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.     

Assistant parlementaire au Parlement européen : un tremplin pour une carrière européenne

To better understand the politicians involved in EU politics and their staffs, attention is turned toward access to a position as assistant in the European Parliament and to the tasks and career opportunities related thereto. These graduates with five years of postsecondary education are tightly selected and, sometimes, well paid. They work in the background while holding subordinate, precarious positions as political advisors. They are helping to build the EU, and will hold future positions in European-level institutions and interest groups. A position as assistant is a step in a “rite of institution” that opens the way to a career in EU public offices.     

Youth Migration,Stratification and State Policy in Post‐Soviet Russia

In principle, the fall of the Soviet Union brought democratic capitalism to the Russian people. In practice, during the post‐Soviet era power elites influence state policies governing social processes like migration to protect their power from democracy and shield their economic status from free market competition. Manipulating policy stalls social mobility and reinforces stratification as many Russian migrants, most of whom are young and poor, cannot assimilate into cities like Moscow in order to take advantage of the economic and educational opportunities exclusively available there and nowhere else in the country. While Russia is unique in being a newly established democracy with a free market, similar processes also create and reproduce inequalities in the west. Thus, sociologists should explore how denying access to space and the unprecedented opportunity some places offer migrants limits social mobility thereby maintaining the social stratification hierarchy.     

The Social Backgrounds of Nazi Leaders: A Statistical Analysis of Political Elites in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933

This article compares the social backgrounds of Nazi leaders and representatives of democratic parties in the Weimar Republic. It does not advance any overarching new narrative on Nazism’s social origins, but rather aims to present a nuanced statistical picture of Weimar’s political elites. The results of this analysis are derived from an index of German members of parliament and from a new dataset, which has recently been collected from the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), Germany’s largest biographical encyclopaedia. Together, these two samples cover more than 2000 German politicians, industrialists, diplomats, political writers, academics, high state officials, and important journalists. This article reveals sociological differences between the politicians who led the Nazi party in parliament and those elites that promoted Nazism in the media, in academia, or within the German civil service. While Nazi politicians in the Reichstag were recruited from a variety of social classes, ranging from industrial workers to members of the aristocracy, National Socialist elites outside the parliament typically belonged to the Bildungsbürgertum and sociologically resembled the highly educated members of democratic and liberal parties. Overall, the picture of a generation of Nazi leaders emerges that was sociologically far more heterogeneous than is often recognized by historians.     

From Historical to “Dialectical” Populism: The Case of Post-Communist Romania

This article begins with a brief discussion of the differences between “historical populism” and “neo-populism” in the post-communist context. The second part concentrates on “neo-populism from below,” exemplifying the category of neopopulist politicians aspiring to power, with the case in point being George Becali and his New Generation Party (PNG). The third part turns to “neo-populism from above,” that is to say, to populist policies employed by incumbent politicians for the purpose of preserving power and enlarging support. The example chosen here is that of President Traian B?sescu and the role played by intellectual elites in making possible “neopopulism from above.” The fourth examines successes and failures of the two categories of neo-populists in two electoral contests, namely the 2007 elections for the European Parliament and the 2008 local elections. It is pointed out that the latter electoral contest produced a prospective “populist dialectics,” namely, a symbiotic mergence of the two Romanian post-communist populisms. Finally, the fifth and last part turns to theoretical considerations of a general and comparative nature.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Power Elite</Emphasis> in historical context: a reevaluation of Mills’s thesis,then and now

This article presents a reevaluation of C. Wright Mills’s classic book, The Power Elite, in light of recent historical evidence about the changing nature of the corporate elite in the United States. I argue that Mills’s critique of the mid-twentieth century American elite, although trenchant and in large part appropriate, fails to acknowledge the extent to which business leaders of that era adopted a moderate and pragmatic approach to politics. Operating with an orientation they termed “enlightened self-interest,” the elites of that era promoted policies that—at least to an extent—served the interests of the larger population. I show how the history of the American corporate elite as well as the character of the current US big business community allows us to gain a clearer perspective on the actions of the group’s mid-century counterparts.     

