The power elite and elite-driven countermovements: The associated farmers of california during the 1930s

The involvement of the power elite in social movements has been a neglected area of research. The investigation of elites has generally been limited to that of local elites, political parties, and philanthropic foundations, and their involvement in social movements is believed limited to resource support (either to further or deter the progress of an insurgent social movement) or the institutional obstruction or facilitation of the movement. I contend that under specific conditions, the power elite may become active mobilizers, leaders, and supporters of countermovements (movements to deter insurgent movements). These conditions arise during periods of heightened insurgent movement activity and when the efficacy of institutional channels to safeguard or advance the interests of the power elite is reduced. This is illustrated in the case of the Associated Farmers of California, Inc., a countermovement aimed at interfering with and obstructing the attempts of farmworkers to strike and unionize during the 1930s by enlisting citizens and citizen groups as anti-unionization shock troops. It also opposed New Deal policies and legislation. The mobilization of nonelites into the Associated Farmers originated in and was carried out by agricultural and industrial elite of California to advance their own interests. Citizens allied with the Associated Farmers either because of ideological alignment with their goals or dependence on their economic activities. The theoretical ramifications of this example will be explored.     

Transnational class formation and spatialities of power: the case of elite competition in Bolivia

In this article, I argue that the neoliberal and counter‐neoliberal transitions in Bolivia secured the power of transnational capital within the country. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bolivia's mining elite used neoliberal strategies to undermine the interests of the country's agricultural elite and pursued a marriage of convenience with transnational capital that allowed both to enter state‐monopolized spaces of investment in mutually beneficial ways. In Bolivia's counter‐neoliberal turn, leftist social movements and political parties removed the elite from power but were dependent on transnational firms to help them use the country's natural resource wealth to fund programmes of socioeconomic change. Engaging theories of the transnational class formation, I assert that scholars need to acknowledge how different capitalist class fractions have distinct spatialities of power. In particular, it is necessary to distinguish between global elites that participate in local circuits of accumulation and local elites that participate in global circuits of accumulation.     

Elites and Collective Protest*

Efforts to explain collective protest have increasingly stressed the causal significance of elite structure and behavior. This trend is an unexamined manifestation of the broader and widely discussed trend away from “pluralistic” theories and toward “political” theories. But thus far, applications of the elite concept have been largely ad hoc, with little attention paid to its theoretical status or to developing it as an analytical tool. This problem can be rectified by turning to the neoelitist paradigm on which a number of scholars have been working in recent years. In particular, the neoelitist paradigm provides a conceptualization of unified and disunified elites which is theoretically and empirically grounded, capable of operationalization, generally applicable, and which plausibly helps account for variations in political conflict. It therefore complements and carries forward recent developments in the collective protest literature. This implies that the neoelitist paradigm merits serious attention alongside pluralist and Marxist paradigms as a guiding framework for macro social and political analysis.     

Why Do Political Elites Fracture? The Unusual Case of the Yugoslav Communist Elite

After World War II, Yugoslavia as a state was reconstituted by a small communist elite. Since this was an ideocratic rule, ideology was taken seriously by the elite and treated enthusiastically. One of the elite’s initial goals was to speedily develop Yugoslavia, so that a Western level of economic development be achieved. Economic disparities among regions were also to have been overcome. For various reasons, this objective was never close to being achieved, although in certain periods economic development was strong. The elite tried to speed up growth by various incentives, including worker self-management. Failure to achieve this goal and various economic troubles first precipitated mutual acrimony within the elite along national lines, while at the next stage, it brought about ethnic segmentation of the elite itself. By 1972, the elite had dissolved into national, although still communist, elites. The major reasons for this process are found in the very failure to achieve the developmental goal, in the consociational nature of the political system, and in the nature of the political elites, which were national ones. Elite segmentation sheds important light on the dissolution of the Yugoslav state.     

