What is elite politics and elite decision making

elite theory

Western political science and sociology theory and research methodology that describes the nature of society and relations of domination through the study of society's rulers and outstanding people. The term "elite" first appeared in 17th-century France, meaning "the chosen few" or "the good". Elite theory holds that the rulers of a society are a minority of the society, but they are the elites of the society as they surpass most of the ruled in terms of intelligence, character, ability, property, etc., and have an important influence on the development of the society. A very small number of these political elites represent certain interest groups and hold major decision-making power, and their political attitudes, words and deeds have an important influence on the direction and prospects of political development and determine the nature of politics. It is believed that these political elites must be analyzed in order to reveal the nature and laws of politics.

The origin of the elite theory can be traced back to Plato's "Politics of the Philosophers" in ancient Greece. s idea of "politics of philosophers", and the medieval Italian N. Machiavelli's idea of the power of rulers and techniques of ruling. s study of the power of rulers and the techniques of ruling. Later in France, C.-H. de Saint-Simon? and H. Tann of France, and L. Gomplowicz of Germany also explored the issues of who rules society, the ****ness of rulers, how to maintain rule, how to rule, etc., which played a major role in the emergence and development of elite theory. It was only in the mid-19th century that elite theory developed a clearer theoretical framework and research methodology and gained a theoretical status.

Basic content Elite theory is divided into early and contemporary. People usually refer to the elite theory of the late 19th century to the 1950s as the early elite theory. There are three representative figures in this period, they are: ① Italian sociologist G. Mosca, whose representative work is The Ruling Class. He believed that there existed a ruling class and a ruled class in all societies; and that social civilization changed with the change of elites. He focused on the nature of political elites and the way they gained power, as well as their changes in different historical circumstances. At the same time, he discussed the maintenance and replacement of elite status. (2) Italian sociologist V. Pareto, whose representative work is Ideas and Society. He perfected the "theory of elite mobility" and believed that the rise and fall of elites and the mobility between elites and non-elites were inevitable, and that such mobility was the basic factor for maintaining social balance, and that without normal mobility, political instability and revolutionary situations would result, leading to collective mobility of elites instead of individual mobility. (3) The Swiss-German sociologist R. Michels put forward the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" in his "Theory of Political Parties", arguing that political parties and all other human organizations cannot avoid the tendency of oligarchy. Early elite theory focused on the political rule of elites, emphasized the innate quality of human beings, focused on discursive research, especially focusing on the role of a few rulers, ignoring the role of the democratic system in the political process, with an anti-democratic tendency, and was subject to a lot of criticism. after the 1950s, with the emergence of behaviorist political science, the contemporary theory of the elites in the United States developed. The main representatives are political scientist H.D. Lasswell? , sociologist C.W. Mills, economist J. Schumpeter and so on. Although the basic idea of contemporary elite theory is consistent with the early elite theory, contemporary researchers pay attention to the position and role of political elites in social relations as well as the existence and significance of other social elites and even citizens in social relations; they emphasize the specialized skills that are formed by human practice later in life, and believe that elites can be produced both in the upper and lower strata of the society, and can be produced both in the political field as well as in other social fields; citizens can express their interests through various forms of political participation and exert influence on the rulers to force them to make decisions in favor of the majority of the people; and elites have the possibility of being replaced once they have lost their leadership ability and the trust of the public. Contemporary elite theory claims to be "value-neutral" and focuses on multidisciplinary empirical research to illustrate the effectiveness of social power relations and democratic politics through qualitative or quantitative analyses of the origins, experiences, cultures, social backgrounds, interrelationships, representativeness, and leadership behaviors of Western political, economic, technological, and military elites.

Significance Elite theory tries to reveal the essence and operation law of the political system from the social elites, especially the political leaders and outstanding figures, opening up a new way of political science research and forming some analytical tools, which play an unignorable role in the contemporary western political science research and the analysis of political phenomena. However, some scholars have criticized this theory for over-exaggerating the personal role of rulers and subjective conditions, and its ideological essence is the heroic historical concept of historical idealism.