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 International Studies in
Sociology and Social
Anthropology

Series Editor
David Sciulli, Texas A&M University

Editorial Board
Vincenzo Cicchelli, Cerlis, Paris Descartes-CNRS
Benjamin Gregg, University of Texas at Austin
Carsten Q. Schneider, Central European University Budapest
Helmut Staubmann, University of Innsbruck

VOLUME 111
 Democratic Elitism:
New Theoretical and
Comparative Perspectives

Edited by
Heinrich Best and John Higley

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
Cover image: AP/Reporters

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Democratic elitism : new theoretical and comparative perspectives / edited by Heinrich

Best and John Higley.
p. cm. -- (International studies in sociology and social anthropology ; v. 111)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17939-4 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Democracy. 2. Elite (Social sciences) I. Best, Heinrich. II. Higley, John.
III. Title. III. Series.

JC423.D381356 2010
305.5'2--dc22

2009041610

ISSN 0074-8684
ISBN 978 90 04 17939 4

Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill
NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani-
cal, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the
publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill pro-
vided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.

printed in the netherlands

 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. vii

Table of Contributors ................................................................................ ix

Introduction: Democratic Elitism Reappraised ......................................1

Heinrich Best and John Higley

PART I
DEMOCRATIC ELITISM: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

“They Ain’t Making Elites Like They Used To”:

The Never Ending Trouble with Democratic Elitism .......................... 25
Jens Borchert

Beyond the Happy Consensus about Democratic Elitism .................. 43

András Körösényi

Democratic Elitism – Conflict and Consensus .................................... 61

Fredrik Engelstad

Elites’ Illusions about Democracy .......................................................... 79

John Higley

PART II
DEMOCRATIC ELITISM: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES

Associated Rivals: Antagonism and Cooperation in the

German Political Elite .............................................................................. 97
Heinrich Best

Political versus Media Elites in Norway .............................................. 117

Trygve Gulbrandsen

Elite Formation and Democratic Elitism in Central and

Eastern Europe: A Comparative Analysis ........................................... 129
Michael Edinger
vi contents

Hungary: Between Consolidated and Simulated Democracy .......... 153

György Lengyel and Gabriella Ilonszki

The Assault on Democratic Elitism in Poland .................................... 173

Jacek Wasilewski

Democracy by Elite Co-optation: Democratic Elitism in

Multi-Ethnic States ................................................................................. 197
Anton Steen with Mindaugas Kuklys

Epilogue: Democratic Elitism and Western Political Thought ......... 215

John Higley

Index ........................................................................................................ 231

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book stems from an international conference organized jointly by

the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee
on Political Elites (RC02) and the University of Jena’s Collaborative
Research Centre on Social Developments after Structural Change:
Discontinuity, Tradition, and Structural Formation (SFB 580). The
conference took place during June 2007 in the Old Castle of Dornburg,
near Jena in Germany. It assembled a score of scholars from eight
countries to canvas Democratic Elitism’s achievements and limits as an
explanation and description of contemporary representative democra-
cies. Although Democratic Elitism may have become somewhat dated
since it emerged during the first half of the 20th century, it still com-
bines in an unmatched way two sets of political relations pivotal for
these democracies: relations among competing elites and leaders, and
relations between them and the general public. This book reassesses
Democratic Elitism’s theoretical propositions, reconsiders their place
in theories of democracy and Western political thought, and confronts
the propositions with empirical evidence of how contemporary democ-
racies are developing and functioning in Europe’s eastern and western
countries.
The book contains a selection of presentations at the Dornburg con-
ference that have been thoroughly edited, peer reviewed, and updated.
We wish to thank the German Science Foundataion (DFG) for funding
the conference, and the University of Jena for providing it with a splen-
did venue. We also wish to thank Rainer Eising and Karl Schmitt (both
University of Jena), Ursula Hoffmann-Lange and Andreas Gruber
(both University of Bamberg), Ekkart L. Zimmermann (University of
Dresden), Jan Pakulski (University of Tasmania), Gwen Moore (State
University of New York, Albany), and Jean-Pascal Daloz (Oxford
University) for valuable comments and contributions that helped make
the conference a success and that have numerous traces in this book.
We thank two anonymous Brill reviewers for truly extensive and pen-
etrating critiques of the book’s draft chapters. Finally, we thank Verona
Christmas-Best most warmly for indispensable help in editing the
book.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Heinrich Best is Professor of Sociology at the University of Jena,

