Approaches to understanding the structure and components of the political class

The article discusses approaches to understanding the structure and components of the political class from the origins oftheformationofelitologytomodernideas.Variousstructuralschemesareillustratedandpreferenceisgiventotheconceptofconcentric circles. Within the framework of this concept, as the most explanatory, the key components of the political class are identified: the political elite, administrative bureaucracy, parliamentary corps, political advisers and consultants, political journalists. Although it is recognized that such a list of components is not a universal standard, it is used as a research prism to better explain the nature and functions of each component to the reader. Such attention to the components of the political class is necessary to understand the process of making political and managerial decisions in an ideally typical design and in a particular country, since the key functions of the components and their roles are preserved in almost any political system, albeit with country-specific features. In some countries, a specific component, for example, the parliamentary corps in parliamentary republics, comes to the fore, which determines the configuration of the whole process of making essential decisions. In presidential systems, on the contrary, there are cases when the administrative class, that is, the executive branch, becomes decisive in the process of formulating a political course. Time also makes adjustments to the structure of the political class, and today in a stable democratic community the political media component begins to play an increasingly important role, because in an era of accelerated dissemination of information and “post-truths”, real journalistic investigations can play a decisive role in shaping the agenda and even lead to the transformation of the political class as such. Thus, there is no doubt that each component of the political class and its functions should be studied.

political class, political elite, parliamentary corps