Leadership Trends in Advanced Democracies

Political sociology suggests two inter‐related leadership trends in advanced democracies: the increasing prominence of political leaders, and the waning influence of political parties, especially the ideological‐programmatic ‘mass parties’ or Volksparteien. These trends intensified and reinforced each other over the last 30–40 years resulting in a rapidly changing physiognomy of contemporary democracy. Democratic politics becomes more elite driven, mass‐mediated and populist in style than in the past. Moreover, the power and elite structures in advanced democracies, as well as the electoral competition, increasingly resemble what Weber labelled ‘leader democracy’. The shift towards ‘leader democracy’ has coincided with the processes of party‐voter dealignment and decline of political parties, the rise of the electronic mass media, and the ascendancy of powerful leaders–reformers in the ‘core’ liberal democracies. The sociological argument about the shift is anchored in a theoretical framework derived from works of Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter. It depicts democratic political leaders as key political actors embedded in broader elites, motivated by determination and commitment, and empowered by the resources of modern states and the mass media.     

Accounting for success and failure in policy implementation: The role of commitment in India's MGNREGA

Commitment or political will is often notable by its absence. While lack of commitment is a key factor in policy failure, it has been challenging to identify and operationalize how commitment can shape successful implementation. This article applies Brinkerhoff's (2000) framework of expressions of commitment to explain how commitment of policy elites shape policy implementation processes. Evidence for five characteristics of commitment traces these expressions from two types of policy elites — politicians and bureaucrats. Primary data from four Indian states were used—Chhatisgarh, Assam, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh—to examine the case of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA). The data were collected through interviews with state‐level elites, supplemented by secondary data on the political economy of these states. In explaining how successes and failures of the MGNREGA are attributable to the commitment of these actors, the article considers the politics of policy implementation. It argues that commitment is critical at the sub‐national level in India, and explains the different outcomes of MGNREGA in the four states. The article considers how to strengthen policy implementation, and demonstrates that this can be done through capitalizing on positive feedback loops between different strands of commitment, as well as between commitment of administrative elites and political party leaders. The paper concludes that commitment and capacity feed off each other, improving implementation of social policies.     

Embedding and disembedding of political elites: a filter system approach

This article looks at the issue of political disengagement in mature democracies and the growing tendency towards disconnect between citizens and their political representatives. It locates itself in relation to ‘demand‐side’ (external to politics) and critical ‘supply‐side’ (focused on the political centre) explanations of disengagement. It concentrates on the latter and, accordingly, builds on critical, post‐Marxist and elite‐oriented work. As such it follows on from earlier calls in the journal for a return to elite‐based research (Savage and Williams, 2008). Drawing on general concepts in economic sociology (Polanyi, Granovetter) the article presents an alternative embedding‐disembedding paradigm for explaining and evaluating this tendency towards political elite disengagement. The propensity for politicians to disembed from wider society is explained by way of a series of eight ‘filters’. Such filters work, alone or cumulatively, both to socially embed political elites within the institutions and networks of formal politics and also to disembed them from wider society and the populace they represent. The interpretive framework outlined here draws on a combination of secondary literature and ongoing interview‐based research with some 150 political actors (politicians, journalists, officials) working at Westminster. As such, the filters and embedding‐disembedding paradigm focuses primarily on the UK case. However, the framework is easily adaptable to other nations and systems.     

Who are in charge,who do i work with,and who are my friends: A latent space approach to understanding elite coappearances in China

How ruling elite arrange and maintain their power-sharing is key to our understanding of authoritarian politics. We analyze the dynamics of elite power-sharing in authoritarian regimes using a network framework that embeds actors onto a low-dimensional space. We also introduce a novel dataset tracking appearances of elite Chinese Community Party (CCP) members at political events. Our framework and data allow us to disentangle three key aspects of CCP elite power-sharing: (1) who are in charge, (2) who do I work with, and (3) who are my friends. Using a latent factor network analysis of approximately 10,000 appearance records of over 200 top CCP elites from 2013 to 2017, we empirically assess these three questions by computing elites’ total appearances, dyadic coappearances, and their distance in a latent social space. We test how well these three indicators fare at predicting elites’ appointments to the leading small groups (LSGs) of the CCP Central Committee and the Central Government, and from that analysis are able to highlight the need to account for the indirect ties elites share.     