Andrii Liubka’s Carbide: Ukrainian democratic reforms through a dark glass

ABSTRACT

The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine and its reforms are the topics of Andrii Liubka’s novel Karbid (Carbide, 2015). Employing Voltairean laughter and neo-Gothic aesthetics, Liubka presents the idea of European integration (one of the expected outcomes of the reforms) implemented practically by the corrupt elites of the imagined Transcarpathian town of Vedmediv as a money-laundering enterprise – an underground tunnel for smuggling drugs and people’s organs from Ukraine to Europe. The author proposes that the elites – most of whom are criminals – personify Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection in the novel and represent social spheres that need reform. Contrary to the Euromaidan goals, these comprador elites desire even stronger borders between Ukraine and the European Union, as these facilitate their shadow economy, and they subject the local population to economic and social decline, turning them into disposable human waste. By applying the concept of abjection in its psychoanalytic and social forms to Liubka’s tragicomic novel, the author argues that his text points to Ukraine’s struggle to define itself as “West” and shed its totalitarian legacy of the Soviet “East,” and brings attention to the conflict between the post-Euromaidan national strivings of Ukraine’s citizens and the rampant corruption that negates their efforts.     

Performing the ‘Two-Body Problem’: An Analysis of Academic Couples’ Career Sensemaking as Revealed Through Joint Storytelling

Increasingly competitive labor markets have created new challenges for academic partners who are seeking faculty positions in the same location. Mismatches between career aspirations and available opportunities can precipitate struggles over the meaning and desirability of an academic career, triggering a need for sensemaking. This article offers an analysis of academic couples’ job search stories, focusing on how they jointly make sense of career events through narrative performances. Using dialogic/performance analysis, the article identifies several specific strategies by which participants collaboratively manage tensions between “self” and “other” and sustain positive identities. These strategies include bolstering the partner’s image through protective teamwork, minimizing status differences, and re-storying professional setbacks. Together, these strategies show how couples strive to make their experiences sensible to themselves and others and to forge new meanings of career passages that, in many cases, depart from established models.     

Problems of Taxonomy,Issues of Class,Citizenship, Consumption,and Avdot’ia Smirnova’s KoKoKo (2012)

Sundry discussions of Russian society by scholars, journalists, and politicians suffer from imprecise taxonomy, wielding labels such as middle class, civil society, and creative class in an automatic transfer of discursive categories long defining Western societies to one at increasing odds with numerous Western values. As various surveys by Russian sociologists have indicated, a ‘middle class’ and ‘civil society’ in the traditional sense do not exist in Russia. Moreover, even ‘the intelligentsia’, as historically defined, seems to have diminished, evaporated, or emigrated. Indeed, the incisive portrayal of contemporary Russian class distinctions in Avdot’ia Smirnova’s film KoKoKo (2012) exposes the impotence of the self-serving intelligentsia, contrasted to the vitality and drive of ‘the people’, who may be the only hope for Russia’s future – neither the radiant future fantasized by the Soviet Union nor the democratic future that seemed possible after perestroika, but one that meaningful resistance to the authoritarianism of Putin’s regime will need to elaborate step by painstaking step.     

‘Them that runs the country don't know what they're doing’: political dissatisfaction amongst members of the white working class

There are signs that a significant number of British people do not feel that their concerns are being addressed by the mainstream parties or the political system. This paper attends to the quality of that political dissatisfaction amongst members of ‘the white working classes’. There is a need to extend typical concerns about youth disengagement to adults and to consider the role that class plays. Lower participation in formal democratic processes may not mean disengagement from all forms of politics, but could have considerable consequences for who gains power and for the tone and focus of political debates and policies. Our project contributes to exploring political dissatisfaction by engaging with low wage workers in Yorkshire and the North West, where high support for the far‐right BNP and low voter turnout are signs that mainstream politics and politicians are failing to impress. We asked people about their feelings in relation to mainstream politics and their concerns. These participants feel distanced from governing elites, formal political processes and old ideologies. They are searching for ways to make sense of their struggles to live a decent life, and in doing so must contend with the dominance of racist discourses.     