where he holds the Chair of Social Science Research Methods and
Structural Analysis of Modern Societies. He is also Co-Director of the
Collaborative Research Centre there. His recent publications include
Parliamentary Representatives in Europe 1848–2000 (2000, with
M. Cotta), Democratic Representation in Europe: Diversity, Change and
Convergence (2007, with M. Cotta), and Elites and Social Change. The
Socialist and Post-Socialist Experience (2008, with R. Gebauer).

Jens Borchert is Professor of Political Science at the University of

Frankfurt, where he holds the Chair in Political Sociology and State
Theory. His recent publications include The Professionalization of
Politics: On the Necessity of a Nuisance (2003, in German), and The
Political Class in Advanced Democracies (2003, with J. Zeiss).

Michael Edinger is Senior Researcher at the University of Jena,

where he coordinates research on parliamentary elites in the Collab-
orative Research Centre. He is a member of the editorial board of
Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, the journal of German parliamentary
affairs. His publications include Political Careers in Europe (2009, with
S. Jahr), and “The Making of Representative Elites in East Germany”
(2009).

Fredrik Engelstad is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo

and research director at the Institute for Social Research, Oslo. He is
series editor of the yearbook Comparative Social Research, and a board
member of the European Consortium for Sociological Research. His
recent publications include Comparative Studies of Culture and Power
(2003), Power and Democracy. Critical Interventions (2004, with Ø.
Østerud), and Comparative Studies of Social and Political Elites (2007,
with T. Gulbrandsen).

Trygve Gulbrandsen is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social

Research, Oslo, and Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo.
x notes on contributors

His recent publications include Comparative Studies of Social and

Political Elites (2007, with F. Engelstad), Private Business Between
Market and Politics (2003, with F. Engelstad, E. Ekeberg, and J. Vatnaland,
in Norwegian), and “Elite Integration and Institutional Trust” (2007).

John Higley is Professor of Government and Sociology at the

University of Texas at Austin. He chairs the International Political
Science Association’s Research Committee on Political Elites. His
recent publications include Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes
(1998, with M. Dogan), Elites After States Socialism (2000, with G.
Lengyel), Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy (2006, with M.
Burton), and Nations of Immigrants: Australia and the United States
Compared (2009, with J. Nieuwenhuysen).

Gabriella Ilonszki is Professor of Political Science at Corvinus

University in Budapest, where she conducts research on comparative,
gender, and institutional aspects of political representation. Her most
recent publication is Amateur and Professional Politicians: MPs in
Hungary (2008, in Hungarian).

Mindaugas Kuklys is a Dr. Phil. candidate in Sociology at the

University of Jena and an associated member of the Collaborative
Research Centre. His most recent publication is the monograph Gender
and Ethnic Representation in the Baltic Legislatures: Latvia and
Lithuania, 1990–2006 (2008).

András Körösényi is Professor of Political Science at the Eötvös

University of Budapest and President of the Hungarian Political Sci-
ence Association. His English publications include Post-Communist
Transition (1992), Government and Politics in Hungary (2000), and
articles in Electoral Studies, Government and Opposition, and Political
Quarterly.

György Lengyel is Professor of Sociology at Corvinus University in

Budapest, where in 2009 he received the Szent-Györgyi Prize for
Distinguished Scholorship. His recent publications include Restruc-
turing the Economic Elite after State Socialism (2007, with D. Lane and
J. Tholen), The Social Composition of the Hungarian Economic Elite at
the End of the 20th Century (2007, in Hungarian), and Hungarian
Political and Economic Elites’ Images of the European Union (2008, in
Hungarian).
 notes on contributors xi

Anton Steen is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo.

