Studying the Power Elite
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ELITES, POWER SOURCES and DEMOCRACY by DENZ YETKN
ELITES, POWER SOURCES AND DEMOCRACY by DEN İZ YETK İN Submitted to the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Sabancı University 2008 ELITES, POWER SOURCES AND DEMOCRACY APPROVED BY: Asst. Prof. Dr.Nedim Nomer: ……………………. (Dissertation Supervisor) Prof. Sabri Sayarı: ……………………. Prof. Tülay Artan: ……………………. DATE OF APPROVAL: …………………… To my parents... © Deniz Yetkin 2008 All Rights Reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………vi Abstract...……………………………………………………………………………..…vii Özet…….……………………………………………………………………………….viii INTRODUCTION .…………………………………………………….......…………....1 CHAPTER 1..……………………………………………………………………………6 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF ELITE DISCUSSION 1.1 Machiavelli and His Followers……………………………………………....7 1.2 The Classical Elite Theorists……………………………………………......8 1.2.1 Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) and the ‘Governing Elite’…………..…….....8 1.2.2 Gaetano Mosca (1858- 1941) and the ‘Ruling Class’……….………...….21 1.2.3 Robert Michels (1876-1936) and the ‘Dominant Class’……………...…..23 1.2.4 C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) and ‘The Power Elite’………..……………26 1.3 Who are Elites? ……………………………………………………………30 CHAPTER 2 ..……………………………………………………………….………….32 POWER SOURCES, POWER SCOPE OF ELITES, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF DEMOCRACY 2.1 Power and Democracy in Classical Elite Theories...……………………….33 2.2. A New Approach to Elites, Power Sources and Democracy...…………….38 CONCLUSION ..……………………………………………………………………….47 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………….……..49 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Asst. Prof. Nedim Nomer. I believe that without his support and guidance the writing of this thesis would have been difficult. Moreover, I am grateful to Prof. Sabri Sayarı and Prof. Tülay Artan for their precious comments. Apart from academic realm, I also would like to thank all my friends: I am grateful to my friends at Sabancı University for making my study enjoyable. -
Underclass, Overclass, Ruling Class, Supernova Class1
EIGHT Underclass, overclass, ruling class, supernova class1 Danny Dorling Introduction One man in his mid-thirties hoped that his six-figure income would grow rapidly, and admitted that his assets would be valued at nearly a million pounds. He held strong views about poverty. “There is no poverty. Now you can get money from the state. People don’t even have to go to work. You don’t have to put up with working in an unrewarding situation.” He strongly disagreed with the propositions that the gap between rich and poor was too wide and that the rich should be more highly taxed. He strongly opposed the idea of putting limits on “some people’s expensive way of living” to reduce poverty and disagreed with the statement that a lot of people entitled to claim benefits do not claim them. Finally, he strongly agreed that cuts in public services like health and education could be made without increasing the number of people in poverty and that, if there was any poverty, it was more likely to be reduced by increasing Britain’s wealth than by making incomes more equal. (Peter Townsend, describing the views of one of the new overclass of London, recorded in 1985-86; see Townsend, 1993, p 109) By 2010 one in ten of all Londoners had the wealth of the man who Peter had described some 25 years earlier as being part of a tiny elite 155 fighting poverty, inequality and social injustice (see Hills et al, 2010). The Hills inquiry into inequality revealed that one in ten Londoners now have wealth of nearly a million pounds, some 273 times the wealth of the poorest tenth of today’s Londoners. -
The Coming Constitutional Yo-Yo? Elite Opinion, Polarization, and the Direction of Judicial Decision Making
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Digital Commons @ UM Law The Coming Constitutional Yo-Yo? Elite Opinion, Polarization, and the Direction of Judicial Decision Making MARK A. GRABER* I. LIFE TENURE, ELITE STATUS, AND ELECTORAL RETURNS IN ISOLATION ........... 669 II. LIFE TENURE, ELITE STATUS, AND ELECTORAL RETURNS IN COMBINATION ....... 681 III. ELITE CONSENSUS AND THE WARREN COURT ................................................ 684 IV. ELITE POLARIZATION AND THE LATE REHNQUIST/ROBERTS COURT ..................... 693 V. THE COMING CONSTITUTIONAL YO-YO ......... 704 VI. TOO UNSETTLING? .................................. 713 Students of constitutional law provide two kinds of explanations for judicial decisions. Law professors traditionally emphasize the in- ternal or constitutional law foundations for judicial rulings. These in- clude the constitutional text, past precedent, the original understanding of the persons responsible for constitutional language and fundamental constitutional values.1 Political scientists more com- monly focus on the external and institutional foundations for judicial decisions. These include life tenure, the structure of partisan composi- tion, the behavior of those persons responsible for staffing the federal judiciary, and broader cultural forces.2 * Professor of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. I am very, very grateful to everyone at the Howard Law Journal for their editing and forbearance. 1. For one account of the different forms of constitutional arguments, see PHILIP BOBBITT, CONSTITUTIONAL FATE: THEORY OF THE CONSTITUTION (1992). 2. For the variety of institutional and external forces that political scientists claim influence judicial decision making, see HOWARD GILLMAN ET AL., AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM: VOL- UME I: STRUCTURES OF GOVERNMENT 14-18 (2013). -
