In political science, András Körösényi and his associates have taken the bold step of defending leader democracy not only on the grounds of its greater realism compared to classical models of democracy, but also emphasizing its normative elements (Pakulski and Körösényi 2012). ![]() Despite most elite theorists’ own claims to the contrary, Green submits that competitive elitism is not merely a realist account of how modern mass democracies work, but is also a normative theory of democracy, whose moral dimension and progressive potential he seeks to unfold. Green’s The Eyes of the People develops an ocular-as opposed to vocal-model of democracy, based on the ideal of candour, which seeks to spell out ‘the great unelaborated ethical commitment of plebiscitary democracy’ (Green 2010a: 130). Such a state of affairs, marked by a rigid division of labour-and lack of any fruitful dialogue-between empirical political science and normative political theory, has been challenged by recent developments in both fields. Indeed, political theorists and historians of political thought from diverse backgrounds have frequently raised concerns regarding the problematic origins and connotations of competitive elitism as amodel of democracy, and their enduring, often unacknowledged influence on empirical research (Nye 1977, Held 2006: ch. On the other hand, however, the normative implications of the elitist perspective have been relentlessly criticized by democratic theorists. The fact that the sub-discipline of elite studies can claim a very direct link with some of the modern classics of social science, such as Vilfredo Pareto and Max Weber, has thus given it an enduring position of prestige within mainstream empirical political science. ![]() On the one hand, the sociological study of political elites and ruling groups stretches back to the founding generations of modern social science in the late nineteenth century. Elite theory occupies a rather ambivalent position in political studies.
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