The upside‐down roots of a transnational advocacy network: applying an ‘organizational ecology’ approach to the anti‐GMO network

In this article, I examine a transnational advocacy network opposed to the introduction of genetically modified crops and supportive of organic agriculture in India. I argue that this network illustrates some of the consequences of ‘upward oriented linkages’, in which professional NGO brokers focus on constructing relationships with other professional or elite partner bodies such as donor organizations, global retailers and the English language media. The ‘upside‐down’ tree that results has roots pointing upwards to global partners and to domestic elite actors but is less responsive, and less tightly bound, to mass organizations and to its purported non‐elite constituency of marginal farmers. I make this case through a methodological approach I term ‘organizational ecology’ in which I explore the idea of NGO based advocacy organizations as filling ‘niches’ in the larger political ecology of rural India and within this ‘ecology’ forming symbiotic connections to other organizations.     

RESOURCE MOBILIZATION: AN ANALYSIS OF CONFLICTING THEORETICAL VARIATIONS

Although resource mobilization theory has brought a number of advances to the field of social movements, it does not constitute a unified body of theory. The principal divisions exist between McCarthy and Zald's "professional organizer" model and McAdam's "political process" model. Their disagreements are centered mainly around their conceptualizations of the role that elites play in the formation and development of social movements. It is believed that these differences can be reconciled by returning to the original precepts of resource mobilization theory.     

English as a medium of instruction and the discursive construction of elite identity

Debates over medium of instruction, as ideological skirmishes, showcase discursive identity construction, reproduction, and contestation by different social groups. Drawing on such debates in letters to the editor and internet‐based newsgroup posts written by Bangladeshi English‐medium (EM) and Bangla‐medium (BM) educated writers, this article examines the construction of elite identity by the EM educated group. It illustrates how this group drew on changing discourses of elitism, language ideologies, and other identity resources to construct self‐identity that emphasized the achievement of qualifications and attributes rather than unearned social privilege, and how the territorially bound elite identity was transformed into deterritorialized cosmopolitan identity in the process. The article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between language, identity, and society by illustrating struggles for identity and status maintenance in education that is increasingly being dominated by English and English as a medium of instruction under the influence of neoliberal globalization. It also suggests how English and national languages may relate to (post)colonialism, nationalism, national identity, and social class in a globalized world.     

The effects of language on judgments of universal facial expressions of emotion

Because of the close connection between culture and language, a number of writers have suggested that bilinguals will differ in their behavior because of differences in the degree of assimilation of different cultures in the same individual. We tested this notion by obtaining data from bilingual (English and Hindi) college students in India using a well-studied cross-cultural research paradigm involving emotional perception. Subjects judged universal facial expressions of emotion in two separate sessions, one conducted entirely in English, the other in Hindi. In each session, they judged which emotion was being portrayed, and how intensely. Subjects recognized anger, fear, and sadness more accurately in English than in Hindi. They also attributed greater intensity to female photos of anger when rating in Hindi, but attributed greater intensity to female photos of sadness when rating in English. These findings were discussed in relation to the theoretical connection between culture and language.     

State Building as a Source of Islamic Political Organization1

Previous research on political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa has been limited in providing a generalizable theory of its origins and systematically account for the cross‐national variation in the prevalence of Islamic movements. Following a state‐centered approach, this study argues that state‐building activities are a primary origin of Islamic movements. Regimes adopt religious symbolism and functions that legitimate the role of Islam in the public sphere. State incorporation of religion thus creates Islam as a frame for political action, with increased access to mobilizing resources and better able to withstand repression and political exclusion. To provide an explicit and systematic test of cross‐national variation, data on 170 political and militant organizations across the region are analyzed. Results indicate that state incorporation of religion is a crucial factor in the religiosity of movement organizations. Mixed effects of political exclusion and repression are found. No support is found for theories of economic grievances or foreign influence as causes of Islamic mobilization. In sum, analysis suggests that a state‐centered perspective is the most fitting account of political Islam.     

Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

While sociologists have paid a great deal of attention to how political elites matter for the emergence and development of social movements, they have focused less explicitly on how political elites matter for the culture of social movements. This essay reviews work that directly and indirectly addresses this relationship, showing how political elites matter for various aspects of movement culture, like collective identity and framing. It also reviews literature that suggests how movement culture comes to impact political elites. The essay concludes by drawing from very recent scholarship to argue that to best understand political elites and the culture of social movements, we need to think about culture and structure as intertwined and to understand how relations matters in the construction of meaning.     

