Whenever a new US president is sworn in, media pundits and court historians gush about the supposed “peaceful transfer of power” that is taking place. This has become a key tenet of the mythology and ideology surrounding democracy—that governing elites willfully abandon their control over the machinery of the state in response to election outcomes.
Indeed, this narrative about democracy is absolutely foundational to the perceived legitimacy of democracy. The contention that elections lead to a “peaceful transfer of power” reinforces the idea that the governing elites are determined by elections, and therefore by the “will of the people.” If “we the people” vote for a new group of rulers, then the old leaders will step aside a new group will take over.
At least, that’s how the story goes.
The first problem with this myth is that there is no “will of the people.” This is a fantasy that not even mainstream political scientists believe. The notion of the “general will“ is simply a doctrine of a civic religion that is employed to claim that elections grant government officials a “mandate” to rule.
[Read More: “No Matter How You Vote, Politicians Don’t Represent You“]
The absurdities of political “representation” and “the will of the people” are problematic, for sure, but in this column I want to address the central claim of the myth of the “peaceful transfer of power.” Namely, that power is meaningfully transferred from one group of governing elites to another.
It is indeed true that in the United States elected members of two major political parties rotate in and out of government offices. These elected officials, however, are only the public face of the actual governing elite which very much retains power before and after the ostensible “transfer” of power from one group of elected officials to another.
Signs of this reality can be found in how policies change very little in spite of alleged “transfers” of power. Yes, some less-significant policy areas experience changes as the regime-sanctioned political parties circulate. These include “culture war” policies such as abortion and DEI jobs at universities. But policy areas that significantly augment the ruling elite’s financial power—most notably foreign policy, central banking, and major welfare-state programs such as Medicare—are largely untouchable by the elected government.
Moreover, access to positions of elected office are controlled. Specifically, only certain political parties are allowed to actually compete for elected positions of importance. Access to positions of power within the parties themselves, with only a handful of exceptions, are restricted to candidates acceptable to the governing elite.
Politics Isn’t a Friendly Game, and Power Is Not Surrendered Easily
Americans tend to have a relatively cheerful view of the political system. Some would call it naïve. Many Americans even believe—if they have opinions about it all—that ruling elites are motivated by noble desires such as helping the poor, keeping people safe, or otherwise doing good works. If one believes this, it is much easier to believe that governing elites will willingly and peacefully give up their positions of power if they lose an election.
This strains the bounds of plausibility when we consider the true nature of the process of obtaining and wielding political power. For insights into this, we have to look beyond the Anglosphere and its rather optimistic and innocent view of political institutions. For a darker and more realistic—and more accurate—view, we can look to the Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto understood that ruling elites within a democratic regime oversee a complex system of patrons and clients who assist each other in benefiting from what Frédéric Bastiat called legal plunder.
This process of exploiting the masses for the benefit of the ruling elite (and its clients) exists in every modern state, but the process does not work the same way in a democracy as in a dictatorship or absolute monarchy. In Pareto’s view, the ruling elite in a democracy is relatively large and must manage a large and diverse network of clients which are bought off and otherwise “encouraged” to support the elite.
Because of the size and complexity of the elite class, it is unwieldy. Unlike the Marxists, Pareto does not point to any single industry or economic class as representative of the ruling elites. He certainly does not believe any single individual is a key decisionmaker. Rather, the governing class can include both the class of entrepreneurs and industrialists alongside labor groups and government employees. The challenge for the ruling elite lies in establishing a position of patronage in relation to each group in such a way as to create a “symbiosis” among all groups so they they all accept the ruling elite as ultimately beneficial. Consequently, the system of ruling elites is characterized by Pareto biographer S.E. Finer as:
a “connexion” of centers of influence and patronage; and in the modern state, these are increasingly based on economic interest. These various power centers are forever quarrelling and competing with one another but nevertheless have sufficient cohesion to warrant calling them a “class.” How does this come about? Emphatically not by conspiracy. 1
That is, the ruling elite does not function as a conspiratorial party with a specific and directed singular goal. According to Pareto, because of its size and complexity, it would be a mistake for observers to assume that the ruling elite “has a single will, implementing preconceived plans by logical procedures.” It is not a “concrete unit.”2 Nonetheless, cohesion is achieved due to economic self-interest, as Finer puts it:
Such cohesion as it possesses comes about in three ways. In the first place, all the principals, i.e., the heads of each cluster of influence and patronage, live to some extent by taking in each others’ washing. Next, insofar as they are all actuated by economic self interest they naturally tend to act in a common direction ...Finally they are made the more coherent by their “inner government”—a political party or a cabinet which controls the public authorities.”3
The maintenance of this system—and thus the maintenance of the ruling elite’s power—depends on constant efforts to manage and manipulate clients with both cunning and largesse. In a democratic system, the use of violence is generally avoided (but not off limits) as violence signals a breakdown of the managerial skills of the elite.
