Where does power lie in contem
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 a
" It is now accepted that some groups will have more resources than others and hence exercise more power. This is not unusual, when President Clinton came to office, ten of the thirteen members of his cabinet were reputed to be millionaires and most returned to the corporate world after his term in office. 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. society: the economy, government, and the military. Further that in ruling, the middle classes due everything they can to entrench their position. They argue that the distribution of wealth in capitalist societies has been and still is grossly uneven despite claims of "progressive" taxation and the "benefits" of the welfare state. Even though these individuals constitute a close-knit group, they are not part of a conspiracy that secretly manipulates events in their own selfish interest. As Britain clearly shows the elites are quite ready to accept new blood. Mills claimed that a power elite controlled three major sectors of U. If this were not so, the working class would hold positions of power due to the representative qualities of democracy, since the working class will be the majority grouping. This imbalance of power could lead to "hyper-pluralism" which means that once interest groups can get too powerful and then democracy and government are threatened. For the most part, the elite respects civil rights and freedoms, follows established laws, and operates openly and peacefully. The Marxists concentrate their power discussion processes that allow one to govern and in whose interests the governing is done. The Marxists therefore, suggest that as long as the bourgeois hold on the structures of society remains firm, working class access to power will always be restricted.
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Acceptance Essays