Giants: the Global Power Elite
Secrecy and Society ISSN: 2377-6188 Volume 2 Number 2 Teaching Secrecy Article 13 January 2021 Giants: The Global Power Elite Susan Maret San Jose State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/secrecyandsociety Part of the Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Other Sociology Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, and the Public Affairs, Public olicyP and Public Administration Commons Recommended Citation Maret, Susan. 2021. "Giants: The Global Power Elite." Secrecy and Society 2(2). https://doi.org/10.31979/2377-6188.2021.020213 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/ secrecyandsociety/vol2/iss2/13 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Information at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Secrecy and Society by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Giants: The Global Power Elite Keywords human rights, C. Wright Mills, openness, power elite, secrecy, transnational corporations, transparency This book review is available in Secrecy and Society: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/ secrecyandsociety/vol2/iss2/13 Maret: Giants: The Global Power Elite Review, Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Philips Reviewed by Susan Maret Giants: The Global Power Elite, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018. 384pp. / ISBN: 9781609808716 (paperback) / ISBN: 9781609808723 (ebook) https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4097-giants The strength of Giants: The Global Power Elite lies in its heavy documentation of the "globalized power elite, [a] concept of the Transnationalist Capitalist Class (TCC), theorized in the academic literature for some twenty years" (Phillips 2018, 9). -
World Bank Document
Public Disclosure Authorized AUTHOR ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT PRELIMINARY INFORMATION Stability and Vulnerability of the Latin American Middle Class Accepted for publication in Oxford Development Studies To be published by Taylor and Francis Public Disclosure Authorized THE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THE PUBLISHER’S PLATFORM This Author Accepted Manuscript is copyrighted by the World Bank and published by Taylor and Francis. It is posted here by agreement between them. Changes resulting from the publishing process—such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms—may not be reflected in this version of the text. This Author Accepted Manuscript is under embargo for external use and is made available for internal World Bank use only. It is not for distribution outside the World Bank. Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized © 2013 The World Bank Stability and Vulnerability of the Latin American Middle Class Florencia Torche1 and Luis F. Lopez-Calva2 1 Department of Sociology New York University 2 World Bank, Poverty and Equity, PREM-LAC The authors would like to thank Eduardo Ortiz Juarez for excellent research assistance. 1 Stability and Vulnerability of the Latin American Middle Class* Florencia Torche and Luis F. Lopez-Calva Abstract Using panel datasets from Mexico and Chile for the first years of the 21st century, we examine the determinants of middle-class intra-generational mobility. We define the middle class by means of a latent index of economic well-being that is less sensitive to short-term fluctuation and measurement error than standard measures of income. We find high rates of both upward and downward mobility in Mexico and Chile, indicating that the middle class has opportunities to move to higher levels of well-being but is also vulnerable to falling into poverty. -
Rationale for the Development of an Orientation Program for Urban African American Students at Bowling Green State University
RATIONALE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ORIENTATION PROGRAM FOR URBAN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS AT BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY Ana Brown A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF EDUCATION August 2010 Committee: Kathryn S. Hoff, Ph.D., Advisor Paul A. Cesarini, Ph.D. Bettina C. Shuford, Ph.D. Dafina Lazarus Stewart, Ph.D. ii ABSTRACT Kathryn S. Hoff, Advisor The problem of this study was to explore social and cultural issues of acclimation faced by self-identified urban, Black/African American students at Bowling Green State University, a predominantly White institution. Included in the literature review was information about historical context, relevant racial identity theory, and current literature on the topic. Juniors, seniors, and recent BGSU graduates (from Spring 2007 to the present) who participated in the Sidney A. Ribeau President’s Leadership Academy (PLA) and/or the Office of Residence Life Students of Color Mentoring, Aiding, Retaining, and Teaching (SMART) Program were solicited via e-mail to participate in an online, open-ended survey. Four themes occurred consistently throughout the responses from participants: denial of personal acclimation issues, the effect of quality exposure to Whites and/or predominantly White environments prior to arriving at BGSU, the benefit of participation in PLA/SMART, and the need to address certain issues to smooth transition. The recommendations from the researcher include conducting -