A Confluence of Interests in Immigration Enforcement: How Politicians,the Media,and Corporations Profit from Immigration Policies Destined to Fail

The concept of an immigration industrial complex draws from previous work on the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex. All three of these complexes point to the ways that the interests of government bureaucracies, corporate elites, and politicians shape laws and policies. This article explains how the undocumented status of migrants provides advantages to at least three groups: (a) media pundits who make their careers railing against ‘illegal aliens’; (b) politicians who use undocumented migrants as scapegoats; and (c) contractors who profit from massive immigration enforcement expenditures. The disenfranchised status of undocumented migrants enhances the ability of each of these groups to benefit from their presence. This confluence of interests explains why Congress has not enacted viable immigration policies that effectively deal with the ‘problem’ of illegal immigration. This is the second in a two‐part series on the immigration industrial complex.     

The literary development of Yekhiel Shraybman: a Jewish writer in Soviet clothing

This article examines the literary career of the last Bessarabian Yiddish writer of his generation Yekhiel Shraybman (1913–2005). His loss is still deeply felt by the Moldovan Jewish community as his life and writings embraced the country’s historic Jewish past. As his literary career was launched and developed in the Soviet Union his work, aesthetics and politics were affected by “Sovietisation,” a requirement of the Communist Party’s standards in relation to literature. Yet behind the ambivalent glamour of the title “Soviet writer,” he managed to remain a Jewish writer and leave behind a printed memory of his home shtetl, Rashkov.     

Politics and Celebrity: A Sociological Understanding

Many social commentators have denounced the election of entertainment celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Venture, and Al Franken to political offices as indicative of American democracy’s collapse, treating the political victories by these celebrities as evidence of America’s preference for entertainment over political deliberation. This essay reviews the scholarly literature on celebrity and politics to provide a better understanding of this important topic. As the literature demonstrates, this conflation of celebrity and politics is not a recent phenomenon, as politicians have long employed dramaturgical elements to mobilize constituencies. Indeed, celebrities and politicians share many similarities. Both must construct public personalities appealing to their audiences and employ similar actors and strategies to help create these personalities. While some scholars working in this field agree with the concern that celebrity’s presence in politics inhibits serious political discourse, other scholars contend that the use of celebrity performances by politicians may actually attract a wider segment of society to meaningfully participate in politics. The essay concludes by suggesting that future works in this area should adopt a cultural sociology framework to empirically study the meaning of celebrity for different social groups in order to gain a stronger understanding of celebrity’s sociopolitical impact.     

Adat in the Office: The Creative Afterlife of a New Order Cultural Policy

This paper explores the emergence of a new genre of garments in Eastern Indonesia: ‘traditional’ uniforms, made from locally hand-woven cloth, which are worn twice weekly by government employees in Kupang, the capital of the province of East Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Timur, or NTT). These uniforms, which appeared following a 1997 regulation, supported the emergence of a new, urban textile culture, and a partial decoupling of traditional clothing from adat, Indonesian customary law, even as they allowed adat to make inroads into government offices. National policy, the agitation of local elites and the innovation and conservatism of artists and ritual practitioners, all contributed to this new form of artistic and cultural expression. While attention has been paid to the domesticating power of the state on local forms of cultural expression, this example shows how attempts at control can also push cultural expressions in unexpected directions.     

Unruly Theory and Difficult Practice: Issues and Dilemmas in Work with Women Politicians

The importance of exploring the 'gender' dimension in political research has achieved a level of acceptability over the past few years as more women become part of the political mainstream as elected representatives. Rather than being viewed as lone mavericks who at best operate as honorary men and at worst function as idiosyncratic (but powerful) leaders guided by whimsy and their menstrual cycle, women politicians are now viewed as legitimate foci for analysis. As women are achieving political incorporation into parliamentary democracies, if not always power to effect change once they are there,they inevitably become targets for media and academic interest. This paper explores some of the tensions which arise for a feminist researcher intent on pursuing a feminist politics but where the theory-practice dissonance is sometimes hard to handle. This becomes especially so where her interviewees do not always share the same political values and when they sometimes engage with precisely the same kinds of power games associated with male elites. When disclosure of personal values elicits an over-empathising (and sometimes slanderous) testimony by interviewees, such revelations carry their own ethical and moral dilemmas for the feminist researcher. The paper begins by discussing the key themes in feminist research practice, including problems of definition,before moving on to consider someof the issues which arise when doing interview-based work with elite women. It explores the lack of congruence which can arise between 'established' feminist principles relating to interviewing women 'subjects' and the reality of working with 'professional' interviewee groups such as women politicians.     

