A question that gets insufficient consideration in politics is the question of how. How does political change, large and small, happen? And how can we, as advocates and activists, effect change? This question could be considered the question of political theory and answering it requires answers to other fundamental questions of political theory: What is the State? What forms the State? How do we define different regime types (i.e. democracy, authoritarianism and all the shades of gray in between) and how do they differ in functioning? Who or what components of the state are fundamental?
In short, here is how political change occurs: when the elite composition changes, either by belief or constitution, then institutions and policies change.
Elites, however, are a shadowy and often deliberately misused term. Elites can be defined simply as powerful individuals but the source of their power is not always obvious. Still, “elites” can be rescued from the opacity and demagoguery.
In my view, political elites can differ in form from economic elites. Economic elites, because of the nature of capitalist economic structures, are individuals who represent themselves alone. Political elites usually include some economic elites with sufficient ability to translate their economic power to political power through carrots and sticks.
Political elites can be defined as an embodiment of power. Political elites in all states include individuals whose power is granted to them by their association with or leadership of powerful social groups. These can be tribes, clans, industries, religions, or other categories of organized people. In a representative democracy, elected officials are one form of elite but so are interest group leaders, religious leaders, union leaders, and so on. In an authoritarian regime, like Saudi Arabia, different members of the royal family and the Islamic clerics share
Still, power of any kind does not make an elite. Rather, an elite’s relative and legitimate power is what matters. An elite must have sufficient power to be a player and the power must be in the form that is seen as normatively valid for it to be effectively wielded.
The state’s initial formation depends upon a group or groups having the capacity for a monopoly on violence in a territory. This can occur through pacts between different groups with violent capacity, as political settlements theory argues, and/or through the Darwinian competition of proto-states which demands the development of a strong army supported by a sufficient taxation system, as influential sociologist Charles Tilley argues. Probably through some combination of these methods, a state is established. According to Max Weber, the state is an entity with the monopoly of legitimate force in a territory. These processes of state formation usually lead to an initial elite composition of military leaders, typically monarchs and nobility, who rule by power of force.
Democracy emerged in its earliest days through the unconscious formation of the burgher or bourgeois class. New technologies, including financial technology, helped make this class more powerful and military leaders recognized them as valuable taxation sources for paying their armies and efficiently providing services to their armies such as food and munitions. This relationship led to the burghers beginning to demand more political rights after individual rights in contracts were honored. Eventually, the burgher demands became so great that the only possible resolution was a change in regime, the fundamental form and rules which limit the state’s form.
Through the story of the ancient state through early transitions to democracy we see two primary forms of power - violence and wealth or coercive and economic power. At these stages, wealth was powerful because of the need for it to support violent capacity - through taxation and efficient supply of the army. Democratic transitions and democratic deepening frequently rely on powerful social groups with economic power supporting a transition even when they have benefited from the status quo e.g. the UGTT labor union in Tunisia, the growing Anatolian middle class in Turkey.
In addition, international forces can be key players in determining the shape of a regime and upholding status quo elite compositions. Saudi Arabia’s dictatorship, for example, is upheld not just by their repressive state but by the foreign powers (the United States being chief among them) which buy their oil and provide them with weapons (i.e. the capacity for great repression within an authoritarian society). Likewise, the United States could not have broken off from Great Britain and established its political regime free from British special interests without France’s financial and military support.
Later, under representative democracy and semi-democratic regimes, wealth is a primary and at times inherent form of power, often bestowing prestige and serving as a normative, if not legal, prerequisite to electoral qualification. Moreover, wealth facilitates the organization of and support of collectives whose numbers are essential for legitimate rule. Wealth is key to the formation and maintenance of complex patronage networks, vote-buying, and judicial and regulatory exploitation. In developing democracies, these patronage systems are not necessarily antidemocratic as they do serve a representative role and distribute resources according to political success.
In a consolidated democracy, one in which the military is firmly under civilian control and institutionally kept out of politics, collective power, the power of large numbers of organized people, becomes the most, or even only, legitimate for the formation of elites. Under a consolidated democracy, collective power becomes so significant that wealthy and capitalist interests often rely on guising their interests in creating and funding sockpuppet “citizens groups”f. This does not mean, of course, that the collective power is where the power of capitalists comes from.
However, collective power can elevate new elites. The relevance of collective power for legitimacy in a democratic system opens the door for popular social movements outside the elite composition to assert a position in the elite composition. However, the rise of popular movements does not necessarily mean they will acquire sufficient relative power, i.e. sufficient relevant power to challenge the dominance of the existing elite composition.
