Ruling elites decay and are displaced by counter-elites, while the pattern of elite rule persists.
Pareto's 1916 argument: revolutions replace the personnel of the elite while leaving the structure of elite rule intact. Polybius's anacyclosis is the classical ancestor.
In practice
- A firm's leadership is replaced entirely after a scandal, and the new leadership reproduces the reporting structure, the incentives and the blind spots.
- A tenants' association ousts its committee and the new committee is as unreachable as the old one within a year.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works