His publications include Between Past and Future: Elites, Democracy
and the State in Post-Communist Countries (1997), Elites and Democratic
Development in Russia (2003, with V. Gel’man), Political Elites in the
New Russia (2003), “Do Elite Beliefs Matter? Elites and Economic
Reforms in the Baltic States and Russia” (2007), and “Elites and the
Neo-Liberal State: Post-Social-Democratic and Post-Communist
Elites” (2007, with Ø. Østerud, in Norwegian).

Jacek Wasilewski is Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Faculty

of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Warsaw School of Social
Pyschology. His publications deal with political elites, democratiza-
tion, and social stratification in Poland and include Political Leadership
in Polish Counties (2009, in Polish).
 INTRODUCTION:
DEMOCRATIC ELITISM REAPPRAISED

Heinrich Best and John Higley*

Early in the twentieth century Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Robert

Michels and Max Weber highlighted the disjunction between political
elites and democracy. Emphasizing the inescapability and autonomy
of elites, they contended that efforts to achieve government by the
people are futile; an elite-dominated “democracy” is the most that is
possible (Burnham 1943; Femia 2001:67). In such a democracy there
are elected parliaments and other elected offices, but voters do not
really choose their representatives and key office holders. Rather,
career politicians and assorted political interlopers impose themselves
on voters. According to Mosca (1923/1939) and Michels (1915/1962),
democracies can never be more than intra-elite competitions entailing
the systematic manipulation of voters’ choices and interests (see Linz
2006).
Regarding politics as driven always by “the principle of small num-
bers,” Weber hoped that a distinctive “leader democracy,” marked by a
charismatic leader’s domination over parliamentary careerists, party
machines, and state bureaucracies, might nonetheless emerge
(1920/1978:41–71,1111–55,1414,1459–60). Pareto was less hopeful.
There can be a “demagogic plutocracy,” in which an alliance of fox-like
politicians and profit-seeking capitalists (“speculators”) rules through
deception, demagogy and the bribing of diverse interests. But because
such elite maneuvers involve allocating instead of creating wealth, a
demagogic plutocracy gradually “kills the goose that lays the golden
eggs” (1902/1966:142). When the goose is effectively dead – when the
demagogic plutocracy is hollowed out economically – a leonine elite
prepared to reverse economic decline and social decay by force dis-
places the vulpine elite. The demagogic plutocracy is transformed into
a military plutocracy. Eventually, however, the leonine elite over-reaches

* We thank Jan Pakulski for his contributions to an earlier version of this introduc-
tory chapter.
2 heinrich best and john higley

in its “warlike activities” and is unseated by a new fox-like elite that

creates another demagogic plutocracy, thus starting the “plutocratic
cycle” over (Pareto 1921/1984:55–62; Femia 2006:100–123). Attempts
to break the cycle are pointless.
The four early theorists of elites depicted popular sovereignty and
egalitarian socialism as rhetorical façades and political formulas that
merely mask rule by elites. They regarded the surging communist and
fascist movements of their time as vehicles on which illiberal and leo-
nine elites would ride to power, with Weber warning that a “polar night
of icy darkness and hardness” might well occur in post-World War I
Germany (quoted by Antonio 1995:1370). Their premonitions were
largely realized during the 1920s and 1930s, though as a consequence,
theories about elites came to be seen as better at accounting for the rise
of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes than elucidating democracy
(e.g. Lasswell and Lerner 1965). In ideological formulations and popu-
lar outlooks after World War II, the cohabitation of democracy and
elites was viewed as awkward and uneasy (Mills 1956; Kornhauser
1959; Bottomore 1964; Porter 1965). It was widely believed that finding
ways to restrict elite autonomy and prevent arbitrary elite action is
essential if democracy is to have meaning.
Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of competitive democracy, which is
often labeled “democratic elitism” – a label Schumpeter himself never
used – was the most important effort to reconcile democracy with the
existence of elites. In his seminal book Capitalism, Socialism and
Democracy, Schumpeter contended that democracy is a method or
institutional arrangement “for arriving at political decisions in which
individuals [political leaders and elites] acquire the power to decide by
means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (1942:269).
Democracy, in other words, combines governance by leaders and elites
with time-limited mandates to govern issued by the demos. But
Schumpeter’s theory was ambiguous and somewhat contradictory. It
assumed that leaders and elites are competitive but also restrained; it
depended upon unspecified conditions that underlie peaceful compe-
titions for votes; and it tried to merge two antagonistic principles,
democracy and elitism.
For these and other reasons we will discuss, democratic elitism is an
overly simplistic rendition of how democracies, especially today’s
democracies, work. Though a “competitive struggle for the people’s
vote” occurs, political leaders and elites orchestrate this struggle. Indeed,
democracies may be morphing into Weber’s leader democracy, with
 introduction: democratic elitism reappraised 3

