Breaking down the question
The command word is discuss, and the key term in quotation marks — 'power elite' — signals that the answer must be built on C. Wright Mills's specific concept, not a loose notion of powerful people. The object is the importance of the power elite in democracy, which invites reflection on what the concept reveals about how democracies actually distribute power. The power elite and political institutions note anchors the answer.
The productive tension is between the elite claim — that a small group holds decisive power — and democracy's promise of rule by the people. Discussing the "importance" of the concept means showing both its analytical value in exposing hidden concentrations of power and the pluralist objections to it.
How to approach it
Define Mills's power elite precisely as the fusion of three institutional orders. Then discuss its importance in two senses: as a critical lens exposing the gap between democratic form and reality, and as a warning about the passive mass. Introduce the pluralist counter-position of Dahl to keep the discussion balanced, and locate the concept in the wider elite tradition of Pareto.
Model answer
The concept of the power elite was developed by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 study of the United States. He argued that decisive power was concentrated in the hands of a small, unified group occupying the command posts of three interlocking institutional orders — the corporate economy, the political executive and the military. The members of this elite share similar social origins, move between these institutions through interlocking careers, and take the major decisions that shape society, while the mass of citizens are reduced to spectators. This directly challenges the pluralist image of democracy as competition among many groups.
The importance of the concept for understanding democracy is twofold. First, it is a powerful critical lens. It exposes the gap between the formal machinery of democracy — elections, parties, representation — and the substantive reality of who actually governs. Mills argued that on the great questions of war, economic policy and national direction, ordinary democratic institutions are bypassed by an unaccountable elite. The concept thus alerts us to hidden concentrations of power that a purely constitutional account would miss, and remains relevant to debates on corporate lobbying, military-industrial complexes and the influence of wealth on policy.
Secondly, the concept carries a warning about mass society. Mills held that the public had degenerated into an atomised, manipulable mass, informed by a commercial media and lacking the organised means to shape decisions. The power elite matters, on this view, because its rise signals the erosion of genuine democratic participation and the danger of an irresponsible elite acting without effective checks. It is a diagnosis of democratic decay.
The concept must, however, be discussed critically. Pluralists such as Robert Dahl rejected it, arguing that power in democracies is dispersed among many competing groups, that no single unified elite exists, and that elections, a free press and organised interests impose real accountability. Dahl's polyarchy holds that different elites dominate different issues, checking one another. The elite tradition itself, from Pareto and Mosca, insisted that some form of ruling minority is inevitable in every society, democratic or not — which both supports Mills's realism and blunts his critique, since if elites are universal, their mere existence is not a special failing of democracy.
The importance of the power elite, then, lies less in proving that democracy is a sham than in forcing a more honest question: how open is the elite, how accountable, and how far can democratic institutions constrain it? As an analytical tool it keeps the study of democracy realistic; as a normative warning it defends the ideal of genuine popular participation against complacency.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner expects the answer to be built squarely on Mills's concept — the fusion of corporate, political and military orders — rather than a generic account of powerful people. Naming the three institutional orders and the idea of the passive mass immediately signals command of the term.
The word importance rewards a discussion of what the concept teaches us about democracy, both as critique and as warning. The strongest ten-mark scripts then introduce the pluralist counter-argument of Dahl and locate Mills within the classical elite tradition of Pareto, closing with a balanced verdict. That two-sided treatment, rather than an uncritical restatement of Mills, is what secures the top band.