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Taking its point of departure in the elitist paradigm and the much-discussed relationship between elite integration and stable democratic political systems, this article offers a typology of fragmented and integrated national elites and investigates the structure of the "consensually integrated" elite type. It is hypothesized that "consensually integrated" elites have largely similar structures consisting of personal interaction networks which are more inclusive and less class-based, and which contain more extensive and centralized connections among all major elite groups, than the plural elite, power elite or ruling class models of elite structure separately depict. Support for these hypotheses is found in a comparison of the network structures of two consensually integrated national elites, the American and Australian, as these structures are revealed by issue-based sociometric data taken from closely comparable elite samples and studies in the two countries.

Various problems involved in gaining access to national elites, conducting structur ed interviews with them, and gathering interview data on elite ideology and social structure are discussed in light of the growing use of survey techniques in research on national elites. The discussion is based on the authors' experience conducting survey interviews with 124 members of Norwegian business, labor union, political, and civil servant elites during 1969. This experience is quantified and otherwise reported to show ways by which various methodological obstacles in national elite surveys can be reduced. While such surveys are seen to be quite feasible and useful, several problems are of sufficient magnitude to warrant considerable caution and modesty in the claims made for data collected thereby.

Stable democratic regimes depend heavily on the 'consensual unity' of national elites. So Jong as elites remain disunified, political regimes are unstable, a condition which makes democratic transitions and democratic breakdowns merely temporary oscillations in the forms unstable regimes take. Disunity appears to be the generic condition of national elites, and disunity strongly tends to persist regardless of socioeconomic development and other changes in mass populations. The consensually unified elites that are necessary to stable democracies are created in only a few ways, two of the most important of which involve distinctive elite transformations. After elaborating this argument, we examine the relationship between elites and regimes in Western nation-states since they began to consolidate after 1500. We show that our approach makes good sense of the Western political record, that it does much to clarify prospects for stable democracies in developing societies today, and that it makes the increasingly elite-centered analysis of democratic transitions and breakdowns more systematic.

"Stable democratic regimes depend heavily on the 'consensual unity' of national elites. So Jong as elites remain disunified, political regimes are unstable, a condition which makes democratic transitions and democratic breakdowns merely temporary oscillations in the forms unstable regimes take. Disunity appears to be the generic condition of national elites, and disunity strongly tends to persist regardless of socioeconomic development and other changes in mass populations. The consensually unified elites that are necessary to stable democracies are created in only a few ways, two of the most important of which involve distinctive elite transformations. After elaborating this argument, we examine the relationship between elites and regimes in Western nation-states since they began to consolidate after 1500. We show that our approach makes good sense of the Western political record, that it does much to clarify prospects for stable democracies in developing societies today, and that it makes the increasingly elite-centered analysis of democratic transitions and breakdowns more systematic." (author's abstract)