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.

Schumpeter’s Theory

Like Pareto, Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) was an economist who

ventured into political sociology as a sideline (Swedberg 1991; McCraw
2007). He knew Pareto’s pioneering work in economic theory, though
it appears that Schumpeter became familiar with Pareto’s political soci-
ology only late in life, after he had framed his competitive theory of
democracy (see Schumpeter’s essay on Pareto, written in 1948 to cele-
brate the centenary of Pareto’s birth, but published posthumously in
1951). More important, Schumpeter possessed a close knowledge of
Weber’s interdisciplinary “social economics,” and Weber’s discussion of
leader democracy was a key inspiration.
Schumpeter portrayed modern capitalist economies as propelled by
mass consumption, but directed and driven by a few entrepreneur-
innovators. It is the entrepreneur-innovators, not mass consumers,
who are the source of capitalist dynamism. Democracy mirrors capi-
talism. It is propelled by mass consent, but this is mobilized and driven
by political leaders and elites, who are the equivalents of entrepreneur-
innovators. Leaders and elites are the vital actors in democracy; voters
are political consumers who choose which leaders and elites will gov-
ern them: “The role of the people is to produce a government, or else an
intermediate body which in turn will produce a national executive or
government…Voters do not decide issues” (1942:269, 282). Leaders
and elites are constrained indirectly and periodically by their competi-
tions for electoral mandates and, one must add, their need to antic-
ipate and influence voters’ future choices (Friedrich 1963). Schumpeter
assumed these competitions to be free and fair, as well as circumspect
and restrained, but he did not dwell on their features. He stressed,
instead, the decision-making autonomy that leaders and elites must
have once they win a mandate to govern: “The voters must understand
that once they have elected an individual, political action is his busi-
ness and not theirs” (1942:290).
Schumpeter’s theory has received much attention. During the
1950s and early 1960s prominent theorists such as Robert Dahl and
4 heinrich best and john higley

