Party Systems and the Representation of Social Groups

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Abstract
Sociologists and laymen have often seemed to differ over the nature of democracy. Public opinion generally gives prominence to the freedom of citizens to elect representatives, and until recently political scientists devoted most of their attention to the instituted rules which safeguard these rights and make them effective. The sociologist's concentration upon elites and social processes must often haye seemed, to both layman and political scientist, to blur the distinctions between democracy and totalitarian or aristocratic forms of government. This difference in emphasis sometimes reflects the gap between wish and reality; sometimes, however, it is due to the sociologist's excessive neglect of formal institutions. In this omission, the sociologist is frequently suffering from the undue influence of certain ideas in the sociological tradition, which, when first stated, were salutary correctives of older misconceptions. Thus Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter stressed, as the distinctive and most valuable feature of democracy, the formation of the political elite in a competitive struggle for the votes of a mainly passive electorate (I). On account of its heritage of ideas, sociology has yet to create the single theory which will give due weight to the autonomy of legally-constituted elites as well as to the influence of the various other social groups involved in the democratic process.

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