POLITICS & GOVERNMENT: THE ESSENTIALS
(Continued)
5. Political Elites, Political Competition, and Elite Accomodation:
Power-oriented political scientists, defining politics in terms of the acquisition and exercise of political power, tend to emphasize the existence and operation of political elites.
a. Political Elite--A Definition. A political elite is a small but powerful group of political leaders within a particular society, or community. The members of a political elite make up a very small percentage of the total adult population of the society in which they live. Compared to the vast majority of the persons comprising the political community, the members of the political elite (1) are much better informed about politics and public questions, (2) have a much better and significantly more sophisticated understanding of the political processes carried on within the society and how those processes can be effectively used to achieve their own ends and further their own interests, (3) are considerably more active in politics and public affairs, and (4) manage to acquire and exercise a degree of political power far out of proportion to their numbers within the community. The members of the political elite, in short, play leading roles in making and enforcing--or influencing the making and enforcement of--the authoritative decisions of the government on public policy.
b. Political Elites and the Distribution of Political Power.
In a given political society, there may be a single, dominant, and virtually all-powerful political elite, or there may be several--possibly many--competing elites. In a society, political power may be narrowly distributed, or it may be broadly distributed. That is, political power may be concentrated in a single elite, or it may be diffused, or dispersed-- widely distributed among a multiplicity of elites.
Keep in mind that, in discussing the distribution of political power, we are making reference not only to the formal-legal (constitutional and statutory) allocation of political authority among the institutions and offices of the government, but also to the informal distribution of political influence within the society as a whole.
c. Politican Elitism and Political Pluralism. Political scientists and politically oriented sociologists often use the term "power elite" to refer to a single elite that is politically dominant and exercises virtually all political power within a community. The terms "political elitism" and "elitist political system" are employed to designate a community's pattern of political-power distribution, if it is characterized by concentration of power in a single elite--a power elite. The terms "political pluralism," "pluralist political system, and "polyarchy" are used to refer to a distribution pattern characterized by diffusion of political power--wide distribution of political power among many competing elites within the community.
d. Political Elites and Political-Power Distribution in the U.S.A.. American society is characterized by (1) the existence and operation of a multiplicity of political elites and (2) a wide distribution of political power among these elites. No single elite is politically dominant at the national level in the U.S.A. That is to say, no single elite is dominant in all or most areas of American national public policy. In particular areas of U.S. public policy, however, professional, business, labor, military, media, educational, ethnic, and other political elites exercise significant--often decisive--political influence.
For example, the internationally minded American business elites have wielded pervasive influence over U.S. foreign policy through their financial support of and membership in the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR)--the powerful policy-planning group which, since the 1920s, has developed nearly every important American foreign-policy initiative, including (1) the Kellog-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, (2) the hardening of U.S. resistance to Japanese expansion in the Pacific during the 1930s, (3)the Breton Woods Monetary and Financial Conference of 1944 and its creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), (4) drafting the Charter of the United Nations in 1945, (5) the policy of "containment" to stop Soviet expansion in Europe and the Middle East after the Second World War, (6) formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, (7) the 1948-1951 Marshall Plan for Europe's postwar economic recovery, (8) the decision of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to intervene military in Vietnam, resulting in the next 14 years of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, (9) the Paris Peace Talks, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, between the opposing forces in the Vietnam War (the U.S.A. and South Vietnam on one side and North Vietnam and the Vietcong on the otherside), (10) the Paris Accords of 1973 and the subsequent withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Vietnam, resulting in the surrender of Saigon to the Communists in 1975, (11) the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with China in 1979, during the Presidency of Gerald Rudolph Ford, (12) the international "human rights" campaign during the Presidency of James Earl Carter, (13) the Carter administration's adoption of a stricter policy toward nuclear proliferation and its effort to restrict international arms sales, (14) the harder line toward the Soviet Union that was characteristic of American foreign and defense policy during the early years of the Presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan, and (15) the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and the immediate-range nuclear forces (INF) arms-control talks between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union during the Reagan Presidency.
To give another example, those business elites who, in the 1930s and 1940s, abandoned their support of laissez-faire political ideology and made peace with the New Deal, recognizing the national government as having a central role to play in preventing future depressions and otherwise managing or manipulating America's economy to ensure continuing economic growth and stability (maximum production, maximum employment, and maximum purchasing power), have, through their association with and support of the Committee for Economic Development (CED), had a very potent voice in the initiation, formulation, adoption, and implementation of U.S. government economic policy. These business elites have played major roles in influencing and shaping presidentially initiated economic policies and programs from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman through Ronald W. Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and William Jefferson Clinton.