Charles Lindblom (1953), Anthony Downs (1957), Giovanni Sartori

(1962), and Seymour Martin Lipset (1962) endorsed it. Starting in the
mid-1960s, however, democratic elitism came under sustained attack
by champions of a more direct democracy, with Jack Walker (1966),
Henry Kariel (1966), Peter Bachrach (1967), and Carole Pateman
(1970) among the most vocal critics. A main charge, still heard today
(e.g. Diamond 2008:20–26), was that Schumpeter’s conception of
democracy is too procedural or “thin.” It ignores democracy’s substan-
tive or “thick” components, including rule of law, protections of minor-
ities, civil liberties, due process, institutional checks against unbridled
rule, a pluralistic civil society, civilian control of the military, and so
on. Another charge has been that Schumpeter too blithely depicts
voters as compliant and passive vessels while portraying political lead-
ers and elites as creative and responsible actors. Moreover, in rendering
democracy as simply a method by which voters assign governing power
to leaders and elites, Schumpeter downgrades democracy from the sta-
tus of an ultimate and universal value, as many people regard it, to that
of a purely instrumental value (see chapter 12).
There are other questions about Schumpeter’s theory. The readiness
of leaders and elites to refrain from making their competitions into
slugfests is more problematic than he assumed. Schumpeter said noth-
ing about the origin of democratic game rules for competing with
restraint in elections and policy disputes, how these rules become insti-
tutionalized, or how they are enforced and shored up when competi-
tors violate them (Best 2007). He merely noted “a continuous range of
variation within which the democratic method shades off into the
autocratic one by imperceptible steps” (1942:271). Neither did Schum-
peter discuss how persons are selected to compete in elections –
whether selectors are judicious or corrupt; whether selection is rela-
tively open, as in party primaries, or confined to cliques of party bosses;
whether wealthy or unscrupulous outsiders with little political experi-
ence intrude; whether politicians shape electoral districts to guarantee
re-election. Whether, in short, a galaxy of electoral tricks and unfair
advantages make open and freely competitive elections a mirage.
Furthermore, as noted above, Schumpeter stipulated that between
elections office holders must be sufficiently free of mass pressures to
formulate and implement policies effectively. But today, as Juan Linz
has observed, this is problematic because of the complexity of issues,
the multiplication of sub-national and supra-national elections that
create permanent campaign mentalities among politicians, and the
 introduction: democratic elitism reappraised 5

glare of 24-hour media in which officials’ policies and actions are sub-
ject to instant and often devastating attack (Linz 2006:108). In addi-
tion, Schumpeter seemed to take it for granted that election candidates’
presentations of their qualifications and accomplishments and their
opponents’ alleged shortcomings are basically honest. His political
competitions have no place for the agenda setting, professional image
management, spin machines, dirty tricks, and outright lies that color so
much of today’s politics.
Schumpeter also ignored questions about the quality of political
leaders and elites. In line with market theory, he apparently assumed
that, through competition, the most qualified would usually win out,
though he recognized that there could be “cases that are strikingly
analogous to the economic phenomenon we label ‘unfair’ or ‘fraudu-
lent’ competition or restraint of competition” (1942:271). But if, as in
markets distorted by monopolies, some political competitors enjoy
inherited privileges, grossly unequal funding, celebrity status, dynastic
family names, or other big advantages, leaders and elites of high quality
are hardly assured by competitive elections.
What all of this boils down to is that neither Schumpeter nor subse-
quent defenders of democratic elitism pay enough attention to the
actual behaviors of leaders and elites. Attention has been riveted on
how adequately democratic elitism captures the relationship between
governors and the governed in its simple insistence that competitive
elections prevent the relationship from being one-way, i.e., leaders and
elites largely unaccountable to passive and submissive voters. But why
and how leaders and elites create and sustain competitive elections,
what happens if their competitions become excessively stage-managed
or belligerent – how, in short, leaders and elites really act – needs more
examination. Before launching this book’s examination of such issues,
let us clarify relevant concepts and phenomena.

Democracy, Political Elites, and Elitism

As discussed here, democracy entails competitive and participatory

elections, usually on the basis of universal suffrage, to select public
office holders, and these elections are embedded in legal protections of
civil and political liberties to ensure their integrity. We focus, in other
words, on representative democracy because this is what Schumpeter
clearly had in mind and it is what democratic elitism purports to
6 heinrich best and john higley

