Mills vs. Dahl

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the viewpoints of C. Wright Mills and Robert A. Dahl present opposing theories of who holds political power in the United States. It looks at how both analysis of the American political culture present mostly feasible theories and offer insight into who actually makes policy decisions, and both arguments contain flaws of reasoning or ignore important political factors. It also attempts to show how C. Wright Mills's "The Power Elite" makes a more convincing case than Robert Dahl's "Who Governs' Democracy and Power in an American City".

From the Paper:

"In Who Governs, Robert Dahl presents an argument intended to demonstrate that the United States is indeed a representative democracy in which the public exercises important influence on policy-making decisions. The first main point Dahl makes is actually a refutation of the idea that an elite group of people exist within society who retain a firm hold on political authority. He states that while there used to be a group within American society that occupied the upper echelons of social, academic, economic, religious, and public life, the advent of the industrial revolution and the success of entrepreneurs led to a political system of non-cumulative or dispersed inequalities. Dahl is expressing that in the modern societal order, self-made men, or "ex-plebes" as he calls them, can and do gain vast economic resources that allow them to cross former boundaries of education and gain public office."

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