SOC208H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: The Power Elite, Campaign Finance Reform In The United States, Lawrence Lessig
Document Summary
The political lens: calls attention to interests of stakeholder groups, distribution of power across groups. Power: the ability of an individual or group to impose its will or interests on others, even if they resist. Politics: the activities, actions, and policies that are used to gain and hold power in a government or to influence a government. Main power holders basis of public policy dispersed various groups will of all citizens. Elite control: state (and policy) serves elite interests, not interests of the whole, the power elite (c. wright mills, 1956, corporations, military, government, elites: similar worldview, shaped by similar background, interconnections. Basis of public policy ruling class - big business capitalist interests concentrated: big business (capitalists) form a ruling class, all policy serves their interests the capitalist state is an arm of big business. "characteristics which provide actors with the ability to punish or reward other actors" -