The complexity of this system—which Pareto called “pluto-democracy”—illustrates how implausible it is to think that the ruling class will simply give up power if it loses an election. The amount of time, effort, ingenuity, and resources that goes into sustaining the power of the governing elite will not be willfully thrown aside. After all, the stakes are incredibly high, as the governing elite’s powers are critical to augmenting the power, wealth, honors, and prestige of its members (and their families). It would be absurd to contemplate handing these privileges over to a competing counter elite every few years because of the outcome of an election.
This helps explain why there are so rarely any substantial changes to the core government institutions that function at the core of the patronage system. Defense spending, foreign interventions, too-big-to-fail, Medicare policies, and welfare spending are all central to continuing the patron-client relationships and buttressing the ruling elite’s access to resources while neutralizing political opposition.
Two Types of Political Parties: Pro-Regime vs. Revolutionary
Consequently, party politics within modern democracies is allowed to play out only to the extent that the parties function within the superstructure established by the governing elite. This means parties participate in supposedly “competitive” elections, but it also means that only select political parties are allowed to participate.
Thus, Pareto classifies political parties this way:
In our western political systems, parties are divisible into two broad classes: 1. parties which alternate with one another in government; 2. intransigent, uncompromising parties which do not get into government. ... the parties which do not get into government are often more honest, but also more fanatical and sectarian, than parties which do exercise power.4
Pareto concludes that the moderate and compromising parties that rotate in and out of government are “part of the governing elite.” On the other hand, those parties that are “uncompromising” and “fanatical” are not permitted to be part of the governing elite since they “wished to wreck and overturn the system.” It was only these latter parties, Finer notes, that were counted by Pareto as “a genuine counterelite.” For this reason, “It is absurd to equate [Pareto’s] elites and counter elites with the struggles of Labour and Conservaive, or Republican and Democrat. Both are parts of their respective governing classes.”5
To ensure that the governing parties cannot threaten the networks of the governing elite, access to the parties and to positions of leadership within the parties are controlled. For insights into this, we can consult another Italian, Gaetano Mosca who notes that voters only are permitted to choose their “representatives” from a menu presented to them by the political parties. There are numerous safeguards put in place by these parties to ensure that the parties cannot be used as a tool of any true counterelite. Thus, for Mosca and for Pareto, the elite-approved political parties are imposing a pre-determined outcome, within a range of acceptable options, and Mosca writes: “When we say that the voters “choose” their representative, we are using a language that is very inexact. The truth is that the representative has himself elected by the voters.”6
Even if Mosca is overstating the case here, and a candidate is not fully able to impose his election on the voters through partisan antics (or through propaganda), it is nonetheless undeniable that the parties can nearly always decide who the voters will not vote for. Those candidates unacceptable to the elite will not be able to get past the partisan gatekeepers.
Yes, there will be some exceptions, such as Ron Paul or Thomas Massie, who do appear to be among those who might be described as “uncompromising.” But, a small number of these candidates, with no hope of forming a governing majority or attaining the highest offices, can be tolerated.
What matters is that the “fanatical” political parties will not be permitted to circulate as governing parties, and the acceptable parties will cooperate with the ruling elite by ensuring that the governing parties remain safe, cooperative, and of no threat to the elite.
Moreover, if any of the governing parties were to threaten the established system of patronage, they would cease to be regarded as “acceptable” parties and would join the “fanatical” parties among the locked-out coalitions. This helps illustrate why it is always a false hope to think that either the Republican or Democratic party will ever threaten the current status quo of the ruling elite. The fact that they alternate as part of the governing elite is proof enough that they are no threat to the governing elites.
Considering all this, the idea that political power is actually transferred freely and peacefully between groups of counter-elites ought to be thoroughly dismissed. The benefits of membership in the governing elite is too valuable to be risked in any truly open elections. This would not be tolerable to either the elites themselves, or by the political clients who see the perpetuation of the system as in their own economic self-interest.
- 1
S.E. Finer, “Pareto and Pluto-Democracy: The Retreat to Galapagos,” The American Political Science Review 62, No. 2 (Jun. 1968):447.
- 2
Vilfredo Pareto, Sociological Writings, S.E. Finer, ed. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1966)p. 269.
- 3
Finer, “Pluto-Democracy,” p. 447.
- 4
Pareto, Sociological Writings, p. 271.
- 5
Finer, “Pluto-Democracy,” p. 447.
- 6
Gaetano Mosca, “The Ruling Class in a Representative Democracy,” in Classes and Elites in Democracy and Democratization, Eva Etzioni-Halevy, ed. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997)p. 55.
