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Week 5 Readings 

The Power Elite

Mills

  • 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

Power, Democracy, and Civil Society

HRS

  • 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

Hall

  • 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

The Power Elite

Mills

  • 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

Power, Democracy, and Civil Society

HRS

  • 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

Hall

  • 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