ABSTRACT
Today's political landscape is cluttered with post-industrial groups vying to replace the traditional establishment. Social movements, activist government agencies, public interest lawyers, and major media outlets regularly clash with the old "military-industrial complex" and its allies. This chapter examines and critiques the competing theories of power—the Marxists and neo-Marxists, the classical elite theorists, and the pluralists. It presents views of strategic elites, based on the work of sociologist Suzanne Keller, and then explicates the authors' theory of divided elites in the context of contested, divided ideology and culture in America. The chapter also discusses the power elite tradition in modern social science, from Pareto, Mosca, Michels, and especially C. Wright Mills. It then turns its attention to the pluralists, especially Suzanne Keller, and from there, explicates the theory of elite power in America. The biggest change between the new and traditional elites is in the realm of ideology and ideas.
