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Theory of the state

In philosophy, political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the
State that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in society. The theory
posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and
policymaking networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of
democratic elections.[1]
Through positions in corporations and influence over policymaking 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. 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] Elite theory opposes
pluralism, a tradition that emphasizes how multiple major social groups and
interests have an influence upon and various forms of representation within more
powerful sets of rulers, contributing to representative political outcomes that
reflect the collective needs of society.
Even when entire groups are ostensibly completely excluded from the state's
traditional networks of power (on the basis of arbitrary criteria such as nobility,
race, gender, or religion), elite theory recognizes that "counter-elites"
frequently develop within such excluded groups. Negotiations between such
disenfranchised groups and the state can be analyzed as negotiations between elites
and counter-elites. A major problem, in turn, is the ability of elites to co-opt
counter-elites.
Democratic systems function on the premise that voting behavior has a direct,
noticeable effect on policy outcomes, and that these outcomes are preferred by the
largest portion of voters. A study in 2014, 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.[3] At the lowest income
sampled, the correlation coefficient reached zero, whereas the highest income
returned a correlation above 0.6. The conclusion was that there is a strong, linear
correlation between the income of voters and how often their policy preferences
become reality. The causation for this correlation has not yet been proven in
subsequent studies, but is an area of research.

History[edit]
Ancient perspective[edit]
Polybius (≈150 B.C.) referred to what we call today Elite Theory as simply
"autocracy". He posited with great confidence that all 3 originating forms of
sources of political power: one man (monarchy/executive), few men (aristocracy),
many (democracy) would eventually be corrupted into a debased form of itself, if
not balanced in a "mixed government". Monarchy would become "tyranny", democracy
would become "mob rule", and rule by elites (aristocracy) would become corrupted in
what he called "oligarchy".[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.

Italian school of elitism[edit]

Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941), and Robert Michels (1876–
1936), were cofounders of the Italian school of elitism, which influenced
subsequent elite theory in the Western tradition.[5][6]
The outlook of the Italian school of elitism is based on two ideas:

Power lies in position of authority in key economic and political institutions.

The psychological difference that sets elites apart is that they have personal
resources, for instance intelligence and skills, and a vested interest in the
government; while the rest are incompetent and do not have the capabilities of
governing themselves, the elite are resourceful and strive to make the government
work. For, in reality, the elite would have the most to lose in a failed state.
Vilfredo Pareto[edit]
Pareto emphasized the psychological and intellectual superiority of elites,
believing that they were the highest accomplishers in any field. He discussed the
existence of two types of elites:

Governing elites
Non-governing 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.

Gaetano Mosca[edit]
Mosca emphasized the sociological and personal characteristics of elites. He said
elites are an organized minority and that the masses are an unorganized majority.
The ruling class is composed of the ruling elite and the sub-elites. He divides the
world into two groups:

Political class
Non-Political class
Mosca asserts that elites have intellectual, moral, and material superiority that
is highly esteemed and influential.

Robert Michels[edit]
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. He believed that all organizations were elitist and that
elites have three basic principles that help in the bureaucratic structure of
political organization:

Need for leaders, specialized staff, and facilities

Utilization of facilities by leaders within their organization
The importance of the psychological attributes of the leaders
Contemporary elite theorists[edit]
Elmer Eric Schattschneider[edit]
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 most educated and highest-income members of society", and
showed that "the difference between those who participate in interest group
activity and those who stand at the sidelines is much greater than between voters
and nonvoters".[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". 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]

C. Wright Mills[edit]
On the left we have the sociologist C. Wright Mills and on the right we have the
writer Saul Landau (at that time his assistant).
Mills published his book The Power Elite in 1956, in which he claimed to present a
new sociological perspective on systems of power in the United States. He
identified a triumvirate of power groups—political, economic and military—which
form a distinguishable, although not unified, power-wielding body in the United
States.
Mills proposed that this group had been generated through a process of
rationalization at work in all advanced industrial societies whereby the mechanisms
of power became concentrated, funneling overall control into the hands of a
limited, somewhat corrupt group.[9] This reflected a decline in politics as an
arena for debate and relegation to a merely formal level of discourse.[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.
A main influence for the study was Franz Leopold Neumann's book, Behemoth: The
Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944, a study of how Nazism came
to power in the German democratic state. 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.

