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Although the elite concept is often employed broadly and diffusely, it best refers to persons who are able, by virtue of their strategic decision-making positions in powerful organizations and movements, to affect political outcomes regularly and substantially. At the national level in modern polities elites number a few thousand people spread across the tops of all important sectors—politics, government administration, business, trade unions, the military, pressure groups, major mass movements, and so forth. Holding that such power concentrations are inescapable, elite theory seeks to explain political outcomes principally in terms of elite conflicts, accommodations, and circulations.

The theory’s origins lie most clearly in the writings of Italian political scientist Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941), Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), and German-Italian sociologist Robert Michels (1876–1936). Mosca emphasized the ways in which tiny minorities outorganize and outwit large majorities, adding in The Ruling Class (1923/1939) that “political classes”—his term for elites— usually have “a certain material, intellectual, or even moral superiority” over those they govern. Pareto postulated that in a society with truly unrestricted social mobility, elites would consist of the most talented and deserving individuals but that in actual societies they are those who are most adept at using the two modes of political rule, force and persuasion, and who usually enjoy important advantages such as inherited wealth and family connections. Pareto sketched alternating types of governing elites, whom he likened, following sixteenth century Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, to lions and foxes. Michels rooted elites (“oligarchies”) in the need of large organizations for leaders and experts to operate efficiently; as these individuals gain control of funds, information flows, promotions, and other aspects of organizational functioning, power becomes concentrated in their hands. Emphasizing the inescapability and also the relative autonomy of elites, all three men characterized visions of fully democratic and egalitarian societies as utopian.

The writings of Mosca, Pareto, and Michels provide a paradigm from which a general theory of elites and politics might be derived. However, efforts to produce such a theory have not been conspicuously successful. Linking elites causally to major regularities in politics remains elusive; there is no accepted typology of elites and no accepted specification of the circumstances and ways in which one type of elite is replaced by another type; interactions between elites and nonelite populations are captured only piecemeal. Nevertheless, political scientists pay much attention to the key roles played by elites in democratic transitions and breakdowns, revolutions, regime functioning, mass movements, globalization, and many other political phenomena.

Elites And Regimes

What would a general theory of elites and politics look like? The principal regularities that it might seek to explain are the characteristics of political regimes. Regimes can be conceived as structures of elite rule whose basic forms and functioning accord closely with the characteristics of the elites who create and operate them. Regimes manifest the prevailing mode of elite interaction, the disposition of elites to rule preponderantly through force or persuasion, and the political formula that elites use to justify their rule. Economist Joseph Schumpeter’s “competitive theory of democracy” illustrates this approach. It conceives a democratic regime as an institutional arrangement in which elites and leaders compete periodically for voters’ mandates to rule. Elites and leaders are thus the vital actors in a democracy. However, Schumpeter offered no explanation for why elites and leaders in a few polities act in this way while those in most do not. Nor did he specify dynamics of the elite competitions that produce democracy, simply assuming that they are always restrained and circumspect—a sanitized view to say the least.

To capture elite variation and its consequences for political regimes, a general theory would need a cogent typology of elites. One of its dimensions might be the extent of elite structural integration: the relative inclusiveness of formal and informal networks of communication and influence among members and factions. Another dimension might be the extent of elite value consensus: the relative agreement among members and factions about norms of political behavior and the worth of existing governmental institutions. Extensive but mostly informal integration and a mainly tacit consensus about norms and institutions denote elites that operate stable and liberal democratic regimes; extensive but mostly formal integration in a single party, social movement, or religious sect and a uniform profession of its official beliefs denote elites that operate totalitarian, theocratic, or rigidly authoritarian regimes; sharply segmented integration and little agreement about political norms denote elites that operate unstable dictatorial regimes and illiberal democracies.

A general theory would need to specify how transformations from one elite type to another occur. Revolutions, through which, Pareto cynically observed, one ruling elite is merely replaced by another, are the most obvious transformations, although they rarely occur. Equally rarely, warring elite camps may enter deliberately into a sudden but lasting settlement of their most basic disputes. It is possible, too, that deeply opposed elite camps may, in propitious circumstances such as widespread prosperity, gradually moderate their oppositions and converge toward a live-and-let-live modus operandi that proves lasting. Whether elite transformations take still other forms, such as implosions like that of the Soviet Union’s elite during the late 1980s, is an important question.

Elites And Nonelites

Interactions between elites and nonelite populations are the most difficult hurdles a general theory faces. Pareto tried heroically to conceptualize changing asymmetries between elites and nonelite populations regarding their rational interests and nonrational sentiments (“residues”). When these asymmetries become great, he contended, a basic circulation of elites impends. But this happens infrequently because elites are normally able to co-opt the most talented nonelite persons and devise ideologies (“derivations”) that pacify nonelite populations and legitimate elite rule. However, Pareto’s sweeping but exceedingly abstruse account of nonrational residues has proved inhospitable to practical application, and no more usable scheme has gained wide acceptance. A general theory must probably rest on a strategic conception of nonelite interests and orientations as constituting parameters within which elites can safely and effectively act; elites who violate these parameters risk coming to grief. But nonelite parameters for elite action are quite wide, leaving elites with a range of choices, and their choices are normally decisive for political outcomes.

Bibliography:

Field, G. Lowell, and John Higley. Elitism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
Higley, John, and Michael Burton. Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.
Michels, Robert. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. London: Jarrold, 1915.
Reprint, New York: Collier, 1962.
Mosca, Gaetano. The Ruling Class. Translated by Hannah D. Kahn. Edited by A. Livingston. 1923.
Reprint, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939.
Pareto,Vilfredo. The Mind and Society: A Treatise on General Sociology. Edited by A. Livingston. 1916.
Reprint, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935.
Parry, Geraint. Political Elites. London: Allen and Unwin, 1969.
Reprinted with a new introduction. Colchester, UK: ECPR, 2005.
Putnam, Robert D. The Comparative Study of Political Elites. Edgewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1976.
Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper and Row, 1942.