ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some of the major contradictions inherent in the manner in which power is exercised in a democracy. The main argument is that the confrontation of the democratically elected elite's power by the power of other elites is both a danger and a necessity for democracy and that this internal contradiction finds expression in ambivalent, self-contradictory, and controversial "rules of the game" of the democratic process. This argument is supported by illustrations from the area of bureaucracy and in particular from one type of semigovemmental bureaucracy, national broadcasting corporations and their elites, in four western-style democracies. Elite theory and corporatism, too, have little to contribute to the analysis of democracy. Corporatists, for their part, point to the close interaction between governmental elites and corporate and trade union elites in the making of economic policy. They correctly emphasize that such corporatist arrangements frequently short-circuit or bypass democratic institutions and procedures.
