Elite Ideology Research Articles

Policy Voting in the U. S. Senate: Who Is Represented?

This study develops new state-level measures of mass and party elite ideology to assess senatorial responsiveness to different constituencies. The ideological preferences of two groups-independent identifiers and senators' state party elites-prove important in accounting for senatorial Conservative Coalition scores (1981-84), while the preferences of state partisans have no direct effect on roll-call voting. The often noted ideological differences between same-state senators from different parties are explained by the differing values of their respective state party elites. Challengers, in contrast to incumbents, are unresponsive to independents; their campaign issue stances are consistent with the more extreme values of their state party elites. As a result Senate elections tend to be contests between relatively moderate incumbents and ideologically extreme challengers. Popular understanding and academic theory agree that a fundamental feature of modern democratic government is the representation of constituency interests by elected legislators. Studies of representation examine how constituency opinion is related to legislative attitudes and behavior and what conditions promote or inhibit this central relationship. In the theoretical and empirical work on legislative elections, a growing number of studies deals with the role of issues and policy in explaining Senate elections. This work assumes that elections are the chief mechanism for achieving accountability and for insuring legislative responsiveness to constituency preferences. Several features of the contemporary U.S. context shape the potential for legislative responsiveness to constituents. Our electoral rules-single-member district elections, the direct primary, and the Australian ballot-enhance legislative responsiveness to voters rather than to party or the president, as does the decline in partisanship among voters and within Congress. Split-ticket voting is at such levels that while many seats are safe for specific incumbents, fewer and fewer can be considered safe for the parties. Of course the institutional changes in Congress-decentralized power, increased perquisites of office with

Elite Ideology and Risk Perception in Nuclear Energy Policy

Changing U.S. attitudes toward new technologies are examined, as are explanations of such changes. We hypothesize that increased concern with the risks of new technologies by certain elite groups is partly a surrogate for underlying ideological criticisms of U.S. society. The question of risk is examined within the framework of the debate over nuclear energy. Studies of various leadership groups are used to demonstrate the ideological component of risk assessment. Studies of scientists' and journalists' attitudes, media coverage of nuclear energy, and public perception of scientists' views suggest both that journalists' ideologies influence their coverage of nuclear energy and that media coverage of the issue is partly responsible for public misperceptions of the views of scientists. We conclude with a discussion of the historical development of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s and the relation of this movement to the public's declining support for nuclear energy.

The Concept of Fate in Chinese Folk Ideology

Fate was an important concept in traditional Chinese folk culture, and in the culture of the elite. This much is uncontroversial. But what the concept was about, what it meant and how it related to class hegemony, is a matter open to dispute. The relationship of any folk ideology to the hegemonic ideology of the society is a complex one. We can perhaps best conceive this relationship as a compound of two ideal types. In the first the folk ideology is an earthy version of an elite myth, a kind of Marxian people's opiate that disguises the real nature of hegemonic relations. If the peasants believe that suffering in this world is but a prelude to glory in the next, that the Tsar really loves them but corrupt officials prevent his devotion from being realized, that landlords have a right to rents because, after all, they are supplying the land in fair exchange for the peasants' labor, folk ideology is acting in this way: It is reinforcing the hegemonic effect of the elite ideology, even when it does not actually duplicate that ideology.

Elite Ideologies and Manipulation in Higher Education: A Rejoinder to Salter and Tapper

Elite Ideologies and Manipulation in Higher Education: A Rejoinder to Salter and Tapper

The Perils of Idealism: A Reply

The question underlying any discussion of the New Class and its application to religious phenomena is simply, how does one account for the political and economic interests and ideology of religious elites in advanced industrial societies? Many factors are involved in determining the shape of an ideology and set of interests. Yet any attempt to sort out those factors for a particular group that ignores the social structural determinants will ultimately lead to an intellectual idealism. Historical precedents notwithstanding, empirical evidence confirms the utility of the New Class hypothesis for accounting for the world view of religious elites and the Young Evangelicals in particular.

Elite Ideologies in Higher Education: A Reply to McCormick

Elite Ideologies in Higher Education: A Reply to McCormick

The Impact of Ideology on Legislative Behavior and Public Policy in the States

Legislators are thought to face many external pressures and constraints that limit their freedom to choose policies they personally favor. This paper argues that ideology may be actually a valuable tool for legislative elites. It reveals that private political philosophy significantly affects the roll-call voting of legislators from two decidedly divergent states. And it proposes that economic development influences the growth of elite ideology in the states. This relationship may help to explain the well-known linkage of development, party competition, and liberal public policy in the states.

Elite Ideologies and Manipulation in Higher Education: The Development of a Political Perspective on Higher Education in England

Elite Ideologies and Manipulation in Higher Education: The Development of a Political Perspective on Higher Education in England

