The development of political elites in Europe by Luca Verzichelli and Maurizio Cotta

A small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a society

political elites

• is a theory of the state that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in contemporary society.

  • The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections.

Classical elite theory

It is a history of political elites

European democracy

It was accomplished thanks to the formation of stable groups of national political elites

political modernization

__ between the minority of the population taking the important political decisions and the rest of the ruled subjects.

‘necessary gap’

He said that the differences in the performances of European states were mainly due to the different capabilities and degrees of responsibility of their political elites

Max Weber

Key qualities of politicians

‘passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion’

It consists of

• delimited by party-state leaders

• Professional parliamentary politicians

• top government bureaucrats and

• the expanding party officialdom

‘quadrangle of power

__ is more Leader-centered democratic system. While _ is Party-centered nature of elites.

• North America: Leader-centered democratic system.

• Europe: Party-centered nature of elites.

He introduced a political system meeting a sufficient ‘democratic standard’, with a combination of civil and political rights. Give the name and contribution

Polyarchy (Robert Dahl)

His focus wan on the achievement of standards such as liberalization, participation, parliamentary control, and proportional representation.

Stein Rokkan

What is the general profile of elites

• Elites as primarily male - relatively well-educated and rich citizens, do not symmetrically represent the social composition of their represented universes

• Self-interested and generally oppose any new challenger, selecting the most powerful political leader from among themselves

• European democracies have been quite sensitive to the democratic deficit problem presented by the political elite, the very core of representative democracy

• European political elites have been significantly transformed in response to a long series of challenges and crises

what were the three main historical Phases

• First democratization and consolidation of a pluralistic political elite - dominant political role of the European upper classes within the representative institutions was challenged and reduced

• Breakthrough and ascendance of the new mass parties (from the end of WWI to the 1960s) - emergence of professional politicians and a more representative reflection of social stratification within parliaments

• Mature democracy, marked by the decline of traditional mass parties - astonishing process of modernization was largely due to an accelerated rate of growth, but also to the transformation of the role of political parties

The most relevant dissimilarities emerging across countries and across party families differences in the forms of _. The evolution of political professionalism has resulted in significantly different outcomes during the age of consolidated democracy

political professionalism

Refers to the infiltration of post-materialist values into Western societies The ‘cartelization’ of political parties unquestionably balanced out the decrease in the ‘bottom-up’ flow of resources

rise of post-materialism

The increased space acquired within the executive branch of government by new modes of _. Where they were recruited to fill positions in European governments in order to cope with the emerging problems

technocratic expertise

This means the pluralistic/power-sharing democracies

Consociational Democracy

Two degree of permissiveness

• Permissive consensus - citizens allow elites to shape the nature, direction and speed of integration

• Constraining dissensus - elites face continuous political contestations over further integration