Floyd Hunter[edit]
The elite theory analysis of power was also applied on the micro scale in community
power studies such as that by Floyd Hunter (1953). Hunter examined in detail the
power of relationships evident in his "Regional City" looking for the "real"
holders of power rather than those in obvious official positions. He posited a
structural-functional approach that mapped hierarchies and webs of interconnection
within the city—mapping relationships of power between businessmen, politicians,
clergy etc. The study was promoted to debunk current concepts of any "democracy"
present within urban politics and reaffirm the arguments for a true representative
democracy.[11] This type of analysis was also used in later, larger scale, studies
such as that carried out by M. Schwartz examining the power structures within the
sphere of the corporate elite in the United States.[12]

G. William Domhoff[edit]
In his controversial 1967 book Who Rules America?, G. William Domhoff researched
local and national decision-making process networks seeking to illustrate the power
structure in the United States. 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.
[13]

James Burnham[edit]
Burnham's early work The Managerial Revolution sought to express the movement of
all functional power into the hands of managers rather than politicians or
businessmen—separating ownership and control.[14]

Robert D. Putnam[edit]
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.[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]
Thomas R. Dye[edit]
Dye in his book Top Down Policymaking, argues that U.S. public policy does not
result from the "demands of the people", but rather from elite consensus found in
Washington, D.C.-based non-profit foundations, think tanks, special-interest
groups, and prominent lobbying and law firms. Dye's thesis is further expanded upon
in his works: The Irony of Democracy, Politics in America, Understanding Public
Policy, and Who's Running America?.

George A. Gonzalez[edit]
In his book Corporate Power and the Environment, George A. Gonzalez writes on the
power of U.S. economic elites to shape environmental policy for their own
advantage. In The Politics of Air Pollution: Urban Growth, Ecological Modernization
and Symbolic Inclusion and also in Urban Sprawl, Global Warming, and the Empire of
Capital Gonzalez employs elite theory to explain the interrelationship between
environmental policy and urban sprawl in America. 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.

See also: global warming, urban growth, and corporate power

Ralf Dahrendorf[edit]
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. During the
electoral campaign, each party tries to convince voters it is the most suitable for
managing the state business. The logical consequence would be to acknowledge this
character and openly register the parties as service providing companies. In this
way, the ruling class would include the members and associates of legally
acknowledged companies and the "class that is ruled" would select by election the
state administration company that best fits its interests.

Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page[edit]

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."[18][19] Critics cited by Vox.com argued, using the same dataset, that
when the rich and middle class disagreed, the rich got their preferred outcome 53
percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the
time. 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]

Thomas Ferguson[edit]
The political scientist Thomas Ferguson's Investment Theory of Party Competition
can be thought of as an elite theory. Set out most extensively in his 1995 book
Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-
driven Political Systems, the theory begins by noting that in modern political
systems the cost of acquiring political awareness is so great that no citizen can
afford it.[21] As a consequence, these systems tend be dominated by those who can,
most typically elites and corporations. These elites then seek to influence
politics by 'investing' in the parties or policies they support through political
contributions and other means such as endorsements in the media.[citation needed]

Neema Parvini[edit]
In his 2022 book, The Populist Delusion,[22] Neema Parvini asserts that ‘the will
of the people’ does not impact political decisions and that ‘elite driven change’
better explains the realities of political power. In the book Parvini introduces
Elite Theory by explicating the theories of other Elite Theorists: Gaetano Mosca,
Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels, Carl Schmitt, Bertrande de Jouvenel, James
Burnham, Samuel T. Francis and Paul Gottfried. In explaining the thinkers and
applying their frameworks to western political history, Parvini concludes the true
functioning of power to be “where an organized minority elite rule over a
disorganized mass”.[23] Parvini also discusses and presents Elite Theory and the
arguments made in The Populist Delusion on his YouTube channel, Academic Agent.[24]

See also[edit]
Democratic deficit
Elitism
Iron law of oligarchy
Mass society
Positive political theory
The Power Elite
Ruling class
Expressions of dominance
Liberal elite
Invisible Class Empire
Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
References[edit]

^ "Three Theories of American Democracy". Mathwizurd. October 12, 2015. Archived

from the original on October 13, 2018. Retrieved March 28, 2024.

^ Deric., Shannon (2011-01-01). Political sociology : oppression, resistance, and

the state. Pine Forge Press. ISBN 9781412980401. OCLC 746832550.

^ Gilens, M., & Page, B. (2014). Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites,
Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12(3), 564-581.
doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595

^ Polybius.(≈150 B.C.) The Rise of the Roman Empire: Book 6. Translated by Ian
Scott-Kilvert (1979). Penguin Books; London, England

^ Robert A. Nye, The Anti-Democratic Sources of Elite Theory: Pareto, Mosca,

Michels, Sage, 1977.

^ J. J. Chambliss (ed.), Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia, Routledge, 2013,

p. 179.

