In the managerial view of democracy, state elites must manage political demands from below. Military and police control is the ultimate foundation of elite domination over potentially unruly populations. Democracy – if defined as an instrument of popular participation – is sometimes a fiction, a legitimation of elite control, sometimes a recipe for political disorder. An organized and limited elite competition, seeking mass support not out of solidary values but from more mundane motives of career and power, is the best approximation of democracy that can be hoped for in industrial societies. Even so, the democratic institutions of legislatures, parties, and elections are increasingly impotent in the face of powerful elite alliances.

The managerial view of democracy

The classic statement on democracy is that by the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1943). For Schumpeter, democracy is not a process of popular participation and representation; rather, it is an institutional method for selecting leaders. It is not an outcome (representation of popular will) but a structure (elite competition). Competition between elites offering themselves for electoral choice is the only realistic kind of democracy possible for large-scale industrialized societies, whether capitalist or socialist. Democracy is a property of any unit – organization, community, society — in which elites compete for office.

Schumpeter, unlike some pluralists, does not see socialism as incompatible with democracy, partly because he defines socialism as a takeover of the giant business corporations by the state, as does Raymond Aron (see Chapter 10).