An international gathering of scholars examines democratic theory in the light of recent discoveries by biologists, ethologists, and psychologists.

In this book contributors do not attempt to find a single solution to the theoretical problem of the existence of "elites" in a democratic system, but to make a serious approach to examining various aspects of that problem. Albert Somit raises the political-philosophical problem of the contradiction between the existence of elites and democratic concepts. Benson E. Ginsburg views the heritage of the biological nature of our own species, while...