The role of elites within democratic governments presents democratic theorists with one of their thorniest problems. On the one hand, democracies are based upon some type of political equality among citizens -an equality which must be politically significant. On the

Liberal democracy, science, and the market constitute Western modernity’s finest flowers. Each has transformed the world, and together they created a decisive break with all preceding societies. Today even cultures with no understanding of the principles underlying these institutions rhetorically