To cite still another example, the leadership elites of mainline African-American, or Black-American, ethnic organizations, such as the Urban League and the National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People (NAACP), have, in alliance with Democratic-Party elites, national labor-union leaders and Statist "Liberal" upper-middle-class White social and cultural elites, exercised decisive but not unchallenged influence, since, 1964, over the enactment and enforcement of federal legislation in the areas of civil rights, affirmative action, and fair employment practices.
e. Elite Competition for Political Power. Politics, viewed as competition for political power among opposing forces in the political community, can be defined as involving the activities of and interactions between or among rival groups of political leaders--i.e., competing political elites. Some political elites and their respective organized followings compete primarily for political authority, while others compete mainly or solely for political influence.
f. Elite Competition for Political Authority--Political Competition between or among Party Elites. As regards competition for political authority, a political elite, with the support and assistance of its followers, contends with one or more rival elites in an endeavor to become or remain the governing elite, or ruling elite. It competes for the formal-legal right to govern the entire political society; it competes for the right to take over or retain formal control and direction of the government and exercise its legal authority in such manner and for such purposes as the governing elite deems appropriate, desirable, and in the public interest (or, alternatively, in the interest of the ruling elite and its political supporters). This dimension, or aspect, of politics includes the means by which rival political elites compete with each other to obtain the commission (i.e., the mandate, or lawful right and responsibil- ity) to rule the political community--e.g., winning peaceful and legal elections in a stable, well-established constitutional democracy, or armed rebellion and an attempt to forcibly seize power in a society with a political regime lacking widely recognized and widely supported procedures for peacefully transfering political authority from one political elite to another. Also included in this aspects of politics are the objectives the elites propose to accomplish through the acquisition and exercise of political authority as well as the actual consequences of their decisions and actions while occupying the offices and institutions of government.
In a constitutional democracy, competing political parties function to provide the general voting public with alternative political elites--rival groups of political leaders--from among which the voters can choose the governing elite, the leadership group that will govern the community until the voters, in a new election, peacefully transfer the mandate to govern from the incumbents to a rival party elite. Opposing political parties in a society with a constitutional democratic political regime compete with one another to place their respec- tive leadership groups--their respective party elites--in the positions of governmental authority and thereby give them the legitimate right to make and carry out authoritative decisions on public policy, to make and enforce official governmental decisions which authoritatively allocate resources and values for the society.
g. Elite Competition for Political Influence--Political Competition between or among Interest-Group Elites. Elite competition for political power includes the interactions among rival interest-group elites as well as those among party elites. When the common interests and views of one political interest group clash with those of other interest groups in a given area of public policy, the leadership elite of each contending group competes with the others for political influence. The rival interest-group elites compete for political influence in the particular policy area. They compete for the ability to influence and mold the authoritative decisions and actions of the governing elite in the specific area of public policy.
h. Elite Accomodation. Not only do rival interest-group elites engage in political competi- tion with one another, they often seek to accomodate each other. Interest-group elites in a stable constitutional democratic society, such as the U.S.A., are strongly inclined to negotiate and bargain with each other, come up with mutually acceptable compromises, and thereby accomodate each other and their respective group memberships. In the U.S.A., national legislation designed to resolve political conflict over controversial issues of public policy is inevitably the product of negotiation, bargaining, and compromise (1) among the leadership elites of political interest groups with clashing interests in the relevant policy area and (2) between the interest-group elites and the segments of the governing elite or elites that play crucially important roles in the making and implementation of authoritative, binding decisions in the particular policy area--e.g., (a) the standing committees and subcommittees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that write the legislation authorizing and funding government programs in the policy area, (b) the chairmen, other senior members, and key staff personnel of these congressional committees and sub- committees, (c) the majority and minority party leaders in each of the two houses of Congress, (d) the leaders of important political blocs and factions in both chambers of Congress, and (e) the relevant bureaucratic elites, i.e., high-ranking administrative officials in the executive agency or agencies having responsibility for enforcement of legislation in the given policy area. American elites competing for political influence greatly prefer behind-the-scenes accomodation to open confrontation. They prefer political negotiation, bargaining, and compromise among practical and prudent leaders to all-out political conflict between ideological opponents taking rigid and uncompromising positions on public questions, arousing and generating sharp divisions within the general populace, and thereby risking a national crisis that could upset the existing distribution of political power within American society and seriously disrupt and destabilize the political and social order.