PSYB21H3 Chapter Notes -Big Business, Elite Theory
Document Summary
Pluralist theory holds that power is widely dispersed. As a result, no group enjoys disproportionate influence, and decisions are usually reached through negotiation and compromise. Pluralists believed that democracies were heterogeneous societies with many competing interests and centres of power. They view political systems as an institution that helps society achieve goals and interests in the process of integrating members and keeping equilibrium. Elite theorists disagreed with the pluralist account. They argued that groups with opposing goals and interests confront each other in the political arena and that while conflict is not always overt it is never far below the surface of political affairs. Powerful groups have more control over less powerful. C. wright mills defined elites as small groups that occupy the command posts of a society"s most influential institutions. Mills showed how the corporate, state and military (3 forms of institutions) are connected. People move from one elite group to another during their careers.