Myth and Ideology in a Nineteenth Century Peruvian Peasant Uprising

The Atusparia Uprising of 1885, in Peru's Ancash Department, was an anti-fiscal response to increased taxation by a peasantry in a deteriorating economic situation. The historical record of this event has been made by non-peasant journalists, novelists, and historians; it represents an elite view of oppressed rural toilers without ideas of their own, who are anything but historical agents. In reponse to this view, an attempt is here made to search for existence of peasant consciousness which does not correspond to elite ideology. Peasant myths are explored in order to furnish a context of ideas held by rural masses regarding social structure, historical continuity and discontinuity, and political legitimacy. I E. P. Thompson (1971:76) has warned term riot may conceal what he calls spasmodic view of popular history, is, common people can scarcely be taken as historical agents, and they intrude in history in compulsive, rather than self-conscious or self-activating sudden social disturbances in response to large economic events. In opposition to such a view of masses, Thompson (ibid.:78-79) discerns legitimation in crowd actions: belief by people that they are defending traditional rights or customs; and, in general, they were supported by wider consensus of community. In cases which he examines, eighteenth century English food riots, he refers to these popular beliefs as the moral economy of poor. Stalnaker (1979:28) contrasts this indictment of picture conservative historians of insurrection have drawn of rebels who have no ideas but only empty stomachs which propel them automatically into political violence with philosophical idealist picture of rebels with ideas but no material needs, with full but no stomachs at all. This essay addresses issue of relationship between heads and stomachs, or popular consciousness and material conditions by examining related aspects of an Andean peasant rebellion, known as Atusparia Uprising, which took place in Peru's Callej6n de Huaylas in 1885. The Callej6n de Huaylas is a densely populated valley which runs in a southeast-to-northwest direction between ranges of Andes Mountains, for about one hundred miles. A number of towns are strung along Santa River in valley bottom, while peasant settlements of various types are located on hilly slopes and terraces of mountain ranges. The region forms part of Department of Ancash, a political subdivision of country whose capital, Huaraz, occupies a central position in valley at an altitude of a little over 3,000 meters above sea level. Huaraz was scene of first outbreak of mob action in early March, which consisted of a collective protest against

Egypt under Sadat: Elites, Power Structure, and Political Change in a Post-Populist State

In this paper I examine the transformations in the Egyptian state—specifically in the political establishment—as Egypt moves into a new stage of development characterized by economic liberalization and a westward political realignment. I examine persistence and change in the structure and distribution of power in the establishment, in elite ideology, recruitment practices and social composition, and in the patterns and cleavages of intra-elite politics. Through this examination I try to assess the relative strength and effect of forces pulling the political system toward political liberalization on the one hand, and toward conservative authoritarianism on the other. I conclude that the current regime remains an authoritarian one, but that it has taken on an increasingly conservative face and is characterized by a greater, if uninstitutionalized, pluralism limited to elite levels. It is implicit in the analysis that the open door policy cannot be fully explained without reference to these sociopolitical transformations.

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway.John Higley , G. Lowell Field , Knut Groholt

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway.John Higley , G. Lowell Field , Knut Groholt

Vietnamese Marxism: Transition in Elite Ideology

Vietnamese Marxism: Transition in Elite Ideology

Vietnamese Marxism: Transition in Elite Ideology

IT IS MY contention that Marxism in resulted from the adoption of western colonial norms by some members of a neo-Confucian Vietnamese elite and is antagonistic to the peasant nationalism of the bulk of the Vietnamese population. To the extent this assertion is collect, the major premise underlying scholarship on for 100 years-that was the Smaller Dragon-must be revised. No longer can the Chinese norms and social patterns applicable to Vietnam's neo-Confucian elite, organized around the mandarinate of the Nguyen Dynasty, be taken as the exclusive and definitive rule for traditional Vietnamese social organization. There were two traditions in Vietnam-one that was Vietnamese and another borrowed from neo-Confucian China. And to the extent neo-Confucian mandarins became Marxist administrators, the most relevant issue of contemporary becomes the same question long asked about 19th-century Vietnam: how can a small, unpopular elite rule an entire people? That there was a gap between the people of traditional and the ruling gentry class has long been a fundamental conclusion of analysis of Vietnam's social history. Paul Mus has passed on to us the notion of French colonial administrators that consisted of selfcontained villages linked together by a neo-Confucian bureaucracy staffed by a gentry class and supported by indirect taxes. Much has therefore been made of the Vietnamese popular saying The Emperor's Laws Bow Before Village Customs (phep vua thua le lang). This French vision of has become the basis of Communist Hanoi's dynastic historiography as well. Nguyen Khac Vien has written that Vietnam was a monarchy with a mandarin bureaucracy capping an agglomeration of rural villages.'-

Elite ideology in Papua New Guinea

Elite ideology in Papua New Guinea

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway. By John Higley, G. Lowell Field, and Knut Groholt. (Oslo and New York: Universitetsforlaget and Columbia University Press, 1976. Pp. xii + 367. $17.50.)

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway. By John Higley, G. Lowell Field, and Knut Groholt. (Oslo and New York: Universitetsforlaget and Columbia University Press, 1976. Pp. xii + 367. $17.50.)

Book Reviews : John Higley, G. Lowell Field & Knut Grøholt: Elite Structure and Ideology. A Theory with Applications to Norway, Universitetsforlaget/Oslo, Columbia Uni versity Press/New York 1976. 367 pp

Book Reviews : John Higley, G. Lowell Field & Knut Grøholt: Elite Structure and Ideology. A Theory with Applications to Norway, Universitetsforlaget/Oslo, Columbia Uni versity Press/New York 1976. 367 pp

Ideology and American Political Elites

This paper presents evidence that American political elites think and behave in an ideological way. Factor analyses of individual questionnaire items drawn from elite studies in 1958 and 1972 show only marginal evidence of the type of structuring implied by the concept of ideology. However, similar analyses of a priori, multi-item scales constructed from the 1972 surveys clearly show evidence of structure for the elite sample, particularly as compared to a parallel mass sample; this raises serious questions about the use of single item scales in past analyses of political ideology. Further evidence of elite ideology is found in an analysis of interest group ratings of U.S. Representatives in 1970 and 1974. These findings provide strong support for the argument that ideology plays an important role in the perceptions and behavior of American political elites.

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway.

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway.

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway. By J. Higley, G. L. Field, and K. Groholt. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. 376 pp. $17.50

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway. By J. Higley, G. L. Field, and K. Groholt. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. 376 pp. $17.50

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway.

Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway.