, the least of which is the risk of sliding into the "ideological" terrain of the opponent. 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. So Paulo, Edusp. However, this distinction between the rhetoric of legitimation and true motives needs to be related to a more significant and fundamental social division: the one between the ruling class and the ruled (in Moscas terminology) or between the elite and the non-elite (in Paretos terminology). The impact of their work on the current theoretical diagnoses of democracy suggests that their analyses are worthy of more attention than usually acknowledged. This is power in the structural sense. From this viewpoint, the suffrage machinery tends to favour those individuals who are more apt to use the machinery (Burnham 1943, p. 185). 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 . 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. or "who governs? 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. PRZEWORSKY, Adam. Elite theory is the belief that a wealthy elite runs the country. Albert Weale questions the association of populism with the will of the people in light of an elitist framework. The Marxists could refute these arguments by saying that neither they nor Marx defend the idea that social classes act directly in politics, as voluntary collective forces (Therborn, 1989). On its turn, a "displacement of the index of hegemony from one class or fraction to another in the power bloc does not necessarily involve displacements of party representation in the political scene" (Idem, p. 74); the dislocation of the hegemony of a class or fraction to another power bloc does not "necessarily correspond [] to backdoor passages to the political scene (Idem, ibidem). C. Wright Mills Power Elite Theory. 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. It regards Marxism as an ideology rather than an objective analysis of social systems. Putnam & Co, London, Hirschman AO (1991) The rhetoric of reaction: perversity, futility, jeopardy. - 178.88.168.55. 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. 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. "Classe social, elite poltica e elite de classe: por uma anlise societalista da poltica". The search for constants and general laws of political action seemed a natural consequence of such methods. Nevertheless, while the majority acknowledge that television has no overt, direct and unambiguous effects . From this perspective, how should these very same problems be expressed in the language of Marxism, that is, according to its conceptual framework, and what was the theoretical solution Poulantzas devised for them? This is what has come to be called the sin of "formalism. Both Karl Marx (1883) and C. Wright Mills (1956) are famous for their views on the . Paris, Maspero. 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. 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. etc. The political scientist Thomas Ferguson's Investment Theory of Party Competition can be thought of as an elite theory. His main contention is that the logic of distance inherent in liberal democracies should be strengthened as a mechanism for improving democracy via elites, in contrast with the views that promote democracy only by eliminating the ontological gap between those who rule and those who are ruled. Madri, Tecnos. [21] As a consequence, these systems tend be dominated by those who can, most typically elites and corporations. (1994), "Uma contribuio crtica da teoria das elites". Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over policy-planning networks through the financial support of foundations or positions with think tanks or policy-discussion groups, members of the "elite" exert significant power over corporate and government decisions. One of them is more theoretical in nature, which is the question of the foundation of political power. (1982), Does who governs matter? Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. This is because in the real political process there might be a wide range of available alternatives. The first four articles delve into the relevance of certain aspects of elite theory for analysing problems faced by contemporary liberal democracies. How do we explain them? These problems could only be resolved, according to Poulantzas, in a realm of theoretical Marxism, or at least what Poulantzas deemed theoretical Marxism to be. He says the "notion that the pressure system is automatically representative of the whole community is a myth" and, instead, the "system is skewed, loaded and unbalanced in favor of a fraction of a minority".[8]. This kind of formulation lends itself well and preferably to the analysis of strategic actions of real political life. Overly preoccupied with the "subjects" of power, the elitists are incapable of thinking the state as an institutional structure (agents, apparatuses, roles, center of power, etc.) He discussed the existence of two types of elites: He also extended the idea that a whole elite can be replaced by a new one and how one can circulate from being elite to non-elite. Elite theory rejects the plurality that classical and elite pluralism proposes. 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). According to elite theory, the wealthy use their power to control the nation's economy in such a way that those below them cannot advance economically. It is exactly in relation to this problem - the problem of representation - that the concept of elite can be not only complementary to Marxism, but also important to render class analysis workable, in other words, to turn it into a useful tool in social science. The accomplishment of this goal entails great obstacles, as it is no trivial thing to conceive of classes as voluntary collective actors, as Olson (1999) has demonstrated. (1998), Poder e sociedade. Political Science. Evidently, all three dimensions together - action, "spiritual" affiliation and social precedence - render proof of the existence of "class representation" even more convincing. Magalhes, however, argues that attention should be shifted from Webers context-specific defence of plebiscitary leadership in post-WWI Germany to his broader conception of charisma as an attempt to grasp the meaning of significant social and political change. Di Giulio, in turn, carries out the view that Pareto and Mosca, despite their deference to a positivist epistemology, significantly anticipated a sort of epistemological realism unsympathetic to linear notions of causality embedded in contemporary social sciences. The vertical and the horizontal dynamics together generate a political system in which mass bureaucratic parties play a pivotal role. Poulantzas emphasized that the criticism the elitists inveighed against Marxist theory either refer to or are an outcome of "poor interpretations of Marxism." Marxist criticism is an approach to theory and literary commentary that questions society and culture. This is power in the strategic sense. (1975), La crise des dictatures: Portugal, Grce, Espagne. Penguin Books; London, England, Dahrendorf, Ralf (1990) Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: In a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Warsaw. ", Lerner, R., A. K. Nagai, S. Rothman (1996), Milch, Jan, (1992) . Michelss account was unusually compelling because of his own egalitarian sympathies and his case studies of German socialist organizations. The studies on political elites overwhelmingly and convincingly demonstrate the scientific value of studying "politically active minorities" due to the (not necessarily intentional effects) of their actions and strategic options can have on the social system (cf. If political elites do not hold "political power" in the strict sense defined above, they certainly must possess, to some extent (to be empirically determined), authority, force, prestige, or "political influence" capable of producing effects worthwhile examining. Her intention is to reinforce the democratic decision-making process without developing a concept of authority based on an exclusive elite. This lack of importance, however, is an arbitrary derivation of certain theoretical postulates, and not the product of historical, empirical analysis which prove them. Negotiations between such disenfranchised groups and the state can be analyzed as negotiations between elites and counter-elites. Sociologist Michels developed the iron law of oligarchy where, he asserts, social and political organizations are run by few individuals, and social organization and labor division are key. Correspondence to In his view, this association is senseless and dangerous to democracy. [10] This macro-scale analysis sought to point out the degradation of democracy in "advanced" societies and the fact that power generally lies outside the boundaries of elected representatives. He was an American social conflict theorist. _________. 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. BOBBIO, Norberto. (1991), "Classe social, classe poltica, classe dirigente", in _________, Estudos Sociolgicos, Rio de Janeiro, Bertrand Brasil. 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. In the second section, we will synthesize the main troubles pointed out by Poulantzas in how the elitists conceive of the relationship between the political and social worlds. According to authors "the existence of elites does not necessarily negate the impact of interest . Contemporary commentators believe that Mills was an outstanding social critic but not necessarily a first-rate social scientist. There are at least three questions to be dealt with in this regard. (~150 B.C.) In this sense, it is theoretically (and possibly empirically) different from the class "in charge of" a concept which describes the agents who directly control state positions (the "state elite", in Miliband's definition). 3 rebuttals say it's wrong", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elite_theory&oldid=1141272407. We have divided this article into four sections. Not only did they shape the contemporary approach to the study of the ruling classes decisively, but they also provided the groundwork for elitist theories of democracy. It follows therefore that it is possible to diminish or simply ignore the debates, issues, methodological advances and conceptual innovations of non-Marxist sociology and political science and whatever else is not useful or does not contribute towards the overcoming of class-based society. PubMedGoogle Scholar. Democratic elitism played a prominent role in explaining the third wave of democratisation that took place after the Second World War by providing a conceptual and explanatory framework for the emergence of regimes exceedingly dependent on well organised, centralised mass parties. II, p. 154ss; 1969). This is precisely what the theory of democracy as self-government boils down to: a myth. 154ss). 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. Where does their power com from? [9] This reflected a decline in politics as an arena for debate and relegation to a merely formal level of discourse. Mots-cls: Marxisme; Thorie des lites; Thorie sociale; Nicos Poulantzas; Analyse de classe. Liberty, judicial defence, and the right of opposition are, thus, the keystones of Burnhams reinterpretation of democracy. The choice between the expressions "dominant class" and "political elite" is not, however, merely a matter of terminology. 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? 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. Burnham J (1943) The Machiavellians. From the state itself, in that it is considered the exclusive source of political power (as in Weber and Michels)? With this move, he can develop the explanatory capacities of elite theory and explicitly defend the democratic principle as a political formula with positive consequences from the viewpoint of the masses. 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. He asserts, much like Hunter, that an elite class that owns and manages large income-producing properties (like banks and corporations) dominate the American power structure politically and economically. Less attention has been paid to the other element of the contrapositionthe elite. Paris, Seuil. The first mistake made by the elitists was to suppose that Marxism assumes that there is an "empirical concentration of all the political functions in the hands of the politically-economically dominant class," being that power exercised, in practice, by "members of this same class" (Idem, p. 155). All these differentiations are all the more important when we become aware of the misconceptions that can arise from not knowing them. The power bloc can ultimately express itself in the political scene through party alliances or even through direct confrontation between parties (Idem, p. 76). 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. 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. The designation of a hierarchy to these three methodological procedures is fundamental, since they have varying impacts on the proof of the relationship of representation between the minority and the class it supposedly (and not by definition) represents. A Defense of Dialogue in Social Research. As Burnham pointed out, there are real and significant differences in social structures from the point of view of the masses; these differences cannot be properly evaluated in terms of formal meanings, verbalism and ideologies (Burnham 1943, p. 166). 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. 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