Normally, answers to the first two questions will produce an answer to the third, because a re-orientation of the elite towards different sets of issues and towards a different ideology and pattern of practices will accompany the preceding changes. Only rarely does an elite have within itself, without external infiltration, or upset by revolt, the capacity for self-change or inner transformation. The elite of the Roman city state accomplished a re-orientation to a republican empire without losing its original character or personnel. Ordinarily, however, a threatened elite exhibits confusion, self-contradiction, escapism, or other decadent symptoms. The obvious importance of this is that integrated elites though more heterogeneous than the separate pluralities and less vulnerable to separatistic propaganda, and more capable of swift and decisive action on behalf of the whole elite.
Centralization is also to be watched for the same reason.
By illustration here is meant such phenomena as the replacement of a Chamberlain by a Churchill as prime minister, or the replacement of a Hindenburg by a Hitler. From one set of issues to another . Sometimes the principle component of a power shift is the moving of elite attention from one to another group of issues. This may occur without any of the other types of powershifts, though normally, like all other changes, it is usually part of a multiple action complex. Sometimes the very success of an elite presents it with a set of issues to which it must face up.