Bedtime for Democracy: The Power Elite as Sovereign Aristocracy in Neoliberal Amerika
Abstract
Leftist political theory in Amerika has struggled to understand the two most
important issues facing us today: sovereignty and neoliberalism. In their efforts to
understand neoliberalism, most scholars rely on either neo-Marxist or poststructuralist
(Foucault) approaches, and in their efforts to understand sovereignty, scholars
commonly turn to Carl Schmitt’s legalistic notion of sovereignty. Unfortunately, these
approaches cannot produce a sufficiently descriptive account of sovereignty in neoliberal Amerika, which is why I turn to the sociological political theory of C. Wright Mills, articulating a power elite theory of neoliberalism that provides a ground for identifying the aristocratic structure of sovereignty in our historical period.
First, I provide an empirically-supported account of the development of the
Amerikan power elite from the 1950s to today. Rather than consisting of three
directorates as Mills observed in the 1950s – political, economic, and military – the
power elite today rules from only two directorates: the Corporate-Juridical Directorate
and the Military-Juridical Directorate. Second, I turn to early modern political theory to
identify two modes of sovereignty: legislative sovereignty and executive sovereignty, the
latter of which consists of two principles, executive enforcement (of law) and executive
prerogative. Third, I argue that, in neoliberal Amerika, the Corporate-Juridical
Directorate wields legislative sovereignty and the Military-Juridical Directorate wields
executive sovereignty. Ultimately, the Left should abandon its reliance on pluralistic and
legalistic notions in order to understand the aristocratic sovereignty of the power elite.
Subject
C. Wright Millsneoliberalism
sovereignty
poststructuralism
Carl Schmitt
New Left
liberalism
Marxism
The Federalist
Citation
Anderson, Patrick D (2016). Bedtime for Democracy: The Power Elite as Sovereign Aristocracy in Neoliberal Amerika. Master's thesis, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /157817.