encapsulate. There are, however, many at least minimally representa-

tive democracies in today’s world, many more than in the 1940s when
Schumpeter wrote.
The most recent Freedom House assessment of the nearly 200 polit-
ical regimes in today’s world classifies 121 of them as “electoral democ-
racies” (Puddington 2008). A score of these electoral democracies
are microstates in which politics have a strong family- or clan-based
cast. It is obvious, moreover, that in at least half of the 100 or so larger
electoral democracies competitive elections and other democratic
trappings are poorly institutionalized and subject to a host of disrup-
tions and shortcomings: militaries prepared to veto election outcomes
and policy decisions; widespread corruption and fraud; inchoate
party systems; poorly functioning judiciaries; deep and destabilizing
ethno-regional cleavages, and so on. During 2007, in fact, only 29
larger electoral democracies received the highest Freedom House
scores for observing both political rights and civil liberties, and it is
probably only in these well-institutionalized democracies that it
makes sense to talk about democratic elitism. All but three of the 29
democracies are Anglo-American or European states, the three excep-
tions being Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Within Europe, moreover,
none of its southeastern states, other than Slovenia, as yet displays the
extensive political rights and civil liberties assumed by democratic
elitism.
Political elites consist of persons who are able, by virtue of their stra-
tegic positions in powerful organizations and movements, to affect
political outcomes and the workings of political institutions regularly
and seriously. They are persons at or near the top of the “pyramid of
power” (Putnam 1976:14) or, put differently, persons with the “organ-
ized capacity to make real and continuing political trouble” (Higley and
Burton 2006:7). This is a descriptive definition that applies to a number
of functionally differentiated groups sometimes called “strategic elites”
(Keller 1963): full-time politicians in cabinets, important legislators,
party officials, and their immediate advisors; senior public servants;
owners and CEOs of important business corporations and firms; lead-
ers of large labor unions and other powerful pressure groups; top mili-
tary officers; prominent lawyers, economists, journalists, and other
leaders of professions; key religious leaders; as well as persons heading
up major ethnic/racial or single-issue civic movements. This definition
subsumes “established” figures and groups, as well as those who are
often labeled “counter elites” because the latter, like the former, clearly
 introduction: democratic elitism reappraised 7

have the power, though perhaps mainly through blocking actions, to

affect political outcomes and the workings of political institutions reg-
ularly and seriously.
It might be objected that defining political elites in this way is too
sweeping – that it covers tens of thousands of persons in a country
like the United States, for example. Yet when the definition has been
applied rigorously at the national level, researchers have identified
less than 8,000 political elite members in the U.S. (Dye 2002), roughly
4,000 in medium-sized countries like France (Dogan 2003), Germany
(Hoffmann-Lange 1992), and Australia (Higley, Deacon, and Smart
1979), and about 2,000 in small countries like Denmark (Christiansen,
Möller, and Togeby 2001) and Norway (Gulbrandsen et al. 2002).
Researchers have found, moreover, that within these national political
elites there are especially tight-knit groups whose memberships cut
across functional boundaries, including what some term an “inner” or
“central” circle to which several hundred persons holding the upper-
most positions in the otherwise differentiated elite sectors belong
(Kadushin 1968; Moore 1975; Useem 1984; Knoke 1990; Higley et al.
1991).
Political elites vary in type among societies and within them over
time (Aron 1950; Dahrendorf 1967; Putnam 1976). Most frequently,
they are deeply divided into warring camps, with one camp holding the
upper hand and ruthlessly harassing or suppressing other camps – a
disunited political elite. Much less frequently, political elites are tightly
united in a single party or religious movement, whose ideology or
creed elite persons profess uniformly in their public utterances.
Obviously, neither a deeply disunited nor a tightly united political elite
is compatible with representative democracy. Only what might be
termed a “consensually united” political elite is propitious for such a
democracy (Higley and Burton 2006).
The persons and groups making up a consensually united political
elite interact through complex formal and informal networks that are
most dense within functionally differentiated sectors, in which elite
persons engage in the same kind of activity and share similar skills and
information. But these sector-specific networks overlap and interlock
to form web-works and inner or central circles through which sector
elites are tied together and obtain access to key political decision-
makers. Members of the elite share a voluntary, mostly tacit consensus
about norms and rules of political behavior, the hallmark of which is a
commitment to keeping politics tamed (Sartori 1995). Terming this
8 heinrich best and john higley

