Exercise 1 Collins and Makowsky explain Michels’s “iron law of oligarchy” on pages 208–11. Go to http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-reldem?id=MicPoli.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=8&division=div2. This link provides a look at Chapter 5 of Michels’s book Political Parties, and deals with the struggle that takes place between the leaders in society and the masses. After you have read this material, answer the following questions: - How does the struggle between the leaders and the masses relate to Michels’s “iron law of oligarchy”?
- What makes the leaders different from the masses?
- What oligarchical tendencies do you detect in America’s political system?
Exercise 2 Collins and Makowsky observe: “In The Power Elite, Mills gathers together
the evidence to show that power has become highly centralized in all sectors
of American society” (p. 225). Go to http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/HigherCircles_PE.html. After reading the excerpt from C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite,
answer the following questions: - What did Jacob Burckhardt say about “great men”?
- What is the relationship of religious, educational, and family institutions to the institutions of the power elite?
- According to Mills, upon what does the “life-fate” of the modern individual
depend?
- What, according to Mills, is the largest and most expensive part of government?
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2005 McGraw-Hill Higher Education