ACADEMIA Letters The Democracy Ideal and Elites John Higley, Professor Emeritus of Government and Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin As any avid reader of history should know, politics are usually harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory. Special interests normally get their way in power and until supplanted by better situated or shrewder forces. Ideals have little place. Lately in Western countries, however, things haven’t been so bad. With increased productivity and knowledge of the physical world, population majorities in them have been substantially disarmed by material affluence. Predacious and fierce political behavior has declined sufficiently so that political ideals have an influence on people’s lives. Despite pockets of poverty and discrimination, ideals are enforced to a significant extent. The standard that expresses and to some degree enforces ideals is “democracy.” Practically everyone in the more influential circles of Western countries believes in democracy as ideal and standard. For these well-off, moderately influential persons, democracy serves to justify the fairness of their advantaged positions, it serves as a guarantee that they will not be too harshly judged for their greater success, and it is a comfortable set of rules under which politics can be played without the usual severe penalties for losers. Even among influential circles in less developed and affluent countries outside the West no one derogates the democratic ideal because to do so seems tantamount to admitting that international inequality is inevitable, and because so long as all profess democracy there is some chance of obtaining advantages and subventions from Western countries. Unquestionably, professing the democratic ideal has brought many advantages to the score or so Western countries that have attained a high level of socioeconomic development. Yet one of the major difficulties facing them today arises from their widespread tendency to mistake the democratic ideal for political reality. Ideal democracy, in the sense of equal influence for all, is never closely approached in Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 1 even the best established, most representative political systems of the West because it simply cannot be attained in complex societies. In most non-Western political systems, ideal democracy is not remotely approached. In them, professions of the democracy ideal do not conceal political practices that bear no resemblance to the deference to electoral outcomes and rules of procedural fairness that pass for democracy in the prosperous West. The democracy ideal gives rise to a palpably wrong factual conception of politics because it denies that politics arise out of real conflicts that cannot be reconciled by communication and consultation. It avoids the historically obvious fact that when they are successful political rulers impose their own conceptions of justice even though these are never fully convincing to most people they rule. Yet some degree of order, even if inevitably partial, is a necessity and by imposing their conceptions of justice, political elites create partial order. There is no conceivable way to establish justice for all except by making persons wholly equal in their possessions, social status, and lack of freedom. To even attempt or pretend to enforce such equality necessarily involves a bureaucratic tyranny, as in China or the former Soviet Union. As years go by, such a tyranny becomes desperately resented by sensitive and broadly educated people. Since true political equality can never be enforced in complex societies, every regime allows much inequality in practice. Given high material productivity and affluence in Western countries, the effects of elites’ inherently self-interested actions may be limited by invoking the democracy ideal. But without high productivity and affluence anything passing even roughly for democratic restraints on abuses of power is exceedingly difficult or impossible to attain. Unfortunately, much of the world lacks any foreseeable prospect of the productivity and affluence required to make the democracy ideal partly enforceable. In this situation how should social scientists, policymakers and others think about the democracy ideal so they can derive as much as professing it can accomplish politically and still be thinking and talking about politics in the real world? This question has prompted me to advance a model of elites and non-elites in politics (Higley 2021). My model contradicts the explicitly or implicitly democratic conceptions that have long dominated thinking about politics. It portrays the serious business of politics as never more than adjusting claims and conflicts of interest. Methods used are sometimes distributive, giving aggrieved groups some of what they desire, and sometimes repressive, using force or the threat of force to discourage such groups from consciously exerting their demands. Distributive or repressive operations are carried out by elites who are in no sense neutral and who seek advantages for themselves, their families, and their associates. Elites are not, however, free to take whatever actions and measures they like. They are dependent on the political orientations of non-elites and non-elite support for measures taken to govern a country. Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 2 Still, elites normally have enough leeway to buy off or repress potential conflicts. This alone enables a country to continue to exist. My model is not concerned with the politics of non-literate tribes, with thin settlements of literate peoples in resource-rich wildernesses, or even with states comprised of largely selfsufficient peasant populations spread over wide territories and dominated by leisured aristocracies. It places all such political entities, which are characterized by the absence of bureaucratic organization, in the socioeconomic category of undeveloped or severely under-developed. The model is concerned with the politics of countries with clear divisions of labor that are regulated and operated to a large extent through bureaucratic processes relating to defense, policing, tax-collecting, and the training and selection of various types of specialized personnel. It distinguishes the extent of bureaucratic processes in these countries, classifying those with limited bureaucratization as pre-industrial, those with moderate bureaucratization as industrial, and those with extensive bureaucratization as post-industrial. In all pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial countries there are elites consisting of persons whose activity in strategic bureaucratic positions assures their personal influence on decisions that affect the well-being of many other people. Governance in all such countries ultimately involves limiting or reducing the conscious sense of conflict among different parts of the population. This is so for the simple reason that increases in conscious conflicts of interest clearly make countries less and less easy to govern, and beyond some threshold they make a country’s continued existence impossible. As policy questions gradually become concrete and complex, the number of non-elite persons seriously concerned with policy outcomes diminishes, and the influence of public opinion on decisions becomes less authoritative. This is illustrated by the regularly lower participation rates of voters in normal citizen initiatives, referendums, and direct party primary elections compared with participation rates in elections where only broad and general partisan endorsements are solicited Elite actors propose, question, evade, modify, and sometimes clearly declare public policies that always contain arbitrary advantages for some people and disadvantages for others. This is true even when policies concern such common goals as national defense or ecological survival. They do this subject to possible non-elite vetoes and resistance, although in practice the non-elite limitation is usually vague and general. My model distinguishes four basic types of elite unity or disunity that can be shown to have existed during modern history and at present. It describes how each type of elites interrelates with variations in the political orientations of non-elites as countries move through the development process. The four basic elite types are: Disunified, in which members fear power plays by other members, distrust each other and regard attempts to seize government power by force as plausible, even probable, Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 3 eventualities; Ideological unified, in which a single and defined ideology is professed by all or nearly all members and the image of a homogeneous leadership group is assiduously fostered by those holding the uppermost power positions; Consensual unified, in which persons and groups with power take clearly divergent positions on matters of public discussion and oppose each other in limited political struggles widely understood to remove serious personal danger from political contests; Imperfectly unified, in which unity and trust exist mainly among conservative members and factions but do not extend to a large, conspicuously dissident faction or set of factions dissuaded by considerations of expediency or perhaps principle from making frontal assaults on governmental power. My model specifies origins of the four elite types. Disunified elites manifest the harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory politics experienced by nearly all countries historically and by most countries in the world today. Ideological unified elites originate in sweeping, albeit exceedingly rare, revolutions that usher in a dominant elite professing a single and defined ideology. Consensual unified elites originate in sudden and deliberate settlements of basic disputes between factions previously exhibiting deep disunity, in colonial opportunities to practice cautious and limited representative politics before and during struggles for national independence, or in gradual convergences toward shared norms of political behavior by the large and dissident factions in imperfectly unified elites. Imperfectly unified elites originate in the demonstrated ability of a relatively unified portion of elites to maintain a grip on government by winning electoral majorities repeatedly so that veto groups centered on military commanders cease to function as such and expectations of military interventions recede. My principal contention is that elite action and functioning are so basic in modern societies that the structure and behavior of elites constitute the most fundamental distinction between political systems. The extent to which elites do or do not trust and cooperate with each other is what normally determines political stability or instability. It is logically and factually prior to all constitutional and institutional arrangements and to the existence of any practical and durable degree of democratic politics. References Higley, John. 2021. Elites, Non-Elites, and Political Realism. Diminishing Futures for Western Societies. (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 4 

