ABSTRACT
Strategic elites proliferate in advanced industrial societies because of antecedent historical conditions, operative social forces, and the functional requirements of large-scale social systems. The notion that elites subserve social functions is a fairly general one, found in one form or another in most writings on the subject. The elites can never act solely in accordance with the functional requirements of their status. Strategic elites thus provide an important missing link between society as blueprint and society as reality. The dichotomy is also useful in describing strategic elites, with the political, economic, military, scientific, and diplomatic elites on one side of the ledger, and the moral, aesthetic, religious, status, and intellectual elites on the other. Highly organized strategic elites depend for their success on the coordinated efforts of a variety of individuals and groups. Rivalries among elites for supremacy may thus be expected to increase in highly differentiated societies with their differentiated elites.