The Politics of Poverty: Elites, Citizens and States
The Politics of Poverty: Elites, Citizens and States Findings from ten years of DFID-funded research on Governance and Fragile States 2001–2010 A Synthesis Paper Acknowledgements This paper was written by DFID Research and Evidence Division Staff, with help and advice from Graeme Ramshaw of IDS and from the directors and staff of the four Re search centres. Disclaimer: This synthesis presents some key findings of DFID-funded research and the resulting policy recommendations of the researchers: it does not necessarily reflect DFID policy. Cover Photo: Justice and Peace Commissioners, Masisi, DR Congo. © Sarah MacGregor / DFID The Politics of Poverty: Elites, Citizens, and States EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Executive Summary Evidence shows that in order to deliver sustainable international development we must be able to understand and work with its politics. Governance describes the way countries and societies manage their affairs politically and the way power and authority are exercised. For the poorest and most vulnerable, the difference that good, or particularly bad, governance, makes to their lives is profound: the inability of government institutions to prevent conflict, provide basic security, or basic services can have life-or-death consequences; lack of opportunity can prevent generations of poor families from lifting themselves out of poverty; and the inability to grow economically and collect taxes can keep countries trapped in a cycle of aid-dependency. Understanding governance, therefore, is central to achieving development and ending conflict. During the 1990s donors came to realise that development required better ‘governance’, and DFID recognised early on the need to work with the research community to identify ways of improving governance for better development outcomes. -
SOCIAL CLASS in AMERICA TRANSCRIPT – FULL Version
PEOPLE LIKE US: SOCIAL CLASS IN AMERICA TRANSCRIPT – FULL Version Photo of man on porch dressed in white tank top and plaid shorts MAN: He looks lower class, definitely. And if he’s not, then he’s certainly trying to look lower class. WOMAN: Um, blue collar, yeah, plaid shorts. MAN: Lower middle class, something about the screen door behind him. WOMAN ON RIGHT, BROWN HAIR: Pitiful! WOMAN ON LEFT, BLOND HAIR, SUNGLASSES: Lower class. BLACK WOMAN, STANDING WITH WHITE MAN IN MALL: I mean, look how high his pants are up–my god! Wait a minute–I’m sorry, no offense. Something he would do. Photo of slightly older couple. Man is dressed in crisp white shirt, woman in sleeveless navy turtle neck with pearl necklace. WOMAN: Upper class. MAN: Yeah, definitely. WOMAN: Oh yeah. WOMAN: He look like he the CEO of some business. OLD WOMAN: The country club set- picture of smugness. GUY ON STREET: The stereotypical “my family was rich, I got the money after they died, now we’re happily ever after.” They don’t really look that happy though. Montage of images: the living situations of different social classes Song: “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.” People Like Us – Transcript - page 2 R. COURI HAY, society columnist: It’s basically against the American principle to belong to a class. So, naturally Americans have a really hard time talking about the class system, because they really don’t want to admit that the class system exists. -
Inside the Middle Class
Inside the Middle Class: Bad Times Hit the Good Life FOR RELEASE WEDNESDAY APRIL 9, 2008 12:00PM EDT Paul Taylor, Project Director Rich Morin, Senior Editor D'Vera Cohn, Senior Writer Richard Fry, Senior Researcher Rakesh Kochhar, Senior Researcher April Clark, Research Associate MEDIA INQUIRIES CONTACT: Pew Research Center 202 419 4372 http://pewresearch.org ii Table of Contents Foreword…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...3 Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5 Overview……………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………7 Section One – A Self-Portrait 1. The Middle Class Defines Itself ………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………..28 2. The Middle Class Squeeze………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………..…….36 3. Middle Class Finances ……………………………………………………………………………………………….…………….……………………..47 4. Middle Class Priorities and Values………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………….53 5. Middle Class Jobs ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………….65 6. Middle Class Politics…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………71 About the Pew Social and Demographic Trends Project ……………………………………………………….…………………………….78 Questionnaire and topline …………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………………..79 Section Two – A Statistical Portrait 7. Middle Income Demography, 1970-2006…………………………………………………………………………………………………………110 8. Trends in Income, Expenditures, Wealth and Debt………………………………………..…………………………………………….140 Section Two Appendix ……………………………………………………….…………………………………………………………………………………..163 -
Elite Decision Making