^ Woolley and Papa 1998, 165

^ Schattschneider 1960, 30-36

^ Bottomore, T. (1993). Elites and Society (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 25.

^ Mills, C. Wright (1956). The Power Elite. Oxford University Press. p. 274.
ISBN 0-19-541759-3.

^ Hunter, Floyd (1953). Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers.

University of North Carolina Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-8078-0639-0.

^ Schwartz, M., ed. (1987). The Structure of Power in America: The Corporate Elite
as a Ruling Class. New York: Holmes & Meier. ISBN 0-8419-0764-1.
^ Domhoff, G. William (1967). Who Rules America?. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-7674-1637-6.

^ Bottomore, T. (1993). Elites and Society (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 59.

^ Putnam, Robert D. (1977). "Elite Transformation in Advance Industrial Societies:

An Empirical Assessment of the Theory of Technocracy". Comparative Political
Studies. 10 (3): 383–411 (p.385). doi:10.1177/001041407701000305. S2CID 154141193.

^ Putnam, Robert D. (1976). The Comparative Study of Political Elites. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall. p. 384. ISBN 0-13-154195-1.

^ Dahrendorf, Ralf (1990) Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: In a letter

intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Warsaw. New York: Random House

^ "Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy". BBC News. 17 April 2014. Archived

from the original on 24 October 2022. Retrieved 24 October 2022.

^ Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average

Citizens Archived 2014-08-03 at the Wayback Machine (Fall 2014)

^ Matthews, Dylan (9 May 2016). "Remember that study saying America is an

oligarchy? 3 rebuttals say it's wrong". Vox. Archived from the original on 10
November 2021. Retrieved 24 October 2022.

^ Ferguson, Thomas (1995). Golden Rule : The Investment Theory of Party Competition
and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. ISBN 0226243176.

^ Parvini, Neema (2022). The Populist Delusion. Perth: Imperium Press.

ISBN 9781922602442.

^ Parvini, Neema (2022). The Populist Delusion. Perth: Imperium Press. p. 143.
ISBN 9781922602442.

^ Adams, Alexander (2022-05-06). "Book Review: The Populist Delusion". Bournbrook

Magazine. Retrieved 2024-04-22.

Bibliography[edit]
Amsden, Alice (2012) The Role of Elites in Economic Development, Oxford University
Press, 2012. with Alisa Di Caprio and James A. Robinson.
Bottomore, T. (1993) Elites and Society (2nd Edition). London: Routledge.
Burnham, J. (1960) The Managerial Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Crockett, Norman L. ed. The power elite in America (1970), excerpts from experts
online free
Domhoff. G. William (1967–2009) Who Rules America? McGraw-Hill. online 5th edition
Domhoff, G. William. Studying the power elite: Fifty years of who rules America?
(Routledge, 2017); new essays by 12 experts
Downey, Liam, et al. "Power, hegemony, and world society theory: A critical
evaluation." Socius 6 (2020): 2378023120920059 online.
Dye, T. R. (2000) Top Down Policymaking New York: Chatham House Publishers.
Gonzalez, G. A. (2012) Energy and Empire: The Politics of Nuclear and Solar Power
in the United States. Albany: State University of New York Press
Gonzalez, G. A. (2009) Urban Sprawl, Global Warming, and the Empire of Capital.
Albany: State University of New York Press
Gonzalez, G. A. (2006) The Politics of Air Pollution: Urban Growth, Ecological
Modernization, And Symbolic Inclusion. Albany: State University of New York Press
Gonzalez, G. A. (2001) Corporate Power and the Environment. Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers
Hunter, Floyd (1953) Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers.
Lerner, R., A. K. Nagai, S. Rothman (1996) American Elites. New Haven CT: Yale
University Press
Milch, Jan, (1992) . C.Wright Mills och hans sociologiska vision Om hans syn på
makt och metod och vetenskap,. Sociologiska Institution Göteborgs Universit-
("C.Wright Mills and his sociological vision About his views on power and
methodology and science. Department of Sociology Gothenburg University")
Mills, C. Wright (1956) The Power Elite. online
Neumann, Franz Leopold (1944). Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National
Socialism, 1933 - 1944. Harper. online
Putnam, R. D. (1976) The Comparative Study of Political Elites. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall.
Putnam, R. D. (1977) ‘Elite Transformation in Advance Industrial Societies: An
Empirical Assessment of the Theory of Technocracy’ in Comparative Political Studies
Vol. 10, No. 3, pp383–411.
Schwartz, M. (ed.) (1987) The Structure of Power in America: The Corporate Elite as
a Ruling Class. New York: Holmes & Meier.
Volpe, G. (2021) Italian Elitism and the Reshaping of Democracy in the United
States. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.
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