ABSTRACT
The philosophical school of English pluralists arose mainly out of a reaction to the elevation of the entity of the state to almost mystical levels of significance among mainly German thinkers like Treitschke. The descriptive school of pluralism systematised a growing school of thought which analysed American government not in terms of great men and abstract ideals, but as the creation of groups with essentially economic interests. The theory of elitism was originally developed in the nineteenth century primarily as an attempt to counter the marxist economic class theory of society, with its emphasis on inevitability and Utopianism. Controversy over whether elitism is a more accurate model than pluralism for liberal democratic society surfaced in the United States in the 1950s and stimulated a continuing debate. Perhaps the most significant discussion in recent years has been on whether the pluralist processes in British government have been developing in the quasi-elitist direction of corporatism.