elite consensus “restrained partisanship,” Giuseppi Di Palma (1973) has

dissected it as follows:
– Elites recognize the right of oppositions to exist, to be heard, to bar-
gain the content of decisions, to veto decisions, and to enjoy repre-
sentation proportional to their size and influence;
– Elites agree to disagree when decisions cannot or should not be
reached;
– Elites maintain significant autonomy in relation to their respective
non-elite bases of support, i.e., they do not greatly intrude into each
other’s sectors;
– Elites emphasize technical and procedural feasibilities rather than
ultimate rights and wrongs in problem solving;
– Elites practice enough secrecy to have flexibility when bargaining,
fashioning compromises, and seeking innovative solutions to prob-
lems.
In a consensually united elite restrained partisanship is reinforced
and perpetuated by the inclusive and integrated network of interac-
tions in which most members participate. Through friendships and
other personal ties; through frequent, intensive and wide-ranging
organizational contacts; and also through common recreational and
social activities in exclusive and privileged settings (e.g. Domhoff
2002:49–54), elite members know each other well, and this familiarity
disposes them toward reciprocities when tackling common problems,
conflicts, and disagreements. The elite’s operational code is do ut des –
give to get (Sartori 1987:224, 229) – and over time it inclines persons
and groups to view the totality of political outcomes as positive-sum
and to uphold the political institutions that process their bargains (see
chapter 4).
Consensually united elites are relative rarities in the modern histori-
cal and contemporary world, and they appear to originate in only a few
ways. One way is through a deliberate, sudden, and basic “settlement”
of lethal and longstanding oppositions, as occurred between Tory and
Whig elite camps in England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688–89
(Barone 2007) or between Franquist and anti-Franquist elite camps in
Spain during 1977–78 (Linz and Stepan 1996:87–115). A second way
has been through a long experience of relatively benign colonial rule,
during which settler or “native” elites have learned to practice cautious
and restrained politics and eventually wage a unifying struggle for
national independence – the origin of consensually united elites in the
 introduction: democratic elitism reappraised 9

former British colonies of Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, New

Zealand, and, not least, the United States (Weiner 1987). A third way
has been through a gradual convergence of opposing elite camps toward
consensual unity when widespread prosperity has eroded the beliefs
and postures of radically dissident elite camps, as appears to have hap-
pened in Italy and France during the 1960s and 1970s and in Japan
during the 1970s and 1980s (Higley and Burton 2006:139–79). It is pos-
sible, in addition, that social mechanisms specified by William Sumner’s
theory of “antagonistic cooperation” may spur the development of con-
sensually united elites where conditions for the three historical origins
of such elites do not exist (see chapter 6).
“Elitism” is difficult to define. Its dictionary meanings are leadership
or rule by an elite; the selectivity of an elite when choosing new mem-
bers; and/or the consciousness of being or belonging to an elite. In
popular parlance “elitism” and “elitist” are pejorative terms used to den-
igrate persons and groups who think they are better or profess to know
more than others or who possess privileges regarded as unwarranted.
An irony in contemporary politics – colorfully on display in the recent
US presidential contest between Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John
McCain, and sundry other contenders – is that persons in elite statuses
regularly disparage each other for being “elitist” in one or more popu-
lar senses of the term.
Democratic elitism is unclearly related to these several meanings.
Nominally, it means only that elites play a major role in governance
that does not prevent a substantial degree of democracy, though when
used pejoratively democratic elitism implies that there should not be
even this perversion of democracy. More stringently, democratic elit-
ism means that a tolerance of arbitrary rights and powers vested in
elites, however impossible it may be to justify these rights and powers
ab initio, is necessary to prevent a profitless battle of all against all in a
world devoid of universal values (Field and Higley 1980:3–4; Gray
2007:184–204). With regards to its other component, democratic elit-
ism holds that elites protect democratic orders from unsophisticated
and often intolerant publics through the stronger commitments of
elites to democratic values, their more coherent belief systems, their
greater tolerance of dissent, and their readiness to take unpopular
actions in order to preserve democracy (Peffley and Rohrschneider
2007:65). Put differently, democratic elitism portrays elites as democ-
racy’s guardians, without whose protections democracy would proba-
bly unravel (see chapter 3).
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