The New Power Elite

Alan Shipman, June Edmunds, Bryan Turner

Description

A compact, comprehensive account of who’s at the top, and why we let them get there.

The key questions about today’s elites are easy to ask. How did a few spectacularly wealthy bankers and fund managers, whose magic money-tree crumbled to sawdust in 2008, get themselves bailed out with public funds that no health service or infrastructure commission could dream of? Why did democratically elected governments allow the ‘1%’, and those at even more exquisite decimal places, to flee further enriched from a market meltdown that would traditionally have culled their ‘capital’? Why, when voters in America, Europe and Asia turned against governments that had made them pay twice for corporate excess, did they rally behind dissenting members of the elite, rather than traditional anti-elitist parties? What enables the domination of politics and business by an unchosen few – skewing the distributions of power, wealth and status even further skywards – when such pyramids were meant to be flattened long ago by democratization, meritocratic selection and social mobility?

‘Greedy Elites’ derives answers from the latest empirical evidence on rising concentrations of economic and political power, allied to new theories of how elites maintain, apply and justify their ascent over the rest of the society. It traces contemporary turbulence to the membership and internal dynamics of elites – economic, political and social – and the way they manage their connections to the rest of society. The composition and conduct of decision-making ‘higher circles’ remains central to explaining how national and multilateral political arrangements remain stable for long periods, interspersed with phases of abrupt change. ‘Greedy Elites’ also sheds light on why the patterns of change are often common across countries that differ in strength of democracy and civil society, and why they typically raise fractions of the previous elite to greater prominence, despite mass protest aimed at bringing the whole elite down to earth. Sixty years after C. Wright Mills’s pioneering probe of the Power Elite in the US, ‘Greedy Elites’ offers new and internationally applicable ideas on the importance of frictions within the elite in sparking and steering wider social change; the shifting relationship between power and money within elites; the alternative ways in which elite fractions enrol ‘middle’ and ‘working’ class elements in their power struggles, and the typical developmental consequences of elites alternately forming and breaking up distributional class coalitions.

List of Illustrations; Preface; 1. Elites under Siege; 2. Power, Networks and Higher Circles; 3. Sources of Stability: Elite Circulations and Class Coalitions; 4. Rousing Rebellion: Elite Fractions and Class Divisions; 5. Politics and Money; 6. Inequality: Causes and Consequences; 7. Elites and Democracy; 8. Giveaways and Greed; Afterword: The Best and the Rest; References; Index.

Sujets

• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Political economy

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 13 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783087891
• Langue: English

Extrait

The New Power Elite
ANTHEM’S KEY ISSUES IN MODERN SOCIOLOGY
Anthem’s Key Issues in Modern Sociology series publishes scholarly texts by leading social theorists that give an accessible exposition of the major structural changes in modern societies. These volumes address an academic audience through their relevance and scholarly quality, and connect sociological thought to public issues. The series covers both substantive and theoretical topics, as well as addressing the works of major modern sociologists. The series emphasis is on modern developments in sociology with relevance to contemporary issues such as globalization, warfare, citizenship, human rights, environmental crises, demographic change, religion, postsecularism and civil conflict.
Series Editor
Peter Kivisto – Augustana College, USA
Editorial Board
Harry F. Dahms – University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA
Thomas Faist – Bielefeld University, Germany
Anne Rawls – Bentley University, USA
Giuseppe Sciortino – University of Trento, Italy
Sirpa Wrende – University of Helsinki, Finland
Richard York – University of Oregon, USA
The New Power Elite
Inequality, Politics and Greed
Alan Shipman, June Edmunds and Bryan S. Turner
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© Alan Shipman, June Edmunds and Bryan S. Turner 2018

