Within every social circle there are one or more individuals who, to a particular degree, direct the goals, organisation, norms and conduct of that circle. These individuals constitute the elite. Their directive position need not be formal and may vary according to the subject, circumstances and time.
An elite’s position may rest on formal position, authority, expertise, resources, status or informal leadership. The more strongly its position and status are recognised within the circle, the more its civilisation elements may become directive for the circle civilisation and for the civilising of other members.
The power of elites is not unlimited, however. They too depend on the conduct and responses of other members of the social circle. A leader without followers can lead very little. An office-holder can act only when others implement decisions. An expert can exercise authority only for as long as sufficient numbers of others recognise that expertise. Elites therefore operate within relations of dependency and existing circle civilisations that also constrain their own possibilities for action.
Institutionalisation often arises without anyone having designed the eventual result. Rules, customs, social expectations and institutions may develop over long periods from successive interactions among many individuals. The resulting institution need not have been anyone’s original intention.
Institutionalisation may, however, also be pursued purposively. Individuals and social circles may seek to embed particular civilisation elements socially and thereby influence the social order. Political struggle may be directed towards this end, but it may also concern the alteration, maintenance or termination of circle civilisations and institutions without institutionalisation or collectively binding decision-making being its immediate goal.
Within this theory, politics exists where competing actors confront one another in a struggle to achieve goals. Politics is therefore not confined to elections, political parties, parliaments, governments or the state. Political struggle may occur within any social circle or between social circles, and may concern conceptions, norms, goals, interests, positions, resources, institutions or other desired outcomes.
Once a circle civilisation has been embedded in institutions, self-reinforcing processes may also develop. The first of these is the legitimising civilisation loop.
This loop arises when institutions that have emerged from a circle civilisation acquire, within that same civilisation, the status of authoritative sources for judging what is true, right or normatively desirable. The circle civilisation then produces institutions, while those institutions subsequently use their acquired authority to confirm the premises of that civilisation.
The causal course is circular, but not logically defective. An institution may initially acquire authority because sufficient numbers of people recognise it. Once it possesses that authority, its judgements may subsequently contribute to the formation of new generations and new members of the social circle. The institution thereby helps to legitimate the civilisation that itself helped produce the conditions for the institution’s authority.
There is also a reproductive civilisation loop. Through its institutions, narratives, behavioural expectations and social responses, an existing circle civilisation continues to operate in the civilising of individuals. When they internalise these elements, the elements become part of their personal civilisation. They subsequently act partly in accordance with those internalised elements. Through this conduct, they reproduce the norms, expectations, behaviour and institutions through which they themselves were previously civilised.
A circle civilisation thus helps form individuals who, in turn, contribute to the persistence of that circle civilisation. It may consequently endure longer than the individuals who originally formed it.
New members, after all, enter social associations that already exist. Children are born into families and societies in which language, norms, institutions and expectations are already present. New employees enter organisations in which procedures and forms of interaction already apply. New generations of citizens grow up within states whose fundamental institutions existed before they were born.
Civilisation is thereby transmitted over time. That transmission is never necessarily complete or unchanged, however. New generations may interpret existing elements differently or place them in a different relationship with other civilisation elements. Contact with other social circles may introduce alternative conceptions. Changed social conditions may make old norms less useful. Existing elements may consequently be adapted, modified or replaced. Reproduction therefore does not exclude change. It primarily explains why existing civilisation elements may display a considerable degree of continuity.
The maintenance of a circle civilisation does not rest solely on transmission and internalisation either. Deviation may have social consequences. Individuals who do not conform to important expectations of a social circle may – where this is possible for them – leave the circle. Conversely, a circle may exclude members or apply other informal and formal sanctions.
Social sanctioning comprises the responses through which a social circle encourages conforming conduct and discourages or punishes deviation. It may range from disapproval, loss of status and exclusion to formal disciplinary measures and, within institutions authorised to impose them, legal sanctions.
A particular means by which rejection or exclusion may be legitimated is pathologisation. A divergent conception or form of conduct is then not assessed primarily on its substance, but treated as evidence of a cognitive, moral, psychological or social deficiency in the person who holds or displays it. Discussion shifts from whether an argument is correct to the presumed condition of the person advancing it. Its legitimating effect increases the more closely the pathologising assessment corresponds to the circle civilisation and the more its source is accepted as credible and justified.
Social sanctioning may lead individuals to behave in accordance with a circle civilisation without having internalised the civilisation elements concerned. Outward conformity and internalisation must therefore be distinguished analytically.
These mechanisms help explain why circle civilisations can be maintained without the continual explicit use of coercion. Someone who grows up within a circle civilisation, internalises relevant elements of it, trusts authoritative institutions and knows that serious deviation may have social consequences has several reasons to keep thinking and conduct within the bounds of that civilisation.