Introduction: Democratic Elitism Reappraised

Abstract

Early in twentieth century Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels and Max Weber highlighted disjunction between political elites and democracy. This chapter states that democratic elitism is an overly simplistic rendition of how democracies, especially today's democracies, work. Though a competitive struggle for people's vote occurs, political leaders and elites orchestrate this struggle. Indeed, democracies may be morphing into Weber's leader democracy, with strong plebiscitary thrusts that render the people's vote little more than a rubber-stamping of self-selected leaders and self-reproducing elites. It must be asked if democratic elitism is still a relevant and useful theory of democracy. Joseph Schumpeter described how representative democracy works in modern national states. Governing power is centered in some representative body or office and transferred from one political faction to another through open, periodic electoral competitions to dominate that body or office. Keywords: democratic elitism; Joseph Schumpeter; Max Weber