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REVISTA IEEE 11

259 Pedro Luis Rubio Terés The iranian elites as perceived from their society and… http://revista.ieee.es THE RULING CLASS Scholars in elite theory endeavor to include most variables that contribute to forge the local elites, notably the ubiquitous influence of Shi’ism in politics or the impact of external hostile elites. We briefly outline some of the major approaches in the field: —— The Subjectivist approach is mainly focused on the actors who hold power in a political structure: «the elite are made up of people who have the best qua-lification in their field»34. —— The Economic approach contrariwise does not deal with class and power as ontological objects, but rather quantifies the potential hosted by the elites to reach their goals. Huntington notes on market relations that «the power of all actors increases when all parties gain from collective action»35, serving to illustrate this trend. —— Finally the Dialectic-materialist approach studies the impact of power rela-tions on a given society: «rulers and ruling classes would be better identified by the objective effects of their actions»36. Our main concern is: how do we draw a satisfactory line between elites and non-elites? Mosca offers a convincing definition in his work The Ruling Class: the elite (indeed, a minority) can rule over the majority of the society due to its structural organization, contrary to the ruled37. This elite relies, according to him, on a minority group holding a hegemonic symbolic power (that is, the visible face of power), and a large majority dealing with the practical aspects of power. Even authoritarian governments are never entirely freed from the nature of the people they govern, making political stability dependent on the degree of congruence between the political culture of society and the regime structure38. However, the situation in the IRI is quite alluring in terms of the prevalence of a theocracy that has not been able to suppress a quite numerous and liberal sector of the society. This fact is all the more remarkable when compared to neighboring autocratic states, namely those of Central Asia. The popular concept of samoderzhavie among most former Soviet societies expresses the social need for a «great leader» (illustrated 34  PARETO, Vilfredo. The mind and Society, New York: Harcour, Brace and Company, 1935, p. 246. 35  THERBORN, Göran. The ideology of power and the power of ideology, London: Verso, 1980, p. 225. 36  Ibidem, p. 317. 37  His theory of elites is indeed one with idealist elements, including the admission of certain attributes that render leaders superior. 38  The Republic of Weimar provides a priceless historical exemplification of these discrepancies: in that case the people demanded a more authoritarian rule than the increasingly liberal authorities were displaying.

REVISTA IEEE 11
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