It refers to the relatively small group of activists that is highly aware and active in politics, and from whom the national leadership is largely drawn.
Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs) increasingly include those educated at non-elite schools and are of modest social backgrounds.
[7] Lucas (1998) examines despotic versus infrastructural power in terms of relations between the military leaders and the civilian political class in Nigeria from 1985 to 1993.
Military leaders relied on a number of despotic strategies to extend their control over the political class as part of a promised transition to democracy: many politicians were banned, two government-created political parties were imposed, and elections that yielded outcomes threatening to military interests were annulled.
The military's persistent reliance on despotic strategies led to a long-term decline in the integrity and infrastructural capacity of the state.
The theme is that the political elite is undemocratic and has an agenda of its own—especially the aggrandisement of its own power—that is hostile to the larger national interest, and which ought to be opposed by grassroots of populist movements.
Even though it succeeded in many states and cities it was rejected as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court when it tried to limit the number of terms that a federal officeholder could serve.