ACADEMIA Letters The Democracy Ideal and Elites John Higley, Professor Emeritus of Government and Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin As any avid reader of history should know, politics are usually harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory. Special interests normally get their way in power and until supplanted by better situated or shrewder forces. Ideals have little place. Lately in Western countries, however, things haven’t been so bad. With increased productivity and knowledge of the physical world, population majorities in them have been substantially disarmed by material affluence. Predacious and fierce political behavior has declined sufficiently so that political ideals have an influence on people’s lives. Despite pockets of poverty and discrimination, ideals are enforced to a significant extent. The standard that expresses and to some degree enforces ideals is “democracy.” Practically everyone in the more influential circles of Western countries believes in democracy as ideal and standard. For these well-off, moderately influential persons, democracy serves to justify the fairness of their advantaged positions, it serves as a guarantee that they will not be too harshly judged for their greater success, and it is a comfortable set of rules under which politics can be played without the usual severe penalties for losers. Even among influential circles in less developed and affluent countries outside the West no one derogates the democratic ideal because to do so seems tantamount to admitting that international inequality is inevitable, and because so long as all profess democracy there is some chance of obtaining advantages and subventions from Western countries. Unquestionably, professing the democratic ideal has brought many advantages to the score or so Western countries that have attained a high level of socioeconomic development. Yet one of the major difficulties facing them today arises from their widespread tendency to mistake the democratic ideal for political reality. Ideal democracy, in the sense of equal influence for all, is never closely approached in Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 1 even the best established, most representative political systems of the West because it simply cannot be attained in complex societies. In most non-Western political systems, ideal democracy is not remotely approached. In them, professions of the democracy ideal do not conceal political practices that bear no resemblance to the deference to electoral outcomes and rules of procedural fairness that pass for democracy in the prosperous West. The democracy ideal gives rise to a palpably wrong factual conception of politics because it denies that politics arise out of real conflicts that cannot be reconciled by communication and consultation. It avoids the historically obvious fact that when they are successful political rulers impose their own conceptions of justice even though these are never fully convincing to most people they rule. Yet some degree of order, even if inevitably partial, is a necessity and by imposing their conceptions of justice, political elites create partial order. There is no conceivable way to establish justice for all except by making persons wholly equal in their possessions, social status, and lack of freedom. To even attempt or pretend to enforce such equality necessarily involves a bureaucratic tyranny, as in China or the former Soviet Union. As years go by, such a tyranny becomes desperately resented by sensitive and broadly educated people. Since true political equality can never be enforced in complex societies, every regime allows much inequality in practice. Given high material productivity and affluence in Western countries, the effects of elites’ inherently self-interested actions may be limited by invoking the democracy ideal. But without high productivity and affluence anything passing even roughly for democratic restraints on abuses of power is exceedingly difficult or impossible to attain. Unfortunately, much of the world lacks any foreseeable prospect of the productivity and affluence required to make the democracy ideal partly enforceable. In this situation how should social scientists, policymakers and others think about the democracy ideal so they can derive as much as professing it can accomplish politically and still be thinking and talking about politics in the real world? This question has prompted me to advance a model of elites and non-elites in politics (Higley 2021). My model contradicts the explicitly or implicitly democratic conceptions that have long dominated thinking about politics. It portrays the serious business of politics as never more than adjusting claims and conflicts of interest. Methods used are sometimes distributive, giving aggrieved groups some of what they desire, and sometimes repressive, using force or the threat of force to discourage such groups from consciously exerting their demands. Distributive or repressive operations are carried out by elites who are in no sense neutral and who seek advantages for themselves, their families, and their associates. Elites are not, however, free to take whatever actions and measures they like. They are dependent on the political orientations of non-elites and non-elite support for measures taken to govern a country. Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 2 Still, elites normally have enough leeway to buy off or repress potential conflicts. This alone enables a country to continue to exist. My model is not concerned with the politics of non-literate tribes, with thin settlements of literate peoples in resource-rich wildernesses, or even with states comprised of largely selfsufficient peasant populations spread over wide territories and dominated by leisured aristocracies. It places all such political entities, which are characterized by the absence of bureaucratic organization, in the socioeconomic category of undeveloped or severely under-developed. The model is concerned with the politics of countries with clear divisions of labor that are regulated and operated to a large extent through bureaucratic processes relating to defense, policing, tax-collecting, and the training and selection of various types of specialized personnel. It distinguishes the extent of bureaucratic processes in these countries, classifying those with limited bureaucratization as pre-industrial, those with moderate bureaucratization as industrial, and those with extensive bureaucratization as post-industrial. In all pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial countries there are elites consisting of persons whose activity in strategic bureaucratic positions assures their personal influence on decisions that affect the well-being of many other people. Governance in all such countries ultimately involves limiting or reducing the conscious sense of conflict among different parts of the population. This is so for the simple reason that increases in conscious conflicts of interest clearly make countries less and less easy to govern, and beyond some threshold they make a country’s continued existence impossible. As policy questions gradually become concrete and complex, the number of non-elite persons seriously concerned with policy outcomes diminishes, and the influence of public opinion on decisions becomes less authoritative. This is illustrated by the regularly lower participation rates of voters in normal citizen initiatives, referendums, and direct party primary elections compared with participation rates in elections where only broad and general partisan endorsements are solicited Elite actors propose, question, evade, modify, and sometimes clearly declare public policies that always contain arbitrary advantages for some people and disadvantages for others. This is true even when policies concern such common goals as national defense or ecological survival. They do this subject to possible non-elite vetoes and resistance, although in practice the non-elite limitation is usually vague and general. My model distinguishes four basic types of elite unity or disunity that can be shown to have existed during modern history and at present. It describes how each type of elites interrelates with variations in the political orientations of non-elites as countries move through the development process. The four basic elite types are: Disunified, in which members fear power plays by other members, distrust each other and regard attempts to seize government power by force as plausible, even probable, Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 3 eventualities; Ideological unified, in which a single and defined ideology is professed by all or nearly all members and the image of a homogeneous leadership group is assiduously fostered by those holding the uppermost power positions; Consensual unified, in which persons and groups with power take clearly divergent positions on matters of public discussion and oppose each other in limited political struggles widely understood to remove serious personal danger from political contests; Imperfectly unified, in which unity and trust exist mainly among conservative members and factions but do not extend to a large, conspicuously dissident faction or set of factions dissuaded by considerations of expediency or perhaps principle from making frontal assaults on governmental power. My model specifies origins of the four elite types. Disunified elites manifest the harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory politics experienced by nearly all countries historically and by most countries in the world today. Ideological unified elites originate in sweeping, albeit exceedingly rare, revolutions that usher in a dominant elite professing a single and defined ideology. Consensual unified elites originate in sudden and deliberate settlements of basic disputes between factions previously exhibiting deep disunity, in colonial opportunities to practice cautious and limited representative politics before and during struggles for national independence, or in gradual convergences toward shared norms of political behavior by the large and dissident factions in imperfectly unified elites. Imperfectly unified elites originate in the demonstrated ability of a relatively unified portion of elites to maintain a grip on government by winning electoral majorities repeatedly so that veto groups centered on military commanders cease to function as such and expectations of military interventions recede. My principal contention is that elite action and functioning are so basic in modern societies that the structure and behavior of elites constitute the most fundamental distinction between political systems. The extent to which elites do or do not trust and cooperate with each other is what normally determines political stability or instability. It is logically and factually prior to all constitutional and institutional arrangements and to the existence of any practical and durable degree of democratic politics. References Higley, John. 2021. Elites, Non-Elites, and Political Realism. Diminishing Futures for Western Societies. (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 4 

