Beyond elitism: A community ideal for a modern East Asia

Philosophy East and West

Volumn 59, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 537-553

  Tan, Sor Hoon ^a  

^a NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE   (Singapore)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77949613655     PISSN: 00318221     EISSN: 15291898     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/pew.0.0080     Document Type: Note

References (69)

1. - Some recent examples from a substantial literature include: Joseph Fewsmith, Elite Politics in Contemporary China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001)
2. Xiaowei Zang, Elite Dualism and Leadership Selection in China (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004)
3. Zheng Yongnian, Will China become Democratic? Elite, Class and Regime Transition (Singapore: Eastern University Press, 2004)
4. Victor C. Shih, Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
5. - Recent studies of elitism lament that "political correctness" often stands in the way of inquiry and objective assessment (Eric Carlton, The Few and the Many [Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996], p. 2)
6. According to one defender of Elitism, a "culture critic" for Time Magazine, the term "elitist" has come to rival if not to out-strip "racist" as the foremost catchall pejorative of 1990s America; see William A. Henry III, In Defense of Elitism (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 2
7. Henry's "defense," based almost entirely on anecdotal sources, some of which are bigoted and ignorant, is a highly polemical attack on American egalitarianism, which, according the author, is exemplified by the special demands of minorities, feminists, and homosexuals, at the expense of reason and standards in the educational, economic, social, and cultural domains. See a review essay on this book by Morton P. Levitt, "The Offense of Elitism," Journal of Modern Literature 24 (3/4) (2001): 534-538
8. - Jeffrey Bell, Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1992), p. 57
9. - Jeffrey Bell, Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality (Ibid., p. 59
10. - G. Lowell Field and John Higley, Elitism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 58
11. G. Lowell Field and John Higley, Elitism Ibid., p. 50
12. - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in Collected Works, ed. J. M. Robson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), vol. 18, p. 269
13. - John Skorupski, "Liberal Elitism," in David Milligan and William Watts Miller, eds., Liberalism, Citizenship, and Autonomy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1992), pp. 134-153, 136
14. - John Skorupski, Liberalism, Citizenship, and Autonomy (Ibid., p. 135
15. By "modernist," Skorupski means that which pertains to the cultural phase of the first half of the twentieth century (Skorupski, "Liberal Elitism," p. 146)
16. Skorupski himself defends the possibility of deliberation about ends and values by grounding the discussion in a naturalist and historical conception of rationality and objectivity (pp. 147-150). For an account of the politics and "values crisis" in post-World War II America that contributed to this transformation of liberal doctrine, see Bell, Populism and Elitism, chap. 12
17. - Jeffrey Bell, Populism and Elitism, p. 3
18. - John Dewey, The Public and its Problems, first published in 1927, in Jo Ann Boydston, ed., John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), vol. 2, p. 364
19. See also David Spitz, Patterns of Anti-democratic Thought (New York: Free Press, 1965), pp. 148-149
20. - John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government (New York: Dutton, 1950), p. 323
21. quoted in Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey, "The 'Roster Device': J. S. Mill and Contemporary Elitism," The Western Political Quarterly 21 (1) (1968): 20-39, at p. 27. While resisting the conclusion that Mill is an elitist, Kendall and Carey show that Representative Government displays the mindset that permeates contemporary elitist thinking
22. - Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976)
23. On the relation of Hayek's "ungovernability" thesis and his uncertainty about democracy, see Chandran Kukathas, "Friedrich Hayek: Elitism and Democracy," in Liberal Democracy and its Critics, ed. April Carter and Geoffrey Stokes (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), pp. 21-38, at p. 34
24. - Chandran Kukathas, "Liberal Democracy and its Critics, Ibid., p. 36
25. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), vol. 3, pp. 34-35
26. - Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), p. 97
27. Chandran Kukathas ("Friedrich Hayek: Elitism and Democracy") disagrees with this reading of Hayek as an elitist
28. - Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 52
29. quoted in Kukathas, "Friedrich Hayek: Elitism and Democracy," p. 23
30. - Speech by Alexander Hamilton in 1787, Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), vol. 1, p. 299
31. - Sample works include: Vilfredo Pareto, The Governing Class in History (Albuquerque, NM: American Classical College Press, 1986)
32. Vilfredo Pareto, The Rise and Fall of the Elites: An Application of Theoretical Sociology, introd. Hans L. Zetterberg (Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press, 1968)
33. - a translation of Un applicazione di teorie sociologiche, in Revista Italiana di sociologia (1901): 402-456
34. Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class, Elementi de scienze politica (1939), trans. by Hannah D. Kahn, ed. and rev. with an introd. by Arthur Livingston (New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1968)
35. Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949)
36. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956)
