Week 5 Readings

Power elite: men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women * Decisions = major consequences * Have power, wealth, and celebrity
Professional celebrities: have the power to distract the attention of the public to gain the ear of those who do occupy positions of direct power
Major institutions of modern society constitute the means of power
Power = economic, political, military * Major corporation * Military establishment * National Security Council

→ interlocking of those structures = triangle of power

Higher circles: make up the economic, political and military elites * Economic: chief executives * Political: political directorate * Military: Joint Chiefs of Staff
Top social stratum
Moral conception of the elite: many individuals of the upper stratum do come to approximate the types of character they claim to embody
Unity of the power elite
Power elites enact historical change

Noted a contradiction between qualitative and quantitative methods
Relationship between capitalism and democracy
Democracy: is a matter of power and power-sharing
Clusters of power * Social classes * Structure of the state * International power relations

→ Are closely interrelated

Capitalism is related to democracy because it shifts the balance of class power, weakens the power of the landlord class and strengthens subordinate classes * Enlarges the working/middle class making it more difficult for elites to exclude them politically
Bourgeoisie = not a key component in the development of democracy

Civil society: a form of societal self-organization that allows for cooperation with the state while permitting individuation
Civility: based on the recognition of difference and diversity
Fashion: expressing yourself artistically in public
The diversity that is acceptable to civil society is within a particular world with its own boundaries
Civility: concerns the modern world
Civil society first emerged in Western Europe
Tragedy of European civilization: political elites that might have modernized their policies failed to do so
Civil society is only one option among others * It is an ideal born in the West