Elitenselektion durch Bildung oder durch Herkunft?

Does the social origin have a direct effect on the unequal recruitment of the German business elites? Or, does the social origin have an indirect effect on the unequal recruitment only, by means of the unequal participation in the educational system as suggested by the functionalist elite theory? This question is examined with special reference to the business elite. For the 6.500 engineers, jurists, and economists, who received a doctor’s degree in the years of 1955, 1965, 1975, and 1985, the correlation between social origin, educational career, and professional career is analyzed by multivariate methods. The chances of achieving an executive position are 50% higher for individuals with a service class I background and 100% higher for those individuals with an upper class background in contrast to individuals with working class and middle class background. Therefore, the functionalist view can be regarded as incorrect. On the contrary, it holds that social origin has a strong direct effect on the social selection of the elites. Consequently, the social opening of the German educational system did not result into a social opening of the recruitment practices of the business elite. Rather, the opposite is the case: Social selection increased for the 1975 and 1985 cohorts.     

Politicians,celebrities and social media: a case of informalisation?

With electoral politics no longer organised by social class, politicians increasingly seek to relate to a broad spectrum of citizens and part of their relatability is conjured through more casual, informal performances aimed at cultivating authenticity. The various platforms of social media promote forms of authentic communication by blurring the public/private divide, creating ‘spontaneous’ and instant access to ‘real life’. This article seeks to investigate the informalisation thesis by applying it to data from young people aged 16–21 years in Australia, the UK and the USA, asked about the way politicians and celebrities use social media. Findings reveal respondents’ desire for more authentic and accessible politicians, but this was in direct tension with traditional views and expectations of politicians needing to be professional, informed and worthy of respect. Informalisation amongst politicians is evident and welcomed by young citizens but persistent traditional views means it also threatens their credibility.     

The Malawi 1964 cabinet crisis and its legacy of ‘perpetual regression of trust’ amongst contemporary Malawian politicians

Malawi's cabinet crisis was one of the most critical incidents in Malawi's political history. The crisis emanated from a disagreement between the Prime Minister and his six cabinet ministers over domestic, as well as foreign policies. The end result was that the six cabinet ministers resigned or were fired from government. While this article acknowledges that the link between the cabinet crisis and Dr Banda's leadership style during the one party era is undisputed, it argues that a further link between the crisis and contemporary Malawian politics has remained unexplored. The central argument of this article is that the cabinet crisis did not only determine the nature of political relations during the Banda era, but also that of contemporary Malawian politics in what may be identified as the legacy of ‘perpetual regression of trust’ among politicians.     

The Holodomor law and national trauma construction in Ukraine

This article proposes to conceptualize the remembrance of the 1932–33 famine, known as the Holodomor, as cultural trauma construction in Ukraine. This entails the study of how the memory of this devastating historical event became the national collective symbol of suffering with which Ukrainians identify today. Based on Jeffrey Alexander’s concept of cultural trauma, the analysis focuses on the role of political elites and their claim-making regarding the meaning of the famine. Focusing specifically on the 2006 Holodomor law as the main claim of the Ukrainian policy-makers, the article investigates their definition of the historical event, their naming of victims and perpetrators, and their social mediation of famine representations. The article reveals how, through their definition of the Holodomor as genocide, the political elites promoted the understanding that Ukrainians experienced the years of 1932–33 differently from other Soviet nations. The Holodomor law should therefore be seen in the context of Ukrainian nation-building policy, which aims to forge a distinct Ukrainian collective identity.     

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.