The rise of new or existing social groups that rely principally on collective power and legitimacy, though made possible by a democratic system, is obstructed by the existing structures enacted by the established elites. Despite a folk wisdom view of elections, the playing field in a representative democracy is not even because of representative democracy’s origins.
When a country first transitions to democracy, it is most often not through “revolution” but through a bargain struck by members of the old regime and opposition forces. This opposition has to be powerful enough to bargain in the first place and in an authoritarian country that usually means being indispensable to the economy. Even where “revolution” occurs, such as in colonial wars of independence, and a state can be built with minimal influence from ancien régime elites, the regime’s form will be determined by elite negotiation. Though in an ideal form this bargaining would include elites which represent all social groups, in reality only some social groups and powerful individuals are represented, this is never the case.
The institutions put in place by the elites at the birth of representative democracy will seek to ensure their continued power by protecting the sources of their power. They do this by narrowing the avenues available to potential challengers outside of the elite consensus. This is why, in the U.S., fusion voting was all but destroyed after the People’s Party challenged Democratic and Republican party power in the late 19th century and third parties have subsequently been given great roadblocks through laws which are “generally” enforced but due to the realities of who needs to exert great effort to get a party on the ballot line, effectively target third parties.
Still, as this very example demonstrates, even democratic systems which are designed to make it difficult to challenge the elite consensus cannot fully prevent challengers. This is because while institutions can create roadblocks for challengers and use the law (i.e. the legitimate force of the state) to heavily disincentivize opposition, the means of power which are recognized as legitimate and necessary to maintain the bargain between the status quo elites cannot be made illegal. Any anti-system opposition can use the same means the establishment elites use to win and legitimize their power - namely collective and economic power.
By their very nature, regime opposition on the Left do not have significant economic power. Collectively, they may have some especially when they are the product of a strong middle class. In most cases, however, the Left must rely on collective power while Right-wing anti-system movements can rely on certain economic elites to back their movement.
For a popular movement seeking changes in the fundamental structure of the regime to succeed, it must become powerful enough to become a part of the elite composition or change the interests of the status quo elite.
Such a mass movement cannot emerge from thin air - it must build alternative social structures - clubs, media, schools, mutual aid, etc. Social structure is a key element for those intending to utilize collective power in a democracy. Faith organizations, associations, and unions have been identified by such luminaries as Alexis de Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, and Robert Putnam as sources of moral character and civility in modern democratic societies. It is likewise no coincidence that many movements for social justice have been the result of the work of religious groups, unions, or other collective associations.
Organizations allow for cultivation of character and connect individuals to one another. They also tutor their members in organization, civic discussion, and democratic behavior and can serve as the bases of a larger mass movement. Such was the character of the Civil Rights Movement. The Grange halls were essential to the formation Populist party. On the flip side, civil society organizations in atomized Weimar Germany have been seen as key organizations for the creation of the Nazi party.
For such a movement to be truly successful, it must follow the example of past elite bargains and cement a place for the social groups it represents in the regime to sustain its power. Rebuilding a mass movement is too great an undertaking to require it each time these social groups need representation. Moreover, without a secure position in the elite composition via institutional change, the policy changes put in place will likely be undermined or abolished. Sadly, the labor movement’s great wins like the minimum wage and overtime pay were eroded by subsequent laws and one of the Civil Rights Movement’s landmark laws, the Voting Rights Act, had a key element struck down by a conservative judiciary.
The path to political change starts with building social structures that can form the basis of new social groups dedicated to change. For the types of changes that I believe are necessary, changes to the form of the democratic regime itself, these social groups must be very difficult to coopt by the existing elite consensus.
Looking at the examples of New Zealand’s transition to proportional representation from a First-past-the-post system and the Populist party’s success in establishing voter referendums and direct election of Senators, third party movements are key. However, such third parties cannot be based on vanity presidential elections but on deep social structures connecting people together and organizing them around fundamental institutional reforms such as national referendums, citizens assemblies, expanding the size of the legislature, and proportional representation. With such a base built around these goals, they can have sufficient power to resist cooptation and demand the changes that will ensure continued elite status for these kinds of pro-democratic proposals.
Such a mass movement for democracy is difficult to form, to say the least. Yet, the importance of social structure, existing elite interests, and building opposition to elite consensus have been underanalyzed in arguments about how to make societies more democratic. With these additional means of analysis, democratic activists can orient themselves properly to the long and hard path to lasting democratic change.