Elite theory

In philosophy, political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the State that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in contemporary society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections.

Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over policy-planning networks through the financial support of foundations or positions with think tanks or policy-discussion groups, members of the "elite" exert significant power over corporate and government decisions.

The basic characteristics of this theory are that power is concentrated, the elites are unified, the non-elites are diverse and powerless, elites' interests are unified due to common backgrounds and positions and the defining characteristic of power is institutional position.

Elite theory opposes pluralism (more than one system of power), a tradition that emphasized how multiple major social groups and interests have an influence upon and various forms of representation within more powerful sets of rulers, contributing to decently representative political outcomes that reflect the collective needs of society.

Even when entire groups are ostensibly completely excluded from the state's traditional networks of power (on the basis of arbitrary criteria such as nobility, race, gender, or religion), elite theory recognizes that "counter-elites" frequently develop within such excluded groups. Negotiations between such disenfranchised groups and the state can be analyzed as negotiations between elites and counter-elites. A major problem, in turn, is the ability of elites to co-opt counter-elites.

Democratic systems function on the premise that voting behavior has a direct, noticeable effect on policy outcomes, and that these outcomes are preferred by the largest portion of voters. Strikingly, a study published in 2014, which correlated voters' preferences to policy outcomes, found that the statistical correlation between the two is heavily dependent on the income brackets of the voting groups.

At the lowest income sampled in the data, the correlation coefficient reached zero, whereas the highest income returned a correlation coefficient above 0.6. The conclusion of this research was that there is a strong, linear correlation between the income of voters and how often their policy preferences become reality. The causation for this correlation has not yet been proven in subsequent studies, but is an active area of research.