#1286 Hugo Drochon: Elites and Democracy

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lops, and today I'm joined by Dr. Hugo Drochon. He's associate professor in political theory at the University of Nottingham, and today we're going to talk about his latest book Elites and Democracy. So Dr. Rochon, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to

00:22 Hugo Drochon: everyone. It's a pleasure for me to be on it, Ricardo. I'm looking forward to the discussion.

00:27 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, likewise. So I mean, I think that probably we should start with a few definitions here because if I understood it correctly, when it comes to democracy, for example, the way that you explore it and perhaps define it in your book is different from the way that most people, I would say, understand it. So could you explain that?

00:58 Hugo Drochon: OK, right, right to the heart of the matter, Ricardo. OK, well done. It's true, yes, when people talk about democracy, what do they have in mind? They have, you know, in kind of definitional terms, you talk about sovereignty of the people, or majority rule, and if you want to go a bit further with that, I don't know how, for instance, um, and uh familiar some of your listeners might be, or viewers might be with, you know, have this Joseph Schumpeter, famously led, you know, the, the conventional view of democracy is that people come together, they, they develop a kind of a general will, and then they elect representatives to then execute that general will. Obviously, he didn't want to turn that around to something else. And the position I want to defend it is not dissimilar to that, or it has a variation on it, because the book asks, OK, there's this tradition. Um, IN political theory and in democratic theory, um, uh, more generally, where we say, actually, even though there are, even though we are live in a, in a modern democracy, elites still rule. So if elites still rule, then that seems to problematize this idea that democracy might be sovereignty of the people, right? Because it's not the people are sovereign, it seems to be that the elites hold the power, or even majority rule, because the idea here is that minorities rule. So what can democracy mean in that setting? And so in the book, I try to develop a term that I've coined, if you want, and I'm proposing for general discussion, which is called dynamic democracy. And there's a few elements there, I think, to unpack slightly. The, the first is to say, OK, If we think that there are always elites, even in modern democracies, then the way to think about politics more generally is to say that politics is the continual, the perpetual struggle of, um, rising elites against established elites, that there's this perpetual kind of churn. There's established elites who get challenged by rising elites, and in that moment of challenge is where you make, you may get political change. That's a broader, um, kind of conception of democracy. Then the dynamic, and so that's what makes it dynamic, because there's a perpetual kind of change. That's the dynamic aspect to it. The democratic aspect then of this kind of combos to say, OK, but in the moment of challenge, what type of challenge is it? Is it something that might further democracy or actually retract democracy if you want? And it's true that this conception wants to say, instead of having a kind of dichotomy where either you have a democratic regime, or you have an authoritarian or oligarchic regime, whatever you might be. You think about these as more on a continuum toward, towards more democracy or towards more oligarchy. And so the question then the democracy is, the democracy understood here in relatively conventional terms as, as aiming towards democracy. So more political equality, so more participation, social or economic, um, equality too. And actually, that's one of the distinctions perhaps already to the Schumpeter, which we may go back to, which is quite a limited perception of, of democracy or politics more, more broadly, but mine is, uh, I think a bit more expansive. So, so there's this dynamism, which is perpetual challenge, and the democratic aspect is, does that challenge move towards democracy understood as greater equality in the political, economic, or social sphere, or inversely, because you never know, right? Does it go in the other direction, and it takes, it moves away from political equality. And so that's the idea is to offer a framework then within which we can then analyze specific historical or even contemporary moments. So, because I do take the, the foundation for a lot of this theory is quite historical, um, which means that you, you can't just develop an abstract theory, um, of democracy, say, this is democracy, yes or no. The point is to say, here's a framework, and then we can use that framework to analyze either historical moments or even our own, um, moment itself and say, OK, well, this looks to be a challenge that might go in the direction of democracy, um, or not. And obviously, though, that latter part is a, is, um, It's a kind of a question of application or of judgment. Um, THE, the, the, the theory as such doesn't tell you what's going to happen. It tells you, it gives you the analysis when in which, you know, what happens. So that's what I've tried to develop with this idea of dynamic democracy, but based on the fact, and people may not agree with this, based on what I think to be a, a kind of the fact of oligarchy, if you accept it's a fact of oligarchy, then you need to rethink democracy, and here's my proposal for how we might do so.

05:27 Ricardo Lopes: So before I ask you more about the interplay that you explore in your book between elites on the one hand and democracy on the other hand, Who are the elites? I mean, what do you mean by that term? Because I mean when we think or talk about elites, depending on who's talking about it, I mean, probably philosophers, political theorists, political scientists who would have a more sophisticated, let's say, understanding of elites, but I mean regular. People might just think that oh elites are whoever rules us. It can be whoever dominates the economy. It can be whoever dominates politics, whoever dominates culture, basically who has the most influence over people's lives in general, right? So, but what is your take on that?

06:26 Hugo Drochon: Yeah, and actually, maybe the people are right, you know, that's, that's actually that normally the, the, the, the, the death fish that's given. So what I can say, if you go specifically to um Pareto, Wilfredo Pareto, who maybe your listeners or viewers will know Pareto mainly in the economic sphere. They might have heard of economic efficiency or Pareto, sorry, Pareto efficiency. Or the 80/20 rule, um, the idea that

06:50 Ricardo Lopes: yeah, it's the Pareto distribution, exactly,

06:53 Hugo Drochon: Pareto distribution or the power law, as it's sometimes called, the idea that Pareto came up with this idea by studying land distribution in Italy and then in Latin America, where he says, OK, 20% of the population will always own 80% of the land, and You can hear echoes obviously of that today with the 99% of the 1%, and actually, funnily for Pareto too, he was a keen gardener, and he found that 20% of his pea pods produced 80% of the peas. So maybe there's a link there between the two. But he, but Pareto, specifically in his, in his later career after the economics, he looked a bit more at sociology, if you want, or democratic theory. He's the one who gives us the term elite, as we understand it today. Your, your definition that you gave us, is more or less correct. Um, AND it's quite an interesting story because it's elite with the accent, because, um, Pareto's actually half French, his mother's French. He's teaching in Lausanne in Switzerland at the time as part of this Lausanne School of Economics. So he uses the French term elite with the accent when he's writing in French, naturally, but then when he writes also in Italian, he keeps the French word elite, and it's only much later that it loses its accent. Um, I think I've looked at. Um, TODAY, in English, at least, I, I, I don't know what it might be in Portuguese, but in English it's only the New Yorker that still use elite with the accent, which I think says more about the New Yorker than anything else. Uh, IN

08:14 Ricardo Lopes: Portuguese we say elite, so it's pretty close.

08:18 Hugo Drochon: Was it with the accent still, or is the accent gone? No,

08:22 Ricardo Lopes: we don't use the accent, we just pronounce it elite either way,

08:26 Hugo Drochon: exactly. So he's. He's really the one who gives us the modern theory of elite, because he doesn't want to use like the nobility or the aristocracy which is associated with the old regime. He's like, OK, we're in a modern democratic setting, but a small group of people still rule, so what are we going to call them? We're going to call them elite. And he does this for the first time in 1902. So the term that we use today, elite, is actually coined like 120 years ago, 124 years ago. Um, AND he says, as you rightly pointed out, he says, you look at all spheres of activity, of human activity, whether they're legal or illegal, by the way, and you, and you judge people within that by saying, well, who are the best? It's, it's a bit more who are the best and who perhaps has power. So you say, OK, well, who, who's the best chess player? If it's Garry Kasparov, you say, OK, Garry Kasparov, he was a grand chess master, probably give him a 10 out of 10. Whereas me, I can't even remember the chess. Um, RULES most of the time, they probably give me a -1 or a -2. And then, but you look, you look at other, um, instances, you say, what about, you know, courtesans, you know, um, Madame de Pompadour, you know, she was a very powerful, very successful courtesan. Maybe you give her a 9 or a 10. Again, if you give me a courtesan, my charm is, um, pretty, um, useless, so you probably give me a -1 or 2. So that all, you could do that in all spheres of activity. But then Pareto makes a distinction, which you're also alluding to. There's, there's non-political and there's political elites, right? So there's a distinction between the two. And then what he, what he says, there's political elites who, who, who rule, um, but there are two types of political elites, and I'm sure all your, your, your viewers or listeners will remember Machiavelli, Machiavelli and the prince. He says the ideal prince is a combination of these two animals, the lion and the fox. Um, THE, you need the lion to scare off the wolves who are trying to take you down, but you also need to be a fox to avoid the snares or the traps that the lion. Um, MAY fall on it. And Pareto takes that idea and he says, OK, we're gonna say, we're gonna apply it to this idea of elite. We say there's two types of elites. If it's the lions who are in power, then you'll get a certain type of rule, a much more centralized, a much more faith-based rule, and one much more willing to use force. Whereas if it's the foxes are in power, it's more decentralized, more skeptical, and less willing to use force. So Breto says, OK, basically, you have a circulation of elites. THROUGHOUT human history, sometimes the lions are in power, sometimes the foxes are in power, and obviously, it's always a question of degree. It's always, well, the lions are kind of a bit more power. And you also have this idea of circulation. Again, another Machiavellian type of image, if you remember Fortuna being a river, he says, OK, well, sometimes there's just a small slow tributary, and, you know, one of the lions takes over slowly from the foxes or vice versa. But sometimes you get a storm. And the river breaks its banks. And so there you have more of a revolt or revolution. So that's, that's, Pareto gives us this theory of elites. Um, AND, and I think as you rightly say, uh, as you say, most people, it's kind of trickled down, that's probably not the right word to use, but people instantly understand it. So, he really gave us how we understand elite today.

11:35 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah, even though, let me just say, and I'm not sure if you would agree with this or not, because I just want to say this because earlier, for example, I said that elites can be elites in the political domain, in the economic domain, in the cultural domain, for example, and probably we could refer to other domains of life in society, but nowadays, I mean, Not just nowadays, but I guess that even historically, even distinguishing, for example, strictly between economic elites and political elites is very tricky because economics goes usually very well married with the two politics, right?

12:16 Hugo Drochon: You're absolutely right, and that's the link between the power distribution, the 80/20 rule. And elites in itself. And for Pareto, it's obvious that the political elites will often then also be a form of economic and social and social, not necessarily, but there's a link between the two. Although there are other thinkers who are also theorists of elite or minority rule, Gaetana Mosca and Robert Mikelstein also in the book, and they don't necessarily make a direct link between, between the two. THERE'S different, there's different theories about what is the re the link between um. The two, and the other thing I will add, which I think you were hinting to actually in some ways in your question is that, um, just because Preto is conscious of the fact that, um, you know, uh, you, you may have certain people who do rule, who, who have the power, but they may not be the best. So de facto and de jure is not the same thing. And in fact, Pareto was very critical of some of the elites of his time. Um, IN the 1920s, he writes about, um, Italy, and he denounces Italy as a form of demagogic plutocracy. That behind the facade of democracy, the rich rule, and he, he denounced it, so it's a kind of the, it's the fox who kind of rule, kind of by, by, you know, by, by, by decentralization, and they're also kind of hiding behind something, so it's, it's not as, it's not as obvious, um. And then obviously his theory suggested that, well, if the Foxes are in power, then the lions would come in to replace them. And then you get into these controversial questions about, well, did Pareto anticipate was the theory anticipating Mussolini, or did he also welcome Mussolini, given that we know in Italy afterwards. So just to say, just to, just to clarify, I think some of those points too.

14:02 Ricardo Lopes: And I mean, of course, I would imagine that different theorists will have different understandings of What it would mean to be for the elites or the rulers to be the best people out there, right? But, I mean, what does it mean or in your understanding, what would it mean for the people who are part of the elites to be the best? I mean, what does that mean? Is it for them to make the best decisions for the majority of the population, the best decisions for society more generally? To put it in that way, or for them to, I mean, be the most virtuous people out there, for them to be the ones that are less greedy, the ones who are, who are not the hoarders of money or economic assets and ruin society over time, I mean, what, what does it, what does that mean exactly? Or what should we expect from elites?

15:05 Hugo Drochon: Very good question. I think there's different answers to that in terms of what Pareto thought and what maybe I also say in terms of dynamic democracy. Um, BUT, but what's true of all of these is that this is quite contextual, right? So a certain, um, elite is better at a certain time than others, and actually, all of these people will do a historical, um, analysis of different elites over time to say, OK, sometimes there's a military elite that dominates, sometimes it's a financial one, sometimes also it's a kind of a more priest, priestly one, right? Or a more kind of aristocratic one. So, you, you could tell, sir, and then, The question, um, for, for Pareto, given he was an economist, he was quite concerned about economic growth and, and these types of aspects. So that would have been one of the criteria for him. Um, AND there is within this, this theory, obviously, a relationship between, between the elites and the people more, more generally, um, because it's the rising, you know, people who, who challenge the established elites. Um, AND for Perreto, given that, um, he has a slightly complicated language, but what he really means to say is that sometimes there's different sentiments that dominate in, in the population and the elites at large. There's a sentiment that gives, uh, uh, that's linked to the lions, and there's a sentiment that's linked to the foxes. And he does say, oh, if the, if the elites, whether they're lions or foxes, If they're, if they're too separated, if they're too contrary to what the people want, this will often lead to revolt. So that's not something positive. So, there has to be some link between the two. And in fact, Pareto, one of his biggest worries was what he called crystallization, that elite would become so closed and wouldn't allow for the circulation, that what would end up there would be a revolt and a revolution. So he was kind of, those were the different elements he would have used um to try to Make sense of it. And obviously, for me, in the dynamic democracy, hopefully you have a normative answer to it there, which is say, OK, these types of elites who are either there or who are being, who are challenging, which ones are the ones that go, that push more, the cursor towards democracy understood as different forms of equality. So, there's a way of answering in two forms, but it's always, it always has to be, you can't just answer that slightly in the abstract. It always has to be linked to historical kind of context, because certain elites. Like Pareto has, and, and some of the other figures I look at, they have specific suggestion as to which elites would be the best at that moment in time. But that moment in time is, you know, in 1910s, 1920s, is a very different moment to our moment. Um, BUT we can use those ideas, I think, to think about which would be the best elites that we would need for today, and they would be different, they would be different in Portugal than it might be in France, and it might be the UK than the US. But here's a framework within which we can hopefully give a sense of which ones we might need.

17:50 Ricardo Lopes: Um, WHAT do political parties represent within a democracy? I mean, what role do they play and what do we need political parties for?

18:03 Hugo Drochon: Yeah, great question, because this is why we talk about, um, these people writing in the context of, of modern democracy as opposed to ancient democracy, right, the ancient Greeks. Because they, they're all arriving in a period where there's certain developments which we would recognize as being part of our own form of government, namely, the spread of universal suffrage. One thing also, the idea of representation rather than direct democracy. But linked to this universal suffrage, which brings a lot more people into politics than you would have had before, you also have a rise of these kind of modern bureaucratic political parties, mass parties, right, that bring Um, bring the people in, into politics and try to give them, try to give them a bit of a political education, I suppose, in some ways. We often think of the, the emblematic example of this is obviously the socialist parties or the workers' parties, whichever version of that that we have over the course of the 20th century. It was a way of integrating the workers into politics in the way that they hadn't been integrated before. So that's the specific role. Um, AND that's a feature of that time, the rise of the centralized bureaucratic parties. And this is why we think about at the same time, we have another, uh, figure. I look like Mikhaels, but he's close to Weber. Weber, it's all about bureaucratization. That's the role traditionally they've played. They played as this kind of intermediary role, um, um, you know, which even Tocqueville, when he's talking about intermediary institutions in the US, he didn't necessarily have political parties in mind, but that's the role that they're meant to play. And I think some of the challenges we're probably facing today in politics is precisely. See that this political parties, political parties, no longer play the same role that they used to play. They've been, there's this, um, actually half Irish, half Scottish, I think, political theorist called Peter Mayer, who talked about ruling the void, that political parties have been hollowed out, that they no longer have mass memberships like they used to. They're much more linked to the state, so they don't play this intermediary role. And somebody like, somebody like Mikels or Weber. Precisely saw that the, the role of this intermediate class was, was to mediate between elites and the people, if you want, right? It was a way of, and the fact that we've lost a lot of that mediation is perhaps is one of the explanations of why we have more populists at the moment. I say we have populist views because populists say that they have a direct link to the people. There's a direct link, right? Uh, THEY'RE the incarnation of the people. There's no mediation there, which is what political parties, um, used to play. So if we are worried about the populist turn, if you want to, in, in our politics, then revivifying or finding something that can play the same intermediary role of political parties seem to be very, seems to be very important.

20:44 Ricardo Lopes: I would like to ask you now, how do you look at the relationship or the interplay between populism and elitism, because I mean, please correct me if I'm wrong, because of course I'm not the political theorist here, but I mean the way I look at populism, at least, I think that it can have, there can be a positive version or a negative version of it. The positive version is so. We are populist in the sense that we are trying as political representatives the best we can to serve the interests of the vast majority of people in society, and so we are populists in the sense that we are going along with the will of the people, if, if that's a good term to use here. And then the negative version of it would be, I mean, Feeding people with simplistic narratives about the current political predicament to serve the interests of the elites or of the people who want to become elite. So I mean, what do you think about that and then tell us more broadly about how you look at the relationship between populism and elitism.

22:03 Hugo Drochon: Yeah, I think in some ways, you put your finger on both elements, which I think are actually true. So one of the ways of articulating this is Pareto has this very simplistic kind of um formula, if you want, for the circulation of elites, as he puts it, he says, OK, there's a, which is the establishment. ELITE B, which is the rising elite that's challenging A, and then you have C, who are the people. And so, basically, the way this works is that B says to C, look, A is not representing you and it's not doing, you know, the best interest for you. So, come over to our side, we'll overthrow A, and we'll give you a better deal. Um, AND, you know, actually, within Peretto's theory and with, and with the dynamic democracy that I defend more broadly, it may be the case that B gives the C a better deal. But, um, and we, we can use hopefully the dynamic democracy paradigm to try to interpret to see whether that's correct or not, uh, by judging which type of, you know, form of rule or which type of policies you may pursue, whatever it might be. But the claim is also to say that C will never rule. C will always remain C, the people. And so, if B comes to power, what you will then subsequently get is you'll get D that comes along and says, you know, C is not representing you, or sorry, B is not representing you. C, come over to our side and then we'll, we'll challenge B, and then you keep going like that. But it's in one of those moments of challenge that something better may happen. But again, to underline, and I think This is what you're pointing to, and I think sometimes has been, yeah, it's, it's not that it's been overlooked by some of the populist literature, but I simply wanted to put a bit more emphasis on it, is that populists themselves, or populist leaders are always some form of elite. They don't come from, from nowhere, right? And I think that's sometimes we never see. So if we take If you take the populist literature and populism in some ways has been for the last 10 years, the main analytical lens that has been used to, to interpret a lot of the political events, whether, you know, the UK, Brexit, or in the US, um, you know, Donald Trump, I'm sure there are examples. I'm, I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know Portuguese politics sufficiently well, but I can imagine, but you have Chega, right? Don't you,

24:05 Ricardo Lopes: or yeah, yes. There's a very populist far right party called Shige in Portugal, yes,

24:12 Hugo Drochon: which I think I know what that means also, but I perhaps won't repeat what it means online. So you have these examples also throughout Europe or even across the world where you have a kind of a rise of populist, populist leaders, shall we say, and the literature, if you think of people like Jan Werner Muller, right, the great German political scientist who's in Who's in Princeton who say, well, populism has these two elements, actually, you know, one, a rejection of the elites, um, this, this division of politics into, you know, the pure people versus a corrupt few that need to be rejected or overcome. But he, the one thing he adds to it, um, was to say that actually populism, as opposed to more regular democratic politics is anti-pluralist. It claims that only they are the true people, you know, you can't have plurality or whatever it might be. Um, BUT I'd like to think you could, you could bring this kind of populism. So I don't want to deny that. I think that's all very interesting and it sheds light. But I just wanted to put a bit more emphasis on the fact that these populist leaders are often elites, like Donald Trump. OK, yes, he perhaps in 2016, he wasn't a, he wasn't a DC Washington DC political insider, but he's surely an elite, right? He's surely a member of the 1%. Uh, HE was a media personality with The Apprentice. So he's an elite type of figure who's then using, he's a kind of a B, who's using C to overthrow A. Um, AND A is, um, in this instance, is, um, you know, Washington DC had all drained the swamps. It's not just the Democrats, but it's also the Republicans. To, right? There's a, there's a complete shift um over. So that's maybe one way of trying to interpret what's happened in the last 10 years, or it gives you a slightly different perspective as a form of circulation of elites of an elite challenging um another elite, um. And maybe another way, final way, if we continue with, with Pareto, maybe a way of trying to characterize that is that previously, the, the foxes were in power, and now the Lions have taken over, right? That, that Trump and some of these figures are much more line-like in, in the rule, it's much more centralized, right? If you think about the US, the executive has really taken over. Much more willing to use force, much more kind of a faith-based politics. That's very different to Barack Obama, um, if you just want to keep it in the US, um, context. So that's, that's what this, uh, theories, what I'm trying to do is to shed this other light, not to deny other things, but put a slightly different emphasis, give us another way to think about it, and then hopefully with dynamic democracy, give us a way of trying to evaluate, um, evaluate it too.

26:50 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, by the way, shege means enough in English also for my English speaker audience, I mean, which also I guess tells, tells you already the kind of populism associated with it. It's like enough, enough of the enough. Of the current,

27:09 Hugo Drochon: I thought it was a bit ruder. I thought it was a bit more like go away, you know,

27:15 Ricardo Lopes: I mean the direct translation is enough, but I mean maybe someone could translate it that way. I'm not sure, but the direct translation is enough.

27:26 Hugo Drochon: And so, very good, yeah.

27:27 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, OK, so in the book you also talk or explore postwar democratic theory. So earlier you talked a little bit about the work of Gaetanomosa, Wilfredo Pareto, Robert Mikkelsen. Could you tell us now a little bit about how the work of people like Joseph Cumpeter, Robert Dolan, C. Wright Mills, and Raymond Aaron helps us understand post-war democratic theory.

27:59 Hugo Drochon: Yeah, thanks. That's a relatively large subject, but part of what I do in the book, as you rightly say, in the, in the first half, in some ways, I try to recover the thinking of Mosca Preto. Um, AND Niels, as a way of saying, there's a tendency to kind of lump the three together as being the same thing. But if we separate them out, they have different emphasis, different political alignments, different contexts, you know, Italy, Germany, um, Switzerland even. And also, I think, um, when we do that, you see the theories are, have their own emphasis, history, sociology, whatever it might be, um, bureaucratization. And it's, so it's, it's a richer picture than we can draw upon. So what, what I try to do then is I try to say in the second half of the book is to say, OK, the, the very kind of representative figures of social sciences and democratic theory post, uh, post-war, admittedly this is a kind of a, uh, an American, German, French, and um I'm conscious of in the future work, I want to do a more Europe, a kind of slightly more European story. I'd like to have more Portugal, Spain, and, and obviously Italy's in it too. Um, MAYBE some of the Scandinavian countries, but, um, it's to say, some of these emblematic figures, as you've mentioned, Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Daw, Sierra Bales is quite American, Raymond A in France, um, that we can't understand the development of their theories and their ideas without seeing how they were in dialogue with the first three, that I mentioned before. And if we see that, then it actually sheds also a different light on their theories than the way that we normally think about it. And so, I think Joseph Schumpeter, we've, we mentioned him already, where he says, you know, the conventional view of democracy is people come together, and then which through their general will, they elect representatives to execute that general, and he says, you know, that's, that's just not realistic. And in fact, one of the people he explicitly cites as saying that that's not realistic because politics is a lot more irrational than it is rational, is explicitly Peretto. He says Perreto has taught us this. And he instead proposes this, this view that's been called either elite competition or minimalist democracy, although neither of those terms are terms he uses himself. He talks about more rule by politicians or leadership democracy, which is instead you have, you know, elites who come about, and then they, they come up suggesting that they try to capture the market for votes. It's a very, again, economic perspective. Um, AND so, uh, I, I try to show, uh, so that's obviously linked explicitly to, to the early elites, but I just try to show how, what, what Schpeter has done is that he's really reduced the type of competition simply to a small political sphere among political elites. Whereas, as I was talking earlier on, just even in terms of Pareto, the circulation is not just politics, it's like economics and society has a broader, um, a broader aspect to it, and you could say the same for Moscow and Mikkels. And so, I think that Trumpmpeter maybe has, in, in, in focusing on elections in particular, he's, he's really pinpointed a certain important thing within, within democracy, and he, and he defends that, and as a normative defense, that's fine. But if we want analytical tools to try to understand what we are today, I think the other three have a richer canvas, or a richer background upon which we can draw. So I just want to point out for them. Moving quickly on then, if you want, C. Wright Mills or Robert Dow, um, in the US in particular, there's a, there's in, um, both of them in 1956 published a book, very interestingly. So C. Wright Mills published a book called The Power Elite, which is basically the military-industrial complex, that's basically what he's arguing, in 1956. And the same year, Robert Dall publishes a book called A Preface to Democratic Theory. Which is the beginning of his reflections on democratic theory, and ultimately will lead to his, to his notion of polyarchy as being a form of a modern democracy. So, it's not ideal, but it's a kind of a second order. That debate, by the way, C. Wright Mills, the power elite, you talk about in also in Portuguese, that it doesn't have the accent. I think it's with C. Wright Mills in 1956, the Our elite, as he calls the book, doesn't have the accent. It becomes anglicized or loses the accent. Also, I think it's a moment where the term becomes perhaps a bit more pejorative, that with Peretto, it was both an analytical tool, but also, as we discussed previously, he was trying to say, you know, we, we should have the best, right? We should have the best rule. Here with CY Mills, it becomes pejorative, you know, it's, it's the military-industrial complex, so it's linked to the presidents, so it's pejorative. But normally that debate between the two is is constructed as or presented as being, oh, this is the C. Wright Mills is the kind of elite thinker, and Robert Dahl is the defender of democracy. And what I want to say is like actually you've seen from the, the broader historical canvas. There are two sides of the same elite coin, because they both agreed that they're elites in the system. The question is whether elites are more likely to to cooperate. If they cooperate, then we get the power elite. If they compete, then we get polyarchy. So they're both elite thinkers, or they both accept elites. It's just that they give you a sense of um if they compete or they cooperate, you get different forms of politics. Finally, then you have um Remoon, who again during the Cold War was trying to think about what's the difference between Western democracy and Eastern democracy in the European context, because, you know, let's not forget that obviously the East were saying, no, no, you know, we're the true proletarian democracy. We're, we're not this bourgeois liberal democracy, we're the true one. And obviously on the Western, no, no, we're the true democracy, you guys are a dictatorship, right? And so he was trying to develop a a a a way to, to analyze that, and he does start explicitly with what he says, the fact of oligarchy. He says, OK, there is, there are elites in both systems. And the question again is whether elites are more likely to be divided, so that there's a separation and different political institutions that separate out the political, economic, social, judiciary, etc. ELITES that they have their own space, or whether that all these elites, political, social, economic, are all in the same institution, namely the Communist Party. So that's his way of distinguishing, so they're divided or united. Um, AND then from that point on, he's able to, to pass a kind of a judgment, both, both negative and positive. He says, well, if you are, um, if you are pursued by in terms of, in terms of how much there's a bit more defense for the people more generally, in the context of Eastern democracy, if you want, you know, if, if the elite, if the Communist Party comes after you for whatever reason, You kind of have nowhere to turn. There's, there's no one, you've nothing to defend yourself. Whereas in the Western one, at least, he says, OK, well, if one of the elites comes after you, then maybe you can turn to another elite for defense, and you could play them one after the other. So that's a kind of a negative defense. But to go back to Machiavelli, who, whom we kind of started with the prince, but instead of the prince, think about the discourses, right? The discourses of Livy on the Roman Republic. Where Machiavelli says, you know, the reason why the Roman Republic was free was because there was this tumult, this competition or this conflict between the plebs and the patricians, between the elites and the masses, if you want. And, um, Aron takes that and takes a kind of a more liberal interpretation, and says, OK, actually, if you put that in the context of the divided elites, the fact that the elites are divided and that there's competition or conflict between them, means that there's a possibility of liberty to emerge from that system. Therefore, that's why that system is potentially better. So that's what I tried to, sorry, that was quite long, I realized, but I was trying to reconstruct and show how it, it, it, it makes us see things differently, but then also have certain normative, normative and analytical consequences that comes out of it.

35:44 Ricardo Lopes: So I would like to further explore one of the aspects that you mentioned in your answer there. So what role has post-war democratic theory played in the development of the social sciences? I mean, I'm, I'm very interested in hearing more about that and, and also. So why do you think it's important for people to have an understanding or a or a better understanding as to the potential role or the link there that there was between democratic theory post-war and the development of the social sciences?

36:23 Hugo Drochon: Yeah, so, and actually, um, maybe I went over this a bit um too quickly, but all the, all these figures don't just show Schumpeter, Cra M, Robertau. Um, I, I've focused so far in my responses on the kind of the contribution to democratic theory, but they have much broader, um, um, contributions in general. Schumpeter is obviously again, best known as an economist. C. Wright Mills probably more as, as a, as a sociologist, Robert Dahl as a, yes, political theorist, but political scientist. Involved in the behavioral kind of revolution and Remoiron wrote, is probably still better known as a kind of theories of international relations when he was talking to um Kissing close to Kissinger or Kissinger at least, thought he was um somebody worthwhile listening to, and Mossa's theories of history and sociology and relationship to Weber. So there's a broader picture there to start off with. Um. And, um, there are methodological, um, um, kind of debates that are going there. But, what I'm trying to do in, in short, the short answer to your question is to say, um, within all these developments, I think we've slightly, um, lost from sight the fact that all of them have elites as a key part of their theories, whether it's economics, sociology, whatever it might be. And, um, And I think today, today we've lost slightly sight of that. At the time, it was clear, because they were explicitly saying, oh, we're, you know, we're engaging with Pareto's idea, you know, C. Wright Mills uses the word elite, right? You know, where is he taking it from? So, at the time, so in post-war, we could still see it. I think now we've lost it. So we just take these theories as if they were, they were just empirically pure theories, if you want. Whereas actually, they have a certain basis, at least analytical basis. WHICH is the existence of elites in the political system. And I just, I want to bring that back to light because I think one of the things we've, we've slightly lost from view in the social sciences and democratic theory today is precisely that there are elites within political systems. We tend to focus simply on democracy understood as perhaps social movements, participation, all these types of things, both in, um, both in democratic theory and the social sciences. But actually, we need to theorize, um, clearly also the existence of elites, and what I try to advocate for in the book is to think about politics as a relationship between the two. That's what we need to think about. Um, SO that's on one hand. There, there's the other hand also too where some of the social sciences has, the accusation is, is that perhaps it's a bit, in, especially in America, perhaps a bit conservative, where it was worried about the masses, um, And wanted to stabilize the political system and was worried about too much participation. This is sometimes a criticism that's been leveled at somebody like Robert Dahl at certain moments of his life. Sometimes, there were other moments earlier or later where he was a bit more radical, was interested in economic democracy, perhaps. But during the Cold War period, there is a broader sense in political science that there's concern about stabilizing the political system and not being overwhelmed. Um, BUT again, you can only see that, I think, from the fact that they're engaging with these elite theorists sometimes then to, to affirm it and then to preserve the political system. Um, OTHER times not. Um, BUT it's again on whichever side it goes, is to bring back the centrality of thinking about elites within the social sciences of democratic theory more generally, which I think, um, today has been slightly overlooked.

39:50 Ricardo Lopes: So when people talk about the possibility of social transformation, what do you think is possible within this framework of looking at society as a relationship between elites and democracy? Uh, I mean, because for example, if you take it to an extreme and you are an an anarchist and you think that probably. Probably the best version of society, the best way of society existing would be uh non-hierarchical, I mean stateless, do away with the elites. Let's just let the people organize themselves non-hierarchically, and I mean, do you think, of course I'm not completely sure if this is um. If this is a fair question to ask you because we would probably need also an anthropologist here, but do you think that at least in large scale complex societies, the one, the ones that most living people live in today, That it's really possible to do away with the elites, for example. I, I mean, to what extent do you think it's possible to transform society?

41:19 Hugo Drochon: So in large scale complex societies, can we get away with elites? The answer to that, I think is no. I don't think we can. Um, IT'S not to say now, all three of the thinkers though, did think that, um, so, some of them like Moscow thought, you know, in, in, in slightly, in some earlier primitive societies, then you didn't have the same distinction between ruler and rule. It's only over when you get to a certain Um, size. And in fact, some political scientists looking more at political parties have suggested, oh, if there's only like about 1000 members who are there, then, then you can keep a kind of a semblance of equality and, and, and, and, and, and democratic equality and participation. But once it gets over a certain size, and it just becomes impossible because you need to organize in such a way. And once you say organization, this is his famous line by Robert Mills, who says organization says oligarchy, that organization by its very nature is going to lead to a class of organizers, officials, or whatever, who are going to organize the day to day meeting and responses, etc. ETC. And that will just, they will be slightly sad. Separate from the members at a whole and will retain more power than they do. So in large scale societies, I, um, and these thinkers, I just don't think that's possible. I, um, and, um, so there's a few things to say from that. You ask also is social transformation possible. I think it is very much possible. Um, IT'S just,

42:46 Ricardo Lopes: but what, what are the limits within this framework. THAT you present in your book.

42:52 Hugo Drochon: Yes, so the limits are that regardless of which type of political regime we're going to come up with, there's still going to be elites who rule that. So there is a hard, so elites are not, um, they are a feature of the system, they're a bug. I don't think you can get away with it, but it doesn't mean you can't get very, very different systems. Obviously, if you go back to the Cold War, you know, the Eastern Bloc and the Western bloc were quite different types of political regimes. The simple claim there, at least, is to say, but You know, and, and all three thinkers, Perreto, Mikhaels, and Moscow were very much engaging with Marxism and found it very interesting. And they often thought, yes, they're right about conflict as being as the key of politics. They just simply did not believe that should there be a proletarian revolution, that conflict and the state. And um class would disappear. They just thought a new elite would rise up. Um, AND they were very interested in knowing which elite that would be, which is why, um, when I said Perreto coined the term elite in 2002, the name of the book he's, with which this occurs is called The System Socialist, The Socialist Systems, because he's actually analyzing the rising class of, of socialists, and, and their social leader, and he wants to know which type of rulers they're going to be. And he actually thinks that they're going to be lions. Because it's a faith-based politics. Marxism is a form of secular religion, and therefore there will be lions when they come to power, at least according to, um, to Pareto. Um, SO that's the constraints. So you can, you know, if you take Perreto, you can have the lions and the foxes in power, and they will look very, very different over, depending on which historical moment we're we're talking about. But the constraints is um, So, there are constraints, which is simply that there will always be um elites. But I think some people, you know, some people say, oh, once you say elites, that means like, you know, you kind of give up and nothing is possible. I say, no, no, no. Actually, once you say that there are elites, then you can have lots of other interesting conversations. Firstly, you might be able to say, OK, we know there's, we know exactly where the challenge lies. Which is that there's always going to be elites, but we can challenge those elites, we can change them. We can also ask other types of questions like which type of elites do we have, um, what type of elites do we want them to be, which type of formation do they go through? Obviously, like, you know, the elites that you have in the UK, we often talk about Oxford's PPE, Oxford philosophy, Politics and Economics being The degree that runs Britain, you know, that's a certain type of formation, and that's very different to the type of formation, for instance, you get in France with Champsbo and Lennard, which are much more kind of civil service type of elite. So already that's very different, and, and I think this, all these, um, theories allow us to have these conversations which we wouldn't have. And I think they're also they're serious conversations. I realize people will say, well, we do, you know, we want to completely change everything, etc. ETC. AND have perhaps a bit more a revolutionary impulse, which I understand. Here, I, I, I, I suppose I would accept the fact that people say this is a bit more reformist. It's more reformist than it is revolutionary. I think that's true. Um, AND it's also because I think that, um, that sometimes we get more results out of reform than we do with revolution. I'm not saying it's easy to get in, in other ways. There are dangers with, with revolution, there are dangers with reform, but here it's saying, OK, we can get real, real change, and some of it could be very, very positive. Um, Miels, when he's studying the, the German Social Democratic Party, which at the time is the richest, the most powerful, um, social, socialist party in the world, and it's on the cusp of coming to power. He accuses the leaders of not being sufficiently revolutionary. Which is fair. But then if you look at the, the, the increase in living standards of the workers, it goes through the roof, right? You know, the, the, uh, their days are, their working days are reduced, they have more social protection, you know, and in the end, um, you know, Bismarck gives them a social welfare. So, um, which one would you rather have? Um, AND I think I'm more, I think at least I want to defend the possibility that, that having social welfare, if you take that as one of the consequences of what happens here, is something worthwhile, um, worth having too.

46:55 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and I think that also, I mean, it's very unrealistic to think that we can do away with elites in a large scale complex societies, starting with the fact that because we have specialized activities, I mean, we have to be able to coordinate all of them across society. Yeah, I mean, and I mean the, the only way, at least that I can think of to do that and the only way that I think every society on that scale that has ever existed, came up with was to have a form of centralized political power. And I mean, once you have centralized political power. And you have certain people taking over certain institutions in society. I, I, I mean, it's virtually impossible for you to not have elites in some way, right? I mean, I, I don't, I don't think it's possible any other way. So

47:57 Hugo Drochon: yes, I agree, I agree. So there's a kind of a realistic comment about where we are today, but also a kind of a positive one, which is that You know, um, sometimes these elites or experts or whatever you want to call them, it's, it's positive too. Um, YOU might say, you know, can we, if we didn't have the state today, even though it's under a lot of pressure. Um, YOU know, would we be able to still have a degree of social welfare in these things that we don't have? Obviously, the answer to that is to say, well, you know, we should, if we never had the state, we didn't have capitalism, then we wouldn't have all these things to start off with, which is a fair point. Um, BUT given where we are, um, now, then, um, there are certain positive things, um, that come out of it, that come out of the existence of elites, that come out of the centralized state. That we should be aware of. Um, AND if we, if we want to get rid of it completely, we should be aware of all the things that we would probably get rid of with that too. So, um, so it's just, it's, it's, I don't deny at all. I, I, I, I don't want to come across as somebody who's denying the, the anarchist or, or, or the revolution pushes and doesn't have, doesn't make good points. Um, I, um, I do want to say that, OK, but if you want to do this, here are the other things you need to take into consideration, and I, In general, yes, it's true. I think that these are perhaps more worthwhile than, you know, it's more worthwhile. I'm not saying absolutely, but more worthwhile. Um, AND given where we are today, maybe this is something more realistic, um, to try to achieve.

49:20 Ricardo Lopes: So I have one last topic that I would like to explore with you today. How do you look at our current political predicament? I mean by that, I mean, for example, if you look at the US, if you look at the UK, if you look at several other European countries, even Japan to a certain extent, a certain degree of political, economic, and social instability, a certain sense that people have that the future is to a certain degree hopeless because they look around them and they see, for example, rising levels. Of economic inequality, uh, I mean, people, many people, uh, see it, see that it's harder and harder for them to afford even the basics of life. Uh, WE have climate change, of course, and other political issues, even wars and stuff like that, that we can also include into the picture. Um, HOW do you look at our predicament and, uh, I mean, taking into account the framework as to the interplay between elites and democracy that you present in your book, in what ways do you think we could act upon it?

50:43 Hugo Drochon: Yeah, so I think a few things there, and it also depends slightly on which context we're talking about. I have in mind the fact that um Samuel Moyne, um, I think a kind of a public intellectual figure in the US has just brought out this book, um, accusing the US as being a form of gerontocracy, right? It's the old people who've kind of controlled everything. I think That might have been slightly more valid in the political sphere when there was Trump versus Biden. Obviously, Kamala Harris changed things, but he, he has a more structural point he wants to make. But that reminds me of precisely the type of um worries that people like Peretto in Moscow had, this idea of crystallization, right? Is that there's a certain generation of hoarded stuff, and precisely, there's not enough circulation. That's, that's what you say, like, people don't feel they can afford to buy a house, they can, they can move in, in the ways that they would have wanted, um, that they feel stuck, that they feel static. Again, that's one of the contrasts, I, uh, contrast I try to make, um, in the book between a kind of a dynamic view of democracy of democracy or society more generally one on, on circulation, and a more static one, which is, um, which is more a bit stuck. And I think people feel that's, that's staticism at the moment, that they would like more circulation. So I think, I'd like to think it's still very, um, very relevant. You might say in the UK there's a bit too much instability, um, right, there's a lot of prime ministers that are going through, and somebody like Aron. He was very clear on this too. He said, OK, I, you know, yes, I, I agree generally with divided elites, but that can go too far and you lose the, the possibility of, of, of, um, of efficiency too. So, these are always things within a broader scale, but in general, they're more on the side of circulation, precisely because, um, you know, when the disruption of politics, if you want change. So there's a couple of things to say there. One is that You know, if you're despairing at the situation you find yourself in today, politically, economic, and socially, this theory reminds you that there is always change, that there is always change coming. There's never a full stop. Sometimes that change is slower, sometimes that changes faster, and in general, the theory advocates for having it slightly faster, but the change always comes about. So, hold, hold, hold on for a bit and hopefully things will change. Um, AND secondly, is that precisely, it's, it's precisely when these moments have changed that things, that, that, that there's a possibility, there's a possibility of change, but it's in the circulation and in the challenge that there's a possibility of change. Some of them might be good, some of them, some of them might be bad. That's hard to tell, um, a priori, why we don't, there's a challenge, like we don't exactly know, that's, that's the indeterminacy of politics more generally democracy in particular. Yet hopefully the demo, the dynamic democracy gives you this framework to be able to say, OK. You know, is this challenge going to be pushed towards democracy, um, or not? And, and to that, if I may, um, the, the, the book also tries to identify precisely where this, where a change may happen in a more profound sense than simply left or right or changing prime ministers or whatever it might be, because in the UK I think, you know, there's been this radical Brexit change. And, and society is still trying to, still trying to figure it out. And one way of figuring it out is to go through the circulation, actually. Um, SO, this is, this is what it's, it's part of, and we'll see, it sounds like Andy Burnham is now going to become the new prime minister. We'll see what he's able to do or not, whether he's able to stabilize it or not. Um, BUT in a book drawing a kind of some, from social theory, I, I say that if you want to see a kind of a slightly more profound change, if, if, if you use the, The Peret in terms of lions and foxes, as opposed to simply saying left and right. Um Then the three elements to look for are, one, you need something like a, a social movement or a social protest, you need something that's putting pressure on the political system. Um, BUT what you, uh, what you also need is you, you, you still have elites, but you need a section of the elite, the established elite to, to break off and join that social movement to challenge the established elite. And normally that, That kind of mediation and that coming together is done through, historically in, in, in modernity has been political parties, that's the role they've played, to go back to your first question. Political parties. Now, today, but it doesn't have to be political parties. It could be different types of political institutions, and there's a lot of thinking today about whether one of the ways of trying to revive democracy is to have, you know, autocracies like selection by, by lot as opposed to elections, etc. But these are all different forms of political institution, and what I say to all those people is like, you know, that's very interesting and maybe yes, it will revive democracy, and that's welcome. But don't think it's going to get rid of elites. It's just going to bring a new elite. There's a sortian elite that's gonna, that's gonna come about. We could talk about certain specifics. I'm, I'm half Irish. Ireland has had a lot of these different experiments, and they've been quite interesting and being perhaps politically successful, um, but, um, it would be, it would be a bit naive to think it's just people came together and made these decisions. No, no, it was. It was already the parliament who decided it. Half of the people involved were politicians. The other were drawn from the population at large. It lasted for a few years, I think 2 years at least, and they brought in all these different experts to discuss with them on lots of different legal, technical points, etc. ETC. So, that looks, but that looks to me like dynamic democracy, because it's precisely about bringing elites, you know, and the people together, having a discussion, trying to work it out. And then it was put to referendum to the people at large. So, those are very interesting models, but I'm simply saying, don't think they're going to get rid of elites altogether and that all of a sudden we're going to achieve democracy. That's the one thing I would say. Um. Perhaps the final thing, if, if, if, if I may, I mean this is the image that I try to use in the book to try to capture this idea of dynamic democracy. Mikkels uses this at the end of his book on political parties. He, he brings back to life, um, Aesop's fables, so, um, ancient, um, the ancients, um, who, who has this fable of the dying peasant on his deathbed who tells his children, there's a buried treasure in the field. Um, AND so the peasant dies, and I presume, or I hope at least the children are sad for a bit, but then they're very excited and they go out to the field because there's a buried treasure, and they want to find the buried treasure, and they dig, they dig, they dig all the fields, they go around, they dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, and of course, They never find a treasure, but in having tilled the land, they've made the land richer, and they've made themselves richer. And that's kind of, um, I think that's the metaphor I'm I'm trying to hold on with this idea of dynamic democracy. True democracy, to go back to your very first question, you know, sovereignty of the people, majority, we're never going to achieve that fully because Iliso is rule, right? We're never going to achieve it. Nevertheless, It's worth striving towards it, because we might get lots of democratic benefits that might come from it. And, and again, if you more in the historical case, we've've spoken about the German Social Democratic Party. Yeah, sure, they never achieved perhaps socialist revolution in the way their ideology was meant to do so, but the plight of the workers got so much better than it was before. Um, SO that, and I'm trying to say, well, maybe that's something that's, that's worthwhile keeping in mind, and we can give perhaps contemporary examples of that too.

57:46 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, and that last example that you gave there, I think that's one of the reasons why it's important to not just simply dismiss political movements that are looked at as more radical. I mean, even on the left, for example, communists, socialists, and all of that, because Even if for several different reasons it's not possible to really transform society in the way that they intend, they can still have a positive impact and improve society in different ways in that striving toward that ideal.

58:29 Hugo Drochon: That, yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to say, and obviously, what I've given you is an example of a direct political um impact of needing those three elements. There may be huge societal economic impacts, um, too, but I just want to say analytically, it seems to be the case that a social movement on its On its own will not um generate a stronger structural change. It needs a part of um the elite to come over to its size. Um, AND, and, you know, you can give it the US again, perhaps a more neutral example for us, but the US as an example for this because, um, and maybe, you know, this is a negative example, I think for us, but in terms of, uh, but just to show that this is applicable on both sides, I don't think in 2016. Um, THE primaries when Trump is, is challenging, it's quite interesting because already he's bringing a lot of people in who said that they didn't consider themselves to be Republicans. So he's bringing new people into politics. But would Trump have ever really gotten to where he was if a section of the Republican Party itself didn't decide to go over to its side, like Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Mitch McConnell, these people say, OK, you know what, we're gonna, we're gonna, we'll give, we'll give up on Jeb Bush or the more established Republicans, and we'll go over here because we think we can win with this guy. So there's a section of the established elite that joins, and it's run through obviously the political party, the primaries of the Republican Party. There's an example. Of how it comes about. Perhaps a negative example. If you want, I don't know if there's maybe a more positive or a more hopeful or maybe a more European example also, if you think about what just happened in Hungary, um, not long ago, right, with, um, with, um, with Magyar, who is a member of the established elite, right? He's a, he's a member of Fidesz of Orban's party, but at the moment decides he's had enough, he breaks from it. He joins the protest movement. THAT are there against the corruption and the covering up of the Orban regime, runs it through a political party. He, he didn't, it already existed, um, but he, he kind of seizes upon it, and then he's able to overthrow, overthrow the Orban regime in many ways, right? To a lot of people's surprise, like people thought he might do it, but it was quite, it was much more convincing than anybody expected it to be. Um, THERE'S a, there's another version of that, perhaps a more positive one. And one of the, the more interesting things I think he said, um, in terms of the reforms he was going to advocate going forward, was this idea to have limited terms for the prime minister, uh, right, which is a form of dynamism. It's OK, like you can only have two terms, so we're going to make sure that keeps a certain velocity, whereas Orban had say for 16 years in a row or something like that, right? So, OK, that's not going to be possible. We're going to have this surrogate so institutionally. You know, bringing in this kind of dynamism into it. And I think that was, that was quite interesting. Who, I don't, I, it's hard to predict what's going to happen in the future, but that was a moment, I think, in which this theory was, um, was cashed out in a way.

1:01:27 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. OK, great. So, uh, the book is again Elites and Democracy, and I'm of course leaving a link to it in the description of the interview. And Dr. Hoon, apart from the book, would you like to let people know where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:01:47 Hugo Drochon: Yeah, that's very kind. I do, um, I still have, I still have an ex, I think, account where I, I used to, I tweet, I suppose. I know, I still tweet. There's Facebook, and then I have, obviously the, the, the web, the web page at the University of Nottingham. But yeah, Twitter, I suppose, is where I try to, I'm not the best, but I try to, try to keep it going.

1:02:07 Ricardo Lopes: OK, great. So, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a fascinating conversation.

1:02:14 Hugo Drochon: Thanks so much, Ricardo. Great questions. Also, this is what's great about talking these things because it allows you to, to think through even the, the things I wrote in the book. It's like, oh, but here's another way of explaining that, which, which is great and clarifying it. So this is, this was very helpful for me too. So, and hopefully, obviously your viewers and listeners will get something from it too.

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