The Anti-democratic Sources of Elite Theory PDF Download

Author: Robert A. Nye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Author: Joseph V. Femia
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191521175
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Given the almost universal assumption that democracy is a 'good thing', the goal of mankind, it is easy to forget that 'rule by the people' has been vehemently opposed by some of the most distinguished thinkers in the Western tradition. The author attempts to combat collective amnesia by systematically exploring and evaluating anti-democratic thought since the French Revolution. Using categories first introduced by A. O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction, Femia examines the various arguments under the headings of 'perversity', 'futility', and 'jeopardy'. This classification scheme enables him to highlight the fatalism and pessimism of anti-democratic thinkers, their conviction that democratic reform would be either pointless or destructive. Femia shows how they failed to understand the adaptability of democracy, its ability to co-exist with the traditional and elitist values. But, controversially, he also argues that some of their predictions and observations have been confirmed by history.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047441745
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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This book reconsiders Joseph Schumpeter's democratic elitism in light of the directions that recent theories of democracy have taken, and it analyzes democratic elitism's workings in western and eastern European states early in the 21st century.

Author: George Lowell Field
Publisher: London ; Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Author: C.WRIGHT MILLS
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Author: Richard Alston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781922815934
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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"In most Western countries elites have always been with us. Once the elites were largely intellectuals, even benevolent visionaries, but the class now includes almost anyone who has achieved significant material or occupational success. But just because you are a famous film star, sporting hero or business tycoon, let alone a wealthy retiree, doesn't entitle you to pontificate, often on subjects you know little about. Most are university-educated, often driven by emotion rather than reason, and more interested in virtue-signalling and self-satisfaction, with little regard for the values, concerns and everyday struggles of others. All is not lost. In 2016, the elites hated Brexit and Trump. In 2019, they loved Bill Shorten. Each time they lost. While the elite class don't want to know, working middle-class voters are not prepared to see their families, jobs and national safety sacrificed on the altar of elitism."--Back cover.

Author: Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108596126
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Problems associated with cronyism, corporatism, and policies that favor the elite over the masses have received increasing attention in recent years. Political Capitalism explains that what people often view as the result of corruption and unethical behavior are symptoms of a distinct system of political economy. The symptoms of political capitalism are often viewed as the result of government intervention in a market economy, or as attributes of a capitalist economy itself. Randall G. Holcombe combines well-established theories in economics and the social sciences to show that political capitalism is not a mixed economy, or government intervention in a market economy, or some intermediate step between capitalism and socialism. After developing the economic theory of political capitalism, Holcombe goes on to explain how changes in political ideology have facilitated the growth of political capitalism, and what can be done to redirect public policy back toward the public interest.

Author: Sheldon S. Wolin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178488
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level. Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. Now with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges, Democracy Incorporated remains an essential work for understanding the state of democracy in America.

Author: Peter Bachrach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351498940
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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One of the potentially explosive issues of the modern era is a vast and growing disparity between the overwhelming predominance of elites in the decision-making process and the democratic ideal that people should participate in making decisions that vitally affect them. In this book an impressive array of political theorists offer conflicting views on the form of democratic elitism practiced in the United States.Defining the political elite as "the power holders of the body politic," Harold Lasswell explains that the 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 excessive centralization that he regards as "economically inefficient, technologically unnecessary, and humanly damaging." From another standpoint, Herbert Marcuse calls for a struggle against the ideology of tolerance husbanded by the political elites in this country and Jack L. Walker contends that elitist theory has provided an unconvincing explanation of the widespread political apathy in American society.As the events of recent decades vividly demonstrate, a growing number of people refuse to recognize elite rule. This many-sided work puts before the student a variety of strongly held opinions regarding the place and function of the 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 the subject of elites and political power.

Author: John Markoff
Publisher: Pine Forge Press
ISBN: 9780803990197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Waves of Democracy looks at two centuries of history of democratization as a series of multicontinental episodes in which social movements and elite power holders in many countries converged to reorganize political systems. Democracy is defined and redefined in these episodes. John Markoff examines several ways in which governing elites of national states mimic each other and ways in which social movements and elites interact. There is no other book written for undergraduates that looks at democracy over such a broad sweep of time and across so many countries and cultures.