The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-787-7 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-787-0 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter One
Elites under Siege
Chapter Two
Power, Networks and Higher Circles
Chapter Three
Sources of Stability: Elite Circulations and Class Coalitions
Chapter Four
Rousing Rebellion: Elite Fractions and Class Divisions
Chapter Five
Politics and Money
Chapter Six
Inequality: Causes and Consequences
Chapter Seven
Elites and Democracy
Chapter Eight
Giveaways and Greed
Afterword: The Best and the Rest
References
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
6.1 Distribution of average income growth during expansions, US, 1949–2012
6.2 Average household real income, US, 1979–2011
Tables
2.1 Degree of closure and extent of ties
4.1 UK latent class structure
4.2 Yesterday’s harmonious trajectory
4.3 Today’s discordant trajectory
5.1 Phases of political and commercial elite orientation
7.1 Redistributive options among three classes and the state
PREFACE
The key questions about today’s elites are easy to ask. How did a few spectacularly wealthy bankers and fund managers , whose magic money tree crumbled to sawdust in 2008, get themselves bailed out with public funds that no health service or infrastructure commission could dream of? Why did democratically elected governments allow the ‘1 per cent’, and those at even more exquisite decimal places, to flee further enriched from a market meltdown that would traditionally have culled their ‘capital’? Why, when voters in America, Europe and Asia turned against governments that had made them pay twice for corporate excess, did they rally behind dissenting members of the elite rather than traditional anti-elitist parties? What enables the domination of politics and business by an unchosen few – skewing the distributions of power, wealth and status even further skywards – when such pyramids were meant to be flattened long ago by democratization, meritocratic selection and social mobility?
The New Power Elite derives answers from the latest empirical evidence on rising concentrations of economic and political power , allied to new theories of how elites maintain, apply and justify their ascent over the rest of society. It traces contemporary turbulence to the membership and internal dynamics of elites – economic, political and social – and the way they manage their connections to the rest of society. The composition and conduct of decision-making ‘higher circles ’ remains central to explaining how national and multilateral political arrangements remain stable for long periods, interspersed with phases of abrupt change. It also sheds light on why the patterns of change are often common across countries that differ in strength of democracy and civil society , and why they typically raise fractions of the previous elite to greater prominence, despite mass protest aimed at bringing the whole elite down to earth. Sixty years after C. Wright Mills ’s pioneering probe of the Power Elite in the United States, we offer new and internationally applicable ideas on the importance of friction within the elite in sparking and steering wider social change; the shifting relationship between power and money within elites; the alternative ways in which elite fractions enrol ‘middle’- and ‘working’-class elements in their power struggles; and the typical developmental consequences of elites alternately forming and breaking up distributional class coalitions.
Elites and Classes
We make the case that elite analysis, while complementing rather than substituting class analysis, was too long subordinated to it. Social classes and the (distributional) coalitions formed between them are important for political stability, economic progress and the phases of instability that punctuate that progress. But elites, possessing an agency and cohesion that classes inevitably lack, are instrumental in creating and maintaining these coalitions. Intra-elite tensions and rivalries play an equally essential part in breaking up and realigning them. In every country, when a sizeable ‘middle class ’ emerges as a third force between landowners and peasants , it plays a key role in creating the stable political arrangements that push economic development into industrialization. Renegade elite fractions, whose only reinforcements once came from the ‘mass’, now have a safer intermediate group to turn to for support in seeking political change (achieved by replacing the incumbent fraction or forcing it in a new direction).
Successful coalition-building invites its own destruction because an expanding middle class becomes divided, with upper and lower elements losing shared interest while finding affinity with classes above and below. While middle-class expansion usually means a shrinking working class , this too can become divided. Those who gain a measure of protection from the employers and professionals above them lose antagonism towards them, and may aspire to join them; those who lack such protection lose any loyalty to the boss, but may be open to alliance with an elite that can battle that boss from above. Elite-driven policy responses, especially the promotion of globalization and technological innovation often treated as ‘exogenous’, can lead to a re-expansion of the working class whose legally protected ‘insider ’ and unprotected ‘outsider ’ elements make it even more easily divided. The simultaneous sharpening of competing class interests and fraying of intra-class cohesion enables increasingly powerful elites to divide, rule and prolong their own ascendancy.
The shift (with advancing industrialization) from a simple owner/worker division to as many as seven discernible classes widens the available options for elites to build coalitions, and for renegade fractions to split them by reviving class antagonism. We give past and contemporary examples to illustrate the theoretical possibilities in action, linking strands of economic history and historical sociology which ‘political economy ’ has only just started to connect. Social sciences’ continued focus on class, while helping to understand the increasingly complex stratification below the elite level, has led to neglect of the agency that mobilizes class interests and converts them into policy – which can only be exercised by smaller numbers that have floated above the class system.
The Argument in Brief
Chapter 1 gives an overview of the global reaction against elites since the start of the century, observing that holders of concentrated power and wealth sought to ground this in expertise and accountability precisely when publics were ceasing to view these as justifications. Rising expectations of what elite rule should deliver, alongside political and economic limits on what they could do, led to increased questioning of elites’ competence and sensitivity towards their corruption , turning their unrepresentativeness from a source of prestige into a further incitement to revolt. A charge sheet emerges, summarized in the table below, which at first suggests an existential challenge to elites’ lo