Elite Theory and Development of the Methodology for Researching Economic Well-Being in Mass Society

The paper focuses on the design of methodological approaches to examining the role of elites in the new economic reality. The authors analyse the possibilities of the elite and mass society theories to form a reliable methodological basis for developing the economics of well-being. They demonstrate that a game-theoretic approach to the analysis of conflicts of interest between different social groups (in the ultimate case, between the country’s elite and its citizens, population) adopted in the works of D. Asemo? glu, J.A. Robinson and S. Johnson is naturally extended by an institutional approach to the study of elites as subjects of the institute of leadership in society. Institute of leadership includes norms that shape new institutions in the behavior of elites and citizens (population). The paper proves that in the public and private sectors of the modern mixed economy there are the same institutions for diametrically opposite decision-making: the public sector relies on the political mechanism, whereas the private sector uses the market mechanism. The institute of leadership is, then, among the most important institutions of society and forms part of the mechanism of elitist democracy and altimeter economics.