"[...] the ideal of democracy may have been a reasonable, but controversial, theory for a brief moment in fifth-century Athens, but it has simply proved impossible to actualise the ideal in larger and less intelligent societies. In other words, "modern" societies have never actually been democratic within any ideal sense of that word. Experience of the practical application of the idea of liberal democracy has taught us that it contains contradictions that are evidently not accidental or aberrant. They are inherent and central. They relate to the ideal and the claim that liberal democracy is the people's self-governing. Universal education and the development of the mass media of communication have had the unfortunate effect of givin to the mass of the people a basis of information on which they can form a realistic view of how they are governed. We and our predecessors, the privileged few who are the puppetmasters of social consciousness and who have invented the stories needed to convince most of the people most of the time, have sometimes even believed our own inventions. But the people who are supposed to be governing themselves-the long-suffering many-see democracy in social practice, in their daily lives. They can readily understand the claim that capitalism-democracy is the most efficient system for the improvement of the material conditions of human life that the human mind has been capable of inventing. But they may also see that capitalism-democracy is not, or not always, a lovely thing. Capitalism-democracy wears two masks, a smiling mask and a weeping mask-the mask of human benevolence and the mask of human corruption. If the people are supposed to be self-governing, they wonder if they could not govern themselves better.
[...]
the central systematic feature of the idea of democracy has come to seem to be both illusion and delusion, the less-than-noble lie. Democratic societies are ruled by a ruling class, as all societies always have been. The mass of the people know that they are subjects, more and less loyal, of a finite number of ultimate power-holders, as they always have been.
[...]
We the people. We the representatives of the people. We the government governing in the name of the people. We the government governing in the common interest. We the ruling dass ruling in the general interest. The genetic contradictions of democracy-a general will that is also the will of the few; a separation of powers that is also a bulwark against the raw power of the people-mean that, despite all our obsessive talk in the twentieth century about "democracy," the idea of de mocracy is no longer able to bridge the gap
between the ideal of democracy and its social reality.
Professional politicians are an oligarchy with a particular class-interest. When they, elected or unelected, form the exec utive branch of government, they are an oligarchy-within-an oligarchy, acting as a collective monarchy. Democracy-as-oligarchy creates a temporary absolutism, hallowed by a sort of temporary divine right. You, the government, have been blessed by the many. When you are in power, you take what seems to be a legitimate power over the whole of the govern men tal machine because you are deemed to be acting in the name of the many. The royal few cannot be regarded as any thing more than an artificial aristocracy
because, although the government controls an enterprise of immense scope and complexity and power, no specific qualities or qualifications are required, other than personal ambition and an ability to win in the electoral game of chance played with the mass of the people. Their temporary possession of the mantle of absolute monarchy seems almost to compel them to indulge in the traditional temptations of monarchs-corruption, intrigue, patronage, cronyism, the vanity of public shows and public works, and war.
Philip Allott, 'The Emerging International Aristocracy', 35 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 309, 316, 317, 327, 328
