<P> Dye in his book Top Down Policymaking, argues that U.S. public policy does not result from the "demands of the people", but rather from elite consensus found in Washington, D.C. - based non-profit foundations, think tanks, special - interest groups, and prominent lobbying and law firms . Dye's thesis is further expanded upon in his works: The Irony of Democracy, Politics in America, Understanding Public Policy, and Who's Running America? . </P> <P> In his book Corporate Power and the Environment, George A. Gonzalez writes on the power of U.S. economic elites to shape environmental policy for their own advantage . In The Politics of Air Pollution: Urban Growth, Ecological Modernization and Symbolic Inclusion and also in Urban Sprawl, Global Warming, and the Empire of Capital Gonzalez employs elite theory to explain the interrelationship between environmental policy and urban sprawl in America . His most recent work, Energy and Empire: The Politics of Nuclear and Solar Power in the United States demonstrates that economic elites tied their advocacy of the nuclear energy option to post-1945 American foreign policy goals, while at the same time these elites opposed government support for other forms of energy, such as solar, that cannot be dominated by one nation . </P> <P> In his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Ralf Dahrendorf asserts that, due to advanced level of competence required for political activity, a political party tends to become actually a provider of "political services", that is administration of local and governmental public offices . During the electoral campaign, each party tries to convince voters it is the most suitable for managing the state business . The logical consequence would be to acknowledge this character and openly register the parties as service providing companies . In this way, the ruling class would include the members and associates of legally acknowledged companies and the "class that is ruled" would select by election the state administration company that best fits its interests . </P> <P> In their statistical analysis of 1,779 policy issues Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page found "that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass - based interest groups have little or no independent influence ." </P>

The elite theory of american democracy holds that