Corruption as a site for contested meaning: Elite constructions in India

This paper investigates the problem of corruption in India from a social constructionist perspective. The constructions of corruption among five elite groups (bureaucrats, judges, politicians, industrialists, and journalists) in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh were obtained through a total of 60 interviews. Members of these five elite groups play a critical role in constructing the problem of corruption for public discourse. These elite groups, with the possible exception of the media elite, are also primary targets of public accusations of corrupt behavior. This paper examines three major issues related to corruption: the definition of corruption, the so-called functionality of corruption, and the role of culture in fostering or inhibiting corruption. Narrow/legalistic or broad/moralistic definitions of corruption, the acceptance or rejection of functionality, and modernist or nationalist responses to the question of culture are shown to constitute the varied structures of reality constructed by the different elite groups. These constructions of the corrupt reality in India are explained with reference to specific interests of the elites and their positions in the social structure. Instead of treating corruption as an objective condition, this study seeks to view corruption as a process in which strategic elites in society, define the problem and negotiate solutions to it.A previous version of this paper was presented at the 1991 New York Conference for Asian Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca.     

Toward a Synthesis of the Theories of Peripheral Nationalism: A Comparative Study of China's Xinjiang and Guangdong

The central question of this article is: why is peripheral nationalism virtually non-existent in Guangdong but has long been a problem in Xinjiang? Existing theories are inadequate for answering this question. They are tailored to either wealthy or poor regions, but not both. They also fail to explain the absence of nationalism in Guangdong and its presence in Xinjiang. In this article, I propose a model that can explain peripheral nationalism in both wealthy and poor regions. The model incorporates two key variables, elite status and national identity. Specifically, I argue that if the elites from the peripheral region can hold important positions in the central government and if the peripheral residents identify themselves with the core nation, the probability of nationalist movements will be low. On the other hand, if their elites are excluded from high office in the central government and if their people do not identity themselves with the core nation, the probability of nationalist movements will be high. The model succeeds in explaining the cases of Xinjiang and Guangdong.     

Diversity in National Legislatures Around the World

Men from majority racial, ethnic, and religious groups continue to dominate electoral politics in most countries. At the same time, national legislatures are becoming more diverse. Cross‐national research on inequality in national politics focuses most often on women, but occasionally addresses the political representation of other marginalized groups. This review brings together these distinct areas of research – cross‐national studies on the representation of women and minority groups in national legislatures – to think about diversity in politics in a broader way. Such an approach suggests future studies should: (i) acknowledge important differences among women; (ii) focus on more than one type of minority group at a time; and (iii) explicitly examine variation in the overrepresentation of majority men as political elites.     

Self,Career and Nationhood: The contrasting aspirations of British and French elite graduates

There is increasing interest in the emergence of a ‘global middle class’ in which high achieving young graduates increasingly look to develop careers that transcend national boundaries. This paper explores this issue through comparing and contrasting the aspirations and orientations of two ‘elite’ cohorts of graduates. Interviews with students at the University of Oxford, England, and Sciences‐Po, France, reveal very different ambitions and allegiances. Our Oxford respondents portray their futures as projects of self‐fulfilment as they build portfolio careers by moving from job to job and from country to country with limited social allegiances – epitomizing the nomadic worker of the transnational elite. Our Parisian respondents, on the other hand, display strong allegiances to the nation, state and civic duty. Their projects of the self involve reconciling their personal aspirations with strong allegiances to France. The paper concludes by discussing the significance of these differences. It argues that the enduring role of education in the formation of national identities should not be overlooked and that more detailed research is needed on the contextual specifity of transnationalism and the (re)production of elites.     

Internal migration and the politics of place: a comparative analysis of China and Indonesia

Spontaneous and organized population movements have long been used as a means of promoting a country's goals of development and national integration. At the local level, on the other hand, these movements have frequently done the opposite, fueling local grievances, sharpening group distinctions, and at times creating ‘sons-of-the-soil’ conflicts. In this paper, I explore this apparent tension between the national political rationale for internal migration and the political impact such migration has had locally, in four minority regions of China and Indonesia. I argue that the specific manner in which migration affects local politics is influenced by a country's political regime. In Indonesia, the impact of migration is observed in electoral politics, where ‘politics of place’ have been allowed to emerge. In China, it is perceived in the curbing of national minorities’ territorial autonomy. The role played by local elites and group competition between indigenous people and migrants are also reviewed.