As we see it, class analysis of the political dynamic requires following three procedures, ordered in a hierarchy of importance, so as to prove the hypothesis of class political representation by a minority (or, an "elite"):6 a) the study of the actual behavior of this minority; b) the analysis of the content of the manifest discourse; and, lastly, c) the study of the social origins of their members. 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. According to Michels, the elite consists of those The concept of elite (or "political class" or "oligarchy" and so on) was notably borne out of the explicit objective of refuting the concept of class as a little or non-workable theoretical notion. 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. (1984), Los Estados y las revoluciones sociales. He believed that all organizations were elitist and that elites have three basic principles that help in the bureaucratic structure of political organization: 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". 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). Both Karl Marx (1883) and C. Wright Mills (1956) are famous for their views on the . The historian of modern India, Gyan Prakash, points out that the subaltern studies project derives its force as postcolonial criticism from a combination of Marxism, post- structuralism, postmodernism, Gramsci and Foucault, the modern West and India, archival research and textual criticism. Yet empirical elitism also appealed to Marxian figures such as Vladimir Lenin and Antonio Gramsci. Could it be used now to counter, from a liberal-democratic point of view, the populist drift? Some of the points of criticism are: 1. As Cas Mudde pointed out, one of the main features of populism is the anti-elitist / anti-establishment rhetoric. In his view, this association is senseless and dangerous to democracy. However, in addition, or yet, as a precondition, one must question whether Marxism can in fact account for some of these issues, regardless of one's understanding of this theory. 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. 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 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. At the time Mills was writing, academic sociology was in the process of proclaiming itself a science. When Mills published his book in 1956 it made him very . Salvemini overcomes this setting by making the implicit value judgment explicit. Altogether, they seem three perfect examples of a rhetoric of reaction (Hirschman 1991). According to Salvemini, the main difference between autocracies and democracies is the fact that the latter comprise many elites in competition with each other. The search for constants and general laws of political action seemed a natural consequence of such methods. Our perspective is that the answer to this question ought to be no. 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). 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. [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". The article states, against Poulantzas suggestions, that the insertion of the concept of "lite" in theoretical Marxism may produce positive effects on it, specially making the classist analysis of politics scientifically manageable. Paris, Maspero, 2 vols. 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. So Paulo, Annablume/Fapesp, vol. The choice between the expressions "dominant class" and "political elite" is not, however, merely a matter of terminology. 1 (2). 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. Londres, MacGibbon & Kee. _________. Who holds power is, by definition, the dominant classes. (2014). in Western-style democracies from a democratic-elite - or what I prefer to term a demo-elite - perspective. (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. Burnham J (1943) The Machiavellians. which serve the purpose of restraining decision-makers from acting according to their whims. This lack of importance, however, is an arbitrary derivation of certain theoretical postulates, and not the product of historical, empirical analysis which prove them. [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]. This is because in the real political process there might be a wide range of available alternatives. This kind of formulation lends itself well and preferably to the analysis of strategic actions of real political life. 7 Formalism is the outcome of the "internalist" perspective, adopted by some elite theory thinkers. Still, the fact remains that current liberal democracies tend to preserve the party-dependent model that prompted the rise of democratic elitism in the first place and that the revival of populist discourse produced the consequence of directing the spotlight of contestation towards extant (and undismissed) political elites. Pluralism is the theory that most closely corresponds to claims made in high school textbooks and the mass media, and to what many Americans believe. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar. 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. The theory of elites is largely known as a critique of the Marxist theory of a dominant class and an attempt to refute the hypothesis according to which political power or, more appropriately, "the political resources of the dominant class" is derived from their economic power - or, to be precise, "the possession of economic resources" (Saes, What is more, the neo-elitists will argue that the transformation of capitalist system since the mid twentieth century (the separation between property and the means of production, effective social mobility among groups, the decentralization of government functions, the transformation of individuals into a "mass," the new roles taken on by state bureaucracy and so on) rendered obsolete the idea of a class that is at once politically and economically dominant. 60-61). Several patterns observable in Italian recruitment processes are preserved from one regime to another, such as party membership, career length, and cohort effect among the core group of ministers. Marxismo e elitismo: dois modelos antagnicos de anlise social? He posited a structural-functional approach that mapped hierarchies and webs of interconnection within the citymapping relationships of power between businessmen, politicians, clergy etc. Criticism of classical elite theorists by writers such as Meisel centres on the notion that the ruling elite is claimed to be a class. For in reality, the elite would have the most to lose in a failed state. For example, the freedom to start a business and retain the value created by that business would create the same elite . The class in charge of the state apparatus my or may not identify itself with the hegemonic fraction. 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