ACADEMIA Letters The Democracy Ideal and Elites John Higley, Professor Emeritus of Government and Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin As any avid reader of history should know, politics are usually harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory. Special interests normally get their way in power and until supplanted by better situated or shrewder forces. Ideals have little place. Lately in Western countries, however, things haven’t been so bad. With increased productivity and knowledge of the physical world, population majorities in them have been substantially disarmed by material affluence. Predacious and fierce political behavior has declined sufficiently so that political ideals have an influence on people’s lives. Despite pockets of poverty and discrimination, ideals are enforced to a significant extent. The standard that expresses and to some degree enforces ideals is “democracy.” Practically everyone in the more influential circles of Western countries believes in democracy as ideal and standard. For these well-off, moderately influential persons, democracy serves to justify the fairness of their advantaged positions, it serves as a guarantee that they will not be too harshly judged for their greater success, and it is a comfortable set of rules under which politics can be played without the usual severe penalties for losers. Even among influential circles in less developed and affluent countries outside the West no one derogates the democratic ideal because to do so seems tantamount to admitting that international inequality is inevitable, and because so long as all profess democracy there is some chance of obtaining advantages and subventions from Western countries. Unquestionably, professing the democratic ideal has brought many advantages to the score or so Western countries that have attained a high level of socioeconomic development. Yet one of the major difficulties facing them today arises from their widespread tendency to mistake the democratic ideal for political reality. Ideal democracy, in the sense of equal influence for all, is never closely approached in Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 1 even the best established, most representative political systems of the West because it simply cannot be attained in complex societies. In most non-Western political systems, ideal democracy is not remotely approached. In them, professions of the democracy ideal do not conceal political practices that bear no resemblance to the deference to electoral outcomes and rules of procedural fairness that pass for democracy in the prosperous West. The democracy ideal gives rise to a palpably wrong factual conception of politics because it denies that politics arise out of real conflicts that cannot be reconciled by communication and consultation. It avoids the historically obvious fact that when they are successful political rulers impose their own conceptions of justice even though these are never fully convincing to most people they rule. Yet some degree of order, even if inevitably partial, is a necessity and by imposing their conceptions of justice, political elites create partial order. There is no conceivable way to establish justice for all except by making persons wholly equal in their possessions, social status, and lack of freedom. To even attempt or pretend to enforce such equality necessarily involves a bureaucratic tyranny, as in China or the former Soviet Union. As years go by, such a tyranny becomes desperately resented by sensitive and broadly educated people. Since true political equality can never be enforced in complex societies, every regime allows much inequality in practice. Given high material productivity and affluence in Western countries, the effects of elites’ inherently self-interested actions may be limited by invoking the democracy ideal. But without high productivity and affluence anything passing even roughly for democratic restraints on abuses of power is exceedingly difficult or impossible to attain. Unfortunately, much of the world lacks any foreseeable prospect of the productivity and affluence required to make the democracy ideal partly enforceable. In this situation how should social scientists, policymakers and others think about the democracy ideal so they can derive as much as professing it can accomplish politically and still be thinking and talking about politics in the real world? This question has prompted me to advance a model of elites and non-elites in politics (Higley 2021). My model contradicts the explicitly or implicitly democratic conceptions that have long dominated thinking about politics. It portrays the serious business of politics as never more than adjusting claims and conflicts of interest. Methods used are sometimes distributive, giving aggrieved groups some of what they desire, and sometimes repressive, using force or the threat of force to discourage such groups from consciously exerting their demands. Distributive or repressive operations are carried out by elites who are in no sense neutral and who seek advantages for themselves, their families, and their associates. Elites are not, however, free to take whatever actions and measures they like. They are dependent on the political orientations of non-elites and non-elite support for measures taken to govern a country. Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 2 Still, elites normally have enough leeway to buy off or repress potential conflicts. This alone enables a country to continue to exist. My model is not concerned with the politics of non-literate tribes, with thin settlements of literate peoples in resource-rich wildernesses, or even with states comprised of largely selfsufficient peasant populations spread over wide territories and dominated by leisured aristocracies. It places all such political entities, which are characterized by the absence of bureaucratic organization, in the socioeconomic category of undeveloped or severely under-developed. The model is concerned with the politics of countries with clear divisions of labor that are regulated and operated to a large extent through bureaucratic processes relating to defense, policing, tax-collecting, and the training and selection of various types of specialized personnel. It distinguishes the extent of bureaucratic processes in these countries, classifying those with limited bureaucratization as pre-industrial, those with moderate bureaucratization as industrial, and those with extensive bureaucratization as post-industrial. In all pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial countries there are elites consisting of persons whose activity in strategic bureaucratic positions assures their personal influence on decisions that affect the well-being of many other people. Governance in all such countries ultimately involves limiting or reducing the conscious sense of conflict among different parts of the population. This is so for the simple reason that increases in conscious conflicts of interest clearly make countries less and less easy to govern, and beyond some threshold they make a country’s continued existence impossible. As policy questions gradually become concrete and complex, the number of non-elite persons seriously concerned with policy outcomes diminishes, and the influence of public opinion on decisions becomes less authoritative. This is illustrated by the regularly lower participation rates of voters in normal citizen initiatives, referendums, and direct party primary elections compared with participation rates in elections where only broad and general partisan endorsements are solicited Elite actors propose, question, evade, modify, and sometimes clearly declare public policies that always contain arbitrary advantages for some people and disadvantages for others. This is true even when policies concern such common goals as national defense or ecological survival. They do this subject to possible non-elite vetoes and resistance, although in practice the non-elite limitation is usually vague and general. My model distinguishes four basic types of elite unity or disunity that can be shown to have existed during modern history and at present. It describes how each type of elites interrelates with variations in the political orientations of non-elites as countries move through the development process. The four basic elite types are: Disunified, in which members fear power plays by other members, distrust each other and regard attempts to seize government power by force as plausible, even probable, Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 3 eventualities; Ideological unified, in which a single and defined ideology is professed by all or nearly all members and the image of a homogeneous leadership group is assiduously fostered by those holding the uppermost power positions; Consensual unified, in which persons and groups with power take clearly divergent positions on matters of public discussion and oppose each other in limited political struggles widely understood to remove serious personal danger from political contests; Imperfectly unified, in which unity and trust exist mainly among conservative members and factions but do not extend to a large, conspicuously dissident faction or set of factions dissuaded by considerations of expediency or perhaps principle from making frontal assaults on governmental power. My model specifies origins of the four elite types. Disunified elites manifest the harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory politics experienced by nearly all countries historically and by most countries in the world today. Ideological unified elites originate in sweeping, albeit exceedingly rare, revolutions that usher in a dominant elite professing a single and defined ideology. Consensual unified elites originate in sudden and deliberate settlements of basic disputes between factions previously exhibiting deep disunity, in colonial opportunities to practice cautious and limited representative politics before and during struggles for national independence, or in gradual convergences toward shared norms of political behavior by the large and dissident factions in imperfectly unified elites. Imperfectly unified elites originate in the demonstrated ability of a relatively unified portion of elites to maintain a grip on government by winning electoral majorities repeatedly so that veto groups centered on military commanders cease to function as such and expectations of military interventions recede. My principal contention is that elite action and functioning are so basic in modern societies that the structure and behavior of elites constitute the most fundamental distinction between political systems. The extent to which elites do or do not trust and cooperate with each other is what normally determines political stability or instability. It is logically and factually prior to all constitutional and institutional arrangements and to the existence of any practical and durable degree of democratic politics. References Higley, John. 2021. Elites, Non-Elites, and Political Realism. Diminishing Futures for Western Societies. (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 4 

