A Theory and Methodology for the Study of Elites

1 A theory and methodology for the study of elites The concept of a political elite is a simple one; that all societies no matter their ideology or social structure are in fact ruled by a small group of individuals designated variously as a political elite, a ruling class or a power elite. In this book I use the term political elite. In the context of KwaZulu-Natal, this is a political elite in a constitutional democracy with a violent political history of acute political fractures. The term political elite is most commonly used among elite theorists. I set aside the term ruling class because of its relationship to the term class. A political elite is not simply a group of people that rule politically but belong to an economic class. Their basis of power is not necessarily related to the means of production and they are not necessarily primarily driven as an economic class. I further set aside the term power elite because the term power does not designate precisely enough the essential relationship to the state, politics and rule. Elite theorists take as their starting point the causes and consequences of inequality in society. The key characteristics of any society are consequences of the characteristics of the political elite. The historical transformation of all states is a history of political elites. Hence, for the majority of elite theorists a class- less society with political equality belongs to the dreams of utopia. While they may or may not be anti-democratic, on the whole they are sceptical of the possibilities of realising democracy in whichever of its forms. While the concept of a political elite is relatively simple, elite theory remains a divided field and the operational definition of a political elite is contested and inadequate. THEORY AND METHODOLOGY 11 The theory of the ruling class put forward by Italian classical political scientist Gaetano Mosca posits that society is divided into two groups, a minority which rules and a majority that is ruled (Mosca 1939). For Mosca, the organized nature of groups within the political elite is based upon common material interests. But the location of that grouping is undefined. Extending Mosca’s argument is American classical sociologist C. Wright Mills’ famous study of the power elite in America in which he posits the idea that the organi- zational basis of an elite group is the foundation upon which the elite have the capacity to rule. Three unified and interdependent elite structures that consist of the key political, corporate economic and military personnel together constitute the power elite. Trade unions and interest groups make up a middle level of power and the general public or the masses are confined to the bottom level in which they are effectively powerless (C. Wright-Mills 1956). Like Mosca, Mills’ thesis suffers from a failure to fully operationalise his own definition in the context of political power and political institutions. While he discusses the spheres in which the elite is located and through which its members coalesce, he does not specify at what levels within those spheres they exist or how they deny access to power to other groupings within those spheres. Hence, for Mills it would seem that the political elite is simultaneously everyone within those spheres, but no-one specific. French-Italian classical sociologist Vilfredo Pareto saw rule by elites as inevitable, though he emphasised their cyclical quality of rise and decline, and he focused closely on the institutions of government as the crucial sites of elite power and influence. Thus in contrast to Mosca and Mills, Pareto’s upper stra- tum consists of a governing elite. They are political and most likely to be parlia- mentarians (Pareto 1935). In this theory, the political elite is directly related to the environment and instruments through which power operates and they are active rather than passive entities within it. Drawing upon Pareto’s distinction, I define the political elite in KwaZulu-Natal as the elected members of the Provincial Government of KwaZulu-Natal, because their legitimate relationship to the institutions of power enables them, within constitutional and institutional constraints, to take the most important political decisions in the post-1994 per- iod. While operational definitions of the political elite are contested, the focus of literature on political elites in political institutions is also fragmented with the key works devoted to singular studies of either the recruitment, or the behaviour or the ideology of elites in what is a literature that predominantly explores political elites in the context of Europe and America. In this study, I am concerned to integrate existing fragmented theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of political elites and then to extend .

Load more