Final Elitism Essay

Submitted By Nikki-Menillo
Words: 642
Pages: 3

It is important to realize that power in the political sector comes in the form of the amount of resources you have over others and the ability to make decisions. It is obvious from experience that the elites of the world do hold a general amount of power given their status and amount of resources in society but it is foolish to say that there is only one group of elites that control the political arena. The question is, ‘how many elites are there?’ I do agree with David Judge that this debate is a non-controversy and rather that pluralism is at best a differentiated and more diverse expansion on the theory of elitism.
To say that one set of issues remain stable over time is equivalent to saying the world is flat. It is important to not reject the idea that different issues hold more merit under different circumstances. Elitist’s believes that only the elites of society should govern, whereas, Pluralists believe that the system is stratified but differentiated- with different groups/elites wielding different degree of influence in different policy areas at different times. (Judge.) But whose to say who the elites are? The theorists behind pluralism argue that there exist a significant number of relatively autonomous social groups (Dahl). Different groups are going to have the corresponding resources to deal with a particular issue at hand better than other groups may. To dissect further on the issue of who the elites are - within those groups are always going to be at least one person who is above the others at dealing with the particular issue at hand. This person may have more knowledge or be a more active member and they will hold the spot of the “Elite,” so to speak - of the group. So, it is fair to say that in each group there is a power structure containing a higher level of elites at the top or in other words – the most powerful members. Instead of a close knit group of elites we have a diverse collection of elites from different groups all pertaining to different issues that have to do with them. It is a revolving group of individuals who all contain different characteristics that are important at different times.
It is foolish to believe that the existence of elites seizes to exist at all. There is a much larger issue at hand and that asks the question – how many elites actually are there? When reading about Dahl’s New Haven study what I found most interesting was the dispersed inequalities he