ABSTRACT
The democratic coupling of political leadership and the public (in general) represents a classical issue within political science.2 However, in recent years there has been a growing recognition of the pivotal role of relatively autonomous elites within democracy (Etzioni-Halevy, 1993). While initially interpreted along egalitarian lines, whereby there is free circulation between the public and elites, more recently accounts have focused on the horizontal connections created over policy, in particular economic issues, which are increasingly detached from politics on a nation-state level. This ‘elite desertion’ of the disadvantaged has promoted greater socio-economic inequality and distracts from the quality of democracy (Etzioni-Halevy, 1999: 242).