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior Elite Decision Making Contributors: Ivan Cerovac Edited by: Fathali M. Moghaddam Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior Chapter Title: "Elite Decision Making" Pub. Date: 2017 Access Date: June 6, 2017 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks, Print ISBN: 9781483391168 Online ISBN: 9781483391144 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483391144.n110 Print pages: 238-239 ©2017 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book. SAGE SAGE Reference Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. Elite decision making refers to a collective decision-making process that focuses on the instrumental quality of laws, public policies, and political decisions it produces. Since the process aims at producing outcomes of considerable substantive quality, it organizes the existing capacities within a political community to achieve the desired outcome, thus giving greater (or even all) political power to a small group of people (i.e., experts) who are considered to be better at producing correct political decisions. This term has been a central issue in numerous discussions for the last 2,500 years and still represents a relevant political idea because of its strong influence regarding which political system we can see as legitimate. This entry briefly introduces the rationale for elite decision making and discusses various forms elite decision making can take in democratic and nondemocratic systems. The entry concludes with a few influential objections raised against elite decision-making procedures. -
Philadelphia and the Southern Elite: Class, Kinship, and Culture in Antebellum America
PHILADELPHIA AND THE SOUTHERN ELITE: CLASS, KINSHIP, AND CULTURE IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA BY DANIEL KILBRIDE A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1997 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In seeing this dissertation to completion I have accumulated a host of debts and obligation it is now my privilege to acknowledge. In Philadelphia I must thank the staff of the American Philosophical Society library for patiently walking out box after box of Society archives and miscellaneous manuscripts. In particular I must thank Beth Carroll- Horrocks and Rita Dockery in the manuscript room. Roy Goodman in the Library’s reference room provided invaluable assistance in tracking down secondary material and biographical information. Roy is also a matchless authority on college football nicknames. From the Society’s historian, Whitfield Bell, Jr., I received encouragement, suggestions, and great leads. At the Library Company of Philadelphia, Jim Green and Phil Lapansky deserve special thanks for the suggestions and support. Most of the research for this study took place in southern archives where the region’s traditions of hospitality still live on. The staff of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History provided cheerful assistance in my first stages of manuscript research. The staffs of the Filson Club Historical Library in Louisville and the Special Collections room at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond were also accommodating. Special thanks go out to the men and women at the three repositories at which the bulk of my research was conducted: the Special Collections Library at Duke University, the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Virginia Historical Society. -
Working Paper Series
WORKING PAPER SERIES THE CONNECTEDNESSOF IVORY TOWERSAND INNERCITIES CONVERSATIONSABOUT US AND THEM By Sharon E. Sutton, James E. Crowfoot, Mark Chesler, Edith Lewis, and Helen Weingarten PCMA Working CRSO Worlung Paper #46 Paper #527 April 1995 The Program on Conflict Management Alternatives at the University of Michlgan THE PROGRAM ON CONFLICT MANAGEMENT-ALTERNATIVES The Program on Conflict Management Alternatives was established in January, 1986 by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and additional funds from the University of Michigan. These basic grants were renewed in July, 1988 and again in July, 1991. The Program supports an agenda of research, application, and theory development. PCMA also establishes links among other university research and teaching efforts relevant to conflict management alternatives, and maintains liaison and collaboration with similar efforts in other Universities and Practitioner agencies. The Program staffers own work focuses explicitly on the relationship between social justice and social conflict, specifically: (a) the use of innovative settlement procedures and roles for disputants and third parties; (b) the institutionalization of innovative mechanisms and the adoption of organizational and community structures that permanently alter the way conflicts are managed; and (c) the fundamental differences and inequalities between parties that often create conflict and threaten its stable resolution. We examine these issues primarily in United States' settings, in conflicts arising within and between families, organizations and commu'nities, and between different racial, gender, and economic constituencies. These specific efforts are supported by a variety of research and action ! grants/contracts with governmental agencies, foundations, and private and public organizations/agencies. The Program in Conflict Management Alternatives is housed within the Centerfor Research on Social Organization, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Room 4016 LS&A Building, Telephone: (3 13) 763-0472.