ABSTRACT
Elites have been object of scholarly interest since the foundation of the social sciences. Alexis de Tocqueville’s explorations of the formation of the United States and modern society clearly highlighted the key role played by legal professionals in this process and how they offered an important alternative to the landed elites who still dominated in Europe (Tocqueville 1842). Subsequently, Max Weber explored modern society by highlighting how the bureaucratization of the state via legal rationalization created a professional corps of jurists who effectively exercised (delegated) state power (Weber 1978). Moreover, the modern state and society developed a professionalization of politics which challenged other, previously established forms of power and domination. Both authors were however acutely aware that there was no complete transformation from older forms of power to a meritocratic and democratic society and its agency. The ancien régime collided with la révolution in Tocqueville’s analysis; legal rationalization was an ideal-type and not an empirically exhaustive depiction of modern society in Weber’s analysis.
