Where does power lie in contemporary liberal democracies?
             In the industrialized "North," one type of government is predominant, that of the liberal democracy. But what is a liberal democracy? Perhaps the most famous description is that of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in which he described it as "government of the People, by the people.... and for the people." However, as equalitarian and noble as this expression of democracies seems, it is accepted that in many of the world's liberal democracies that a certain inequality of power exists. By power we mean one person having influence over another. A good description of power is that of Max Weber, power is "the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance regardless of the basis on which the probability arrives." So, who are the people who are exercising power over the rest of us and how are they doing it?
             It is clear that in even the most socially advanced and democratic of countries inequality exists. There are always rich and poor, the educated and the less educated, the powerful and the powerless. There are elites, in other words. This point is not disputed, in fact it is readily accepted, where the problems exist in knowing with whom the power actually lies and why. There are three main theories on power in liberal democracies: the elite theorists, who believe that power is split between those that wield the power and those that do not; the Marxists, who view that the political and economic structures as the main tools of power and that whomever so controls these has the power; and finally the pluralists, who believe that power lies among various elites each of which dominate in a specific area. We will look at each of these theories in turn.
             The Elites theorists hold that all power is held by a small, wealthy and select group of people of soci...