Competitive Elitism
Oligarchy by Another Name or Democracy for the Modern Day?
Competitive elitism can be described as a model that has the people’s participation in a democracy relegated to simply voting for the representatives, the political elite, to lead them. At the same time, the elite would then change society without much input from the people outside of elections. This differed from the way people normally imagine a democracy, with sayings such as ‘by the people, and for the people’ or ideas like majority rule being the common view of what a democracy should look like. So, while competitive elitism did involve the people, it put the most power into the hands of this political elite.
Originating in the early 20th century, foundational thinkers like Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter, were the ones who laid out the theory of competitive elitism in works such as: ‘Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy’. Some main ideas that make up competitive elitism are that: direct democracy cannot work in a modern society, and that a class of political elite must serve as the bureaucratic class and the elected representatives in society.
Class is something that is brought up a lot when you read about competitive elitism. For competitive elitism, when we’re talking about class, we mean a class structure with the distinction between the average citizen and the political elite.
A bureaucracy will naturally form as a modern society in the industrialized world is too complex with its institutions and needs to worry about efficiency and providing so many services to keep the state running. To effectively run this bureaucratic system that will inevitably come about and will continue to grow in size, a class of political elite is needed that is proficient in the form of bureaucracy that such a state necessitates. It is because of this that the common people would not be able to work effectively and systems like direct democracy would not be able to work in a modern society and only would work on a small level.
This political elite described in competitive elitism reminds me of the class structure that is set up in ‘The Republic’ where you have the producers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians. The political elite reminds me specifically of the guardians, a class that was chosen to rule the city and was raised to do so.
One criticism against the theory of competitive elitism was the idea of leadership and how the people’s role in democracy was laid out, where the people’s only way to participate in the state democracy was to vote for the elite and then get out of the way.
While looking for arguments against the theory of competitive elitism, I found an essay from UKEssays that highlighted some critiques against the theory. “Schumpeterian elitism leads to a disconnect between the ‘elites’ and the electorate as well as disincentivizes efficiency in the polity. This is because the political elites have no reason to transfer their information to the average voter, in fact, the opposite would more often help them stay in power longer. This creates an incompetent system, plagued by nepotism and cronyism.” The argument given describes a system where the political elite, after the election, would be given free rein to pursue their interests, and the voters would have to rely on faith that the representative they elected meant some of the things they said on the campaign trail.