ACADEMIA Letters The Democracy Ideal and Elites John Higley, Professor Emeritus of Government and Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin As any avid reader of history should know, politics are usually harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory. Special interests normally get their way in power and until supplanted by better situated or shrewder forces. Ideals have little place. Lately in Western countries, however, things haven’t been so bad. With increased productivity and knowledge of the physical world, population majorities in them have been substantially disarmed by material affluence. Predacious and fierce political behavior has declined sufficiently so that political ideals have an influence on people’s lives. Despite pockets of poverty and discrimination, ideals are enforced to a significant extent. The standard that expresses and to some degree enforces ideals is “democracy.” Practically everyone in the more influential circles of Western countries believes in democracy as ideal and standard. For these well-off, moderately influential persons, democracy serves to justify the fairness of their advantaged positions, it serves as a guarantee that they will not be too harshly judged for their greater success, and it is a comfortable set of rules under which politics can be played without the usual severe penalties for losers. Even among influential circles in less developed and affluent countries outside the West no one derogates the democratic ideal because to do so seems tantamount to admitting that international inequality is inevitable, and because so long as all profess democracy there is some chance of obtaining advantages and subventions from Western countries. Unquestionably, professing the democratic ideal has brought many advantages to the score or so Western countries that have attained a high level of socioeconomic development. Yet one of the major difficulties facing them today arises from their widespread tendency to mistake the democratic ideal for political reality. Ideal democracy, in the sense of equal influence for all, is never closely approached in Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 1 even the best established, most representative political systems of the West because it simply cannot be attained in complex societies. In most non-Western political systems, ideal democracy is not remotely approached. In them, professions of the democracy ideal do not conceal political practices that bear no resemblance to the deference to electoral outcomes and rules of procedural fairness that pass for democracy in the prosperous West. The democracy ideal gives rise to a palpably wrong factual conception of politics because it denies that politics arise out of real conflicts that cannot be reconciled by communication and consultation. It avoids the historically obvious fact that when they are successful political rulers impose their own conceptions of justice even though these are never fully convincing to most people they rule. Yet some degree of order, even if inevitably partial, is a necessity and by imposing their conceptions of justice, political elites create partial order. There is no conceivable way to establish justice for all except by making persons wholly equal in their possessions, social status, and lack of freedom. To even attempt or pretend to enforce such equality necessarily involves a bureaucratic tyranny, as in China or the former Soviet Union. As years go by, such a tyranny becomes desperately resented by sensitive and broadly educated people. Since true political equality can never be enforced in complex societies, every regime allows much inequality in practice. Given high material productivity and affluence in Western countries, the effects of elites’ inherently self-interested actions may be limited by invoking the democracy ideal. But without high productivity and affluence anything passing even roughly for democratic restraints on abuses of power is exceedingly difficult or impossible to attain. Unfortunately, much of the world lacks any foreseeable prospect of the productivity and affluence required to make the democracy ideal partly enforceable. In this situation how should social scientists, policymakers and others think about the democracy ideal so they can derive as much as professing it can accomplish politically and still be thinking and talking about politics in the real world? This question has prompted me to advance a model of elites and non-elites in politics (Higley 2021). My model contradicts the explicitly or implicitly democratic conceptions that have long dominated thinking about politics. It portrays the serious business of politics as never more than adjusting claims and conflicts of interest. Methods used are sometimes distributive, giving aggrieved groups some of what they desire, and sometimes repressive, using force or the threat of force to discourage such groups from consciously exerting their demands. Distributive or repressive operations are carried out by elites who are in no sense neutral and who seek advantages for themselves, their families, and their associates. Elites are not, however, free to take whatever actions and measures they like. They are dependent on the political orientations of non-elites and non-elite support for measures taken to govern a country. Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 2 Still, elites normally have enough leeway to buy off or repress potential conflicts. This alone enables a country to continue to exist. My model is not concerned with the politics of non-literate tribes, with thin settlements of literate peoples in resource-rich wildernesses, or even with states comprised of largely selfsufficient peasant populations spread over wide territories and dominated by leisured aristocracies. It places all such political entities, which are characterized by the absence of bureaucratic organization, in the socioeconomic category of undeveloped or severely under-developed. The model is concerned with the politics of countries with clear divisions of labor that are regulated and operated to a large extent through bureaucratic processes relating to defense, policing, tax-collecting, and the training and selection of various types of specialized personnel. It distinguishes the extent of bureaucratic processes in these countries, classifying those with limited bureaucratization as pre-industrial, those with moderate bureaucratization as industrial, and those with extensive bureaucratization as post-industrial. In all pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial countries there are elites consisting of persons whose activity in strategic bureaucratic positions assures their personal influence on decisions that affect the well-being of many other people. Governance in all such countries ultimately involves limiting or reducing the conscious sense of conflict among different parts of the population. This is so for the simple reason that increases in conscious conflicts of interest clearly make countries less and less easy to govern, and beyond some threshold they make a country’s continued existence impossible. As policy questions gradually become concrete and complex, the number of non-elite persons seriously concerned with policy outcomes diminishes, and the influence of public opinion on decisions becomes less authoritative. This is illustrated by the regularly lower participation rates of voters in normal citizen initiatives, referendums, and direct party primary elections compared with participation rates in elections where only broad and general partisan endorsements are solicited Elite actors propose, question, evade, modify, and sometimes clearly declare public policies that always contain arbitrary advantages for some people and disadvantages for others. This is true even when policies concern such common goals as national defense or ecological survival. They do this subject to possible non-elite vetoes and resistance, although in practice the non-elite limitation is usually vague and general. My model distinguishes four basic types of elite unity or disunity that can be shown to have existed during modern history and at present. It describes how each type of elites interrelates with variations in the political orientations of non-elites as countries move through the development process. The four basic elite types are: Disunified, in which members fear power plays by other members, distrust each other and regard attempts to seize government power by force as plausible, even probable, Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 3 eventualities; Ideological unified, in which a single and defined ideology is professed by all or nearly all members and the image of a homogeneous leadership group is assiduously fostered by those holding the uppermost power positions; Consensual unified, in which persons and groups with power take clearly divergent positions on matters of public discussion and oppose each other in limited political struggles widely understood to remove serious personal danger from political contests; Imperfectly unified, in which unity and trust exist mainly among conservative members and factions but do not extend to a large, conspicuously dissident faction or set of factions dissuaded by considerations of expediency or perhaps principle from making frontal assaults on governmental power. My model specifies origins of the four elite types. Disunified elites manifest the harsh, conflict-ridden, and predatory politics experienced by nearly all countries historically and by most countries in the world today. Ideological unified elites originate in sweeping, albeit exceedingly rare, revolutions that usher in a dominant elite professing a single and defined ideology. Consensual unified elites originate in sudden and deliberate settlements of basic disputes between factions previously exhibiting deep disunity, in colonial opportunities to practice cautious and limited representative politics before and during struggles for national independence, or in gradual convergences toward shared norms of political behavior by the large and dissident factions in imperfectly unified elites. Imperfectly unified elites originate in the demonstrated ability of a relatively unified portion of elites to maintain a grip on government by winning electoral majorities repeatedly so that veto groups centered on military commanders cease to function as such and expectations of military interventions recede. My principal contention is that elite action and functioning are so basic in modern societies that the structure and behavior of elites constitute the most fundamental distinction between political systems. The extent to which elites do or do not trust and cooperate with each other is what normally determines political stability or instability. It is logically and factually prior to all constitutional and institutional arrangements and to the existence of any practical and durable degree of democratic politics. References Higley, John. 2021. Elites, Non-Elites, and Political Realism. Diminishing Futures for Western Societies. (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: John Higley, jhigley@austin.utexas.edu Citation: Higley, J. (2022). The Democracy Ideal and Elites. Academia Letters, Article 4637. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4637. 4