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Elite theory is a theory of the state
State

A state is a political Social contract with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, State or multinational states....
 which seeks to describe and explain the power relationships in modern society. It argues that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy
Policy

A policy is typically described as a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome. However, the term may also be used to denote what is actually done, even though it is unplanned....
-planning networks, hold the most power no matter what happens in elections in a country. Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over the policy-planning networks through financial support of foundations or positions with think tank
Think tank

A think tank is an organization, institute, corporation, or group that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economy, science or technology issues, industrial or business policies, or military advice....
s or policy-discussion groups, members of the "elite" are able to have significant power over policy decisions of corporations and governments.

The theory stands in opposition to pluralism
Pluralism (political theory)

The political theory of pluralism holds that political power in society does not lie with the electorate, nor with a small concentrated elite, but is distributed between a wide number of groups....
 in suggesting that democracy is a utopian ideal
Utopia

Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society, taken from the Utopia written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly perfect social system-politics-legal system....
.






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Elite theory is a theory of the state
State

A state is a political Social contract with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, State or multinational states....
 which seeks to describe and explain the power relationships in modern society. It argues that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy
Policy

A policy is typically described as a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome. However, the term may also be used to denote what is actually done, even though it is unplanned....
-planning networks, hold the most power no matter what happens in elections in a country. Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over the policy-planning networks through financial support of foundations or positions with think tank
Think tank

A think tank is an organization, institute, corporation, or group that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economy, science or technology issues, industrial or business policies, or military advice....
s or policy-discussion groups, members of the "elite" are able to have significant power over policy decisions of corporations and governments.

The theory stands in opposition to pluralism
Pluralism (political theory)

The political theory of pluralism holds that political power in society does not lie with the electorate, nor with a small concentrated elite, but is distributed between a wide number of groups....
 in suggesting that democracy is a utopian ideal
Utopia

Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society, taken from the Utopia written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly perfect social system-politics-legal system....
. It also stands in opposition to state autonomy theory.

Classical Elite theory

The aristocratic version of this theory is the Classic Elite Theory which is based on two ideas:
  1. power lies in position of authority in key economic and political institutions
  2. the psychological difference that sets Elites apart is that they have personal resources, for instance intelligence and skills; while the rest are incompetent and do not have the capabilities of governing themselves.


Classical Elite Theorists


Vilfredo Pareto

Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto , born Wilfried Fritz Pareto, was an Italy industrialist, sociologist, economist, and philosopher, who developed a somewhat jaundiced view of the human enterprise....
 emphasized the psychological and intellectual superiority that the Elites obtained, he believed that the elites were the highest accomplishers in any field and he discussed how there were two types of Elites
  1. governing elites;
  2. non-governing elites.
He also extended on the idea that a whole elite can be replaced by a new one and how one can circulate from being elite to nonelite.

Gaetano Mosca

Mosca
Gaetano Mosca

Gaetano Mosca was an Italian Political Science, Journalism and Bureaucrat. He is credited with developing the Theory of Elitism and the doctrine of the Political Class and is one of the three members constituting the Italian School of Elitists together with Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels....
 emphasized on the sociological and personal characteristics of elites, he said they were an organized minority and how masses are the unorganized majority. The ruling class is composed of the ruling Elite and the sub-Elites. He divided the world into two groups
  1. ruling class;
  2. class that is ruled.
Elites have intellectual, moral, and material superiority that is highly esteemed and influential.

Robert Michels

Michels developed the Iron Law of Oligarchy
Iron law of oligarchy

The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German syndicalism sociology Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties ....
 where social and political organizations are run by few individuals, he said that social organization is key as well as the division of labor so elites were the ones that ruled. He believed that all organizations were elitist and that elites have three basic principles that help in the bureaucratic structure of political organization
  1. need for leaders, specialized staff and facilities;
  2. utilization of facilities by leaders within their organization;
  3. the importance of the psychological attributes of the leaders.


Elite theorists


C. Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills

Charles Wright Mills was an United States sociology. Mills is best remembered for his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination in which he lays out a view of the proper relationship between biography and history, theory and method in sociological scholarship....
 published his book The Power Elite
The Power Elite

The Power Elite is a book written by the sociologist, C. Wright Mills, in 1956. In it Mills called attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggested that the ordinary citizen was a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities....
 in 1956 claiming a new perspective on systems of power in the USA. He identified a triumvirate of power groups – political, economic and military – who form a distinguishable, although not unified body, wielding power in the American state:

He proposed that this group had been generated through a process of rationalisation at work in all advanced industrial societies whereby the mechanisms of power became concentrated funnelling overall control into the hands of a limited, somewhat corrupt group (Bottomore 1993:25). This reflected a decline in politics as an arena for debate and relegation to a merely formal level of discourse (Mills 1956:274). 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
Franz Leopold Neumann

Franz Leopold Neumann was a Germany left-wing political activist and labour law, who became a political scientist in exile and is best-known for his theoretical analyses of Nazism....
s book, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study how Nazism come in position of power in a democratic state as Germany.It had give him the tools to grasp and analyse the entire total structure and as an warning what could happen in a modern capitalistic democracy.

Floyd Hunter

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 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 which mapped the hierarchies and webs of interconnection operating 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
Representative democracy

File:Electoral democracies.pngRepresentative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of Election individuals representing the people, as opposed to either autocracy or direct democracy....
 (Hunter 1953:6).

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 USA (Schwartz 1987).

James Burnham

James Burnham’s
James Burnham

James Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941....
 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
Principal-agent problem

In political science and economics, the principal-agent problem or agency dilemma treats the difficulties that arise under conditions of incomplete and information asymmetry when a principal hires an Agent ....
 (Bottomore 193:59). Many of these ideas were adapted by paleoconservatives Samuel Francis
Samuel Francis

Samuel Todd Francis was an Anti-capitalism paleoconservatism columnist, nationally syndicated in America, known for his racialist views; this includes his opposition to immigration, multiculturalism, miscegenation, and his involvement in debates concerning other controversial issues of the day....
 and Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried

Paul Edward Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim Fellowships recipient....
 in their theories of the managerial state
Managerial state

Managerial state is a paleoconservative concept used in critiquing modern social democracy in Western countries. The term takes a pejorative context as a manifestation of Western decline....
.

Robert D. Putnam

Robert Putnam
Robert Putnam

Robert David Putnam is a political science and professor of public policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also visiting professor and director of the Manchester Graduate Summer Programme in Social Change, University of Manchester ....
 saw the development of technical and exclusive knowledge among administrators and other specialist groups as a mechanism by which power is stripped from the democratic process and slipped sideways to the advisors and specialists influencing the decision making process
Decision making

Decision making can be regarded as an outcome of mental processes leading to the selection of a course of action among several alternatives. Every decision making process produces a final choice....
 (Putnam 1977:385).
"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" (Putnam 1976:384).


See also

Iron law of oligarchy
Iron law of oligarchy

The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German syndicalism sociology Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties ....
 Positive political theory
Positive political theory

Positive political theory or explanatory political theory is the study of politics using formal methods such as set theory, statistical analysis, and game theory....
 Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti is an United States political scientist, historian, and media criticism....
 Mass society
Mass society

Mass society is a description associated with society in the modern, Industry era. Descriptions of society as a "masses" took form in the 19th century, referring to the leveling tendencies in the period of the Industrial Revolution that undermined traditional and aristocracy values....
 The Power Elite
The Power Elite

The Power Elite is a book written by the sociologist, C. Wright Mills, in 1956. In it Mills called attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggested that the ordinary citizen was a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities....