Institutional Vulnerability in Mass Society

Abstract

The vulnerability of institutions to political manipulation increases as society becomes increasingly a mass society. This development is pathological. It is associated with the debilitation of creative and culture sustaining elites and with changes in the quality of social participation which lead to both cultural attenuation and activist involvement. Existing insight on the nature of "mass" populations and institutions is reformulated and developed, with special emphasis on the nature of mass organization, segmental participation, mobilizability, and the role of unmediated attachment to symbols and organizations.