Political Elites in a Democracy

Abstract

One of potentially explosive issues of modern era is a vast and growing disparity between overwhelming predominance of elites in decision-making process and democratic ideal that people should participate in making decisions that vitally affect them. In this book an impressive array of political theo-rists offer conflicting views on form of demo-cratic elitism practiced in United States. Defin-ing political elite as the power holders of body politic, Harold Lasswell explains that division into elite and mass is universal, while Robert Dahl confirms that key political, economic, and social decisions are indeed made by these tiny minorities. Paul Good-man argues that we are now in a period of ex-cessive centralization that he regards as econom-ically inefficient, technologically unnecessary, and humanly damaging. From another standpoint, Herbert Marcuse calls for a struggle against ideology of tolerance husbanded by political elites in this country and Jack L. Walker contends that elitist theory has provided an unconvincing explanation of widespread political apathy in American society. As events of recent decades vividly demon-strate, a growing number of people refuse to recognize elite rule. This many-sided work puts before student a variety of strongly held opinions regarding place and function of political elite and its power. The wide range of authoritative articles makes Political Elites in a Democracy a most useful addition to every course in political science that touches on subject of elites and political power.