37. Anthony Birch argues that none of the theories of these authors offers a serious intellectual challenge to democratic theory; Birch takes more seriously the Marxist and neo-Marxist critique that democracy is only elitism disguised, but eventually dismisses this for lack of evidence that the state is always a tool of the capitalist class and does not serve the people (Anthony H. Birch, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy [London: Routledge, 1993], pp. 169-195)
38. - More recent works on elites also often premise their studies on similar observations. For example: "Insofar as all societies require rules and general recognition and observance of such rules and conventions, to that extent some kind of ruling elite seems inevitable" (Carlton, The Few and the Many, p. 19)
39. - Field and Higley, Elitism, p. 72
40. - Mills, The Power Elite, p. 276
41. Beside Birch's critique of Mills (The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, pp 182-185)
42. for a defense of democracy in Dewey's philosophy against Mills' elitism, see James Campbell, Understanding John Dewey (La Salle: Open Court, 1995), pp. 235-265
43. - Thomas R. Dye, Who's Running America? The Clinton Years (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995), p. 8
44. The first volume of the series Who's Running America? was published in 1976 and covered the Nixon-Ford years; subsequent volumes covered the Carter years (1979), the Reagan years (1983), the conservative years (1986), and the Bush era (1990)
45. Contrary to the claim of a "power elite," Dye finds no convergence as far as the "interlocking" of institutional positions is concerned, even though 15 percent of those holding positions of power in the areas Dye examined held two or more positions and 30 percent of the positions were interlocked with one another (p. 167). See also Henry, In Defense of Elitism, p. 20
46. - Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, rev. ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1947), p. 269
47. - Examples of such works are Samuel Stouffer, Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955)
48. Herbert McCloskey, "Consensus and Ideology in American Politics," American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 361-382
49. Thomas R. Dye and Herman Seigler, The Irony of Democracy, 7th ed. (Monterey: Brooks/Cole, 1987)
50. Herbert McCloskey and Alida Brill, Dimensions of Tolerance: What Americans Think about Civil Liberties (New York: Russell Sage, 1983)
51. David G. Barnum and John L. Sullivan, "Attitudinal Tolerance and Political Freedom in Britain," British Journal of Political Science 18 (1988): 604-614
52. - Paul M. Sniderman, Joseph F. Fletcher, Peter H. Russell, Philip E. Tetlock, and Brian J. Gaines, "The Fallacy of Democratic Elitism: Elite Competition and Commitment to Civil Liberties," British Journal of Political Science 21 (3) (July 1991): 349-370
53. This view is expanded in a monograph by Paul M. Sniderman, Joseph F. Fletcher, Peter H. Russell, and Philip E. Tetlock, The Clash of Rights (New Haven: Yale University press, 1996)
54. For an earlier challenge to the "Elites Are More Democratic" thesis, see James L. Gibson, "Political Intolerance and Political Repression During the McCarthy Red Scare," American Political Science Review, 82 (1988): 511-530
55. See also the subsequent debate between Sniderman's team and the team of Vengroff and Morton, who claim that the elite differences highlighted by the earlier study reflect regional differences and do not challenge the democratic-elitist thesis of elite consensus. See Richard Vengroff and F. L. Morton, "Regional Perspectives on Canada's Charter Rights and Freedoms: A Re-Examination of Democratic Elitism," Canadian Journal of Political Science 33 (2) (June 2000): 359-382
56. Paul Sniderman, Joseph F. Fletcher, Peter H. Russell, Philip E. Tetlock, and Markus Prior, "The Theory of Democratic Elitism Revisited: A Response to Vengroff and Morton," Canadian Journal of Political Science 33 (3) (September 2000): 569-586
57. Richard Vengroff and F. L. Morton, "The Theory of Democratic Elitism Revisited Again," Canadian Journal of Political Science 34 (1) (March 2001): 169-173
58. Frank Bealy argues that it is not possible to generalize about the attitude of elites to democracy, in "Democratic Elitism and the Autonomy of Elites," International Political Science Review 17 (3) (1996): 319-331
59. - Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994)
60. Peter Knapp et al., The Assault on Equality (Westport: Praeger, 1996)
61. - Cf. John Dewey's list of democratic values, "fraternity, liberty, and equality," in The Public and Its Problems, p. 329
62. - For example, see A. T. Nuyen, "Confucianism and the Idea of Equality," Asian Philosophy 11 (2) (2001): 61-71
63. - These problems of meritocracy are parodied in Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033: An Essay on Education and Equality (Baltimore: Penguin, 1958)
64. - See Analects 6.4, where Confucius disapproves of the amount Ranyou gave to Zihua's mother, not because it is excessive relative to Zihua's merit, but because Zihua was already well-to-do
65. Also see Mencius 1B5, in D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 65
66. Joseph Chan, "Making Sense of Confucian Justice," Forum for Intercultural Philosophy 3 (2001), http://them.polylog.org/3/fcj-en.htm, 2.1-2.3
67. - Xunzi, "On the Regulations of a King," in John Knoblock, trans., Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), vol. 2, p. 98
68. - For a more detailed discussion of the Confucian "differentiated order" and the value of equality in Confucian democracy, see Sor-hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), pp. 98-112
69. - Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory of Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 204. I am borrowing from Dworkin's distinction between choice-sensitive and choice-insensitive issues requiring collective action. The former are "those whose correct solution, as a matter of justice, depends essentially on the character and distribution of preferences within the political community". Capital punishment, anti-discrimination laws, and other matters of principle, in contrast to those of policy, are Dworkin's examples of choice-insensitive issues