Elite Mobility Research Articles

Buying for Armageddon: Business, Society, and Military Spending Since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What role do economic and business interests play in decisions about U.S. weapons systems? Many scholars argue that the U.S. federal government is an autonomous entity, not significantly influenced by social and economic processes outside of state organizations. In this first study to examine highly disaggregated military expenditures, John Boies demonstrates otherwise. In his study of spending between 1962 and 1987 on nine categories of procurement and three kinds of aggregate measures, Boies finds that military spending of many types responds to the profits of the largest defense contractors, the mobilization of right-wing business elites, and the growing dependency of U.S. firms on income from investments abroad. Analyzing complex data, Boies shows how the state is influenced by special interest and elite political action, in this case by the New Right in the form of the Committee on the Present Danger, and by institutionalized responses to the changing foreign interests of U.S.-based corporations. The unique relationships major defense contractors have with the U.S. military ensures that their voices are strong in the Pentagon. Even what is portrayed by sociologists and political scientists as the most autonomous organ of the national state--the military--is strongly influenced by political and economic forces outside the state. The special relationship between the state and U.S. business will dramatically impede the reallocation of resources away from the military to other uses during the post-Cold War era.

Election closeness and voter turnout: Evidence from California ballot propositions

This paper uses a new data set of 885 California ballot propositions from 1912 through 1990 to test the hypothesis that voter turnout increases as an election becomes closer. Various measures of voter participation are regressed on various measures of election closeness. The main finding is that there is not a systematic relation between closeness and turnout. Two conclusions are drawn: (1) voters are not sensitive to the probability their votes are decisive, and (2) other studies which found higher turnout for close elections probably detected an increased mobilization of party elites in tight races.

Political Leadership in the Soviet Union. Edited by Archie Brown. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. 256p. $35.00 cloth, $12.95 paper. - Soviet Regional Elite Mobility after Khrushchev. By William A. Clark. New York: Praeger, 1989. 206p. $42.95 cloth. - Gorbachev and His Enemies: The Struggle for Perestroika. By Baruch A. Hazan. Boulder: Westview, 1990. 335p. $49.50 cloth. - Leadership Change

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Counterinsurgent Vigilantism and Public Response: A Philippine Case Study

Vigilantism against political dissent is a common phenomenon which provokes intense reactions from a number of social sectors. But what shape do these reactions take? Two competing models, crystallized simplicity and fluid complexity, make differing predictions about the dimensionality of issues, social grouping, and temporal dynamics of public concern. Issue dimensions, sectoral clustering, and change of opinion over time are examined with data on counterinsurgent vigilantes in the Philippines. Seven dimensions of opinion were observable: displacement, unrepresentativeness, terror, elite mobilization, extralegality, grievance nonredress, and destabilization. With respect to these seven issue dimensions, social sectors fell into five coalitional clusters: counterinsurgent functionaries, lumpen class, peace and justice coalition, legal lobby, and populist organizations. Most sectors became alienated from the vigilantes over time and polarization occurred on the issues of displacement, unrepresentativeness, and grievance nonredress. The superiority of the fluid complexity model is suggested.

Soviet Regional Elite Mobility after Khrushchev

Preface Introduction: The Concept of Political Elite Mobility in the Soviet System Obkom First Secretaries, Political Mobility, and Seilschaften Toward the Construction of a Political Mobility Ranking of Oblast Communist Party Committees Soviet Regional Elite Mobility: The Search for Non-Idiosyncratic Independent Variables Elite Mobility at the Obkom Tier: The Effects of Background Characteristics and Functional Career Types Regional Cadres Policy after Brezhnev: Changes in the Obkom Elite Summary and Conclusions Appendix I: Stewart's Positions, Codes, and Mobility Index Appendix II: Positions and Codes as Scored on Mobility Index Appendix III: Selected Data on Regional Units of the Soviet Union Appendix IV: Rotated Factor Scores for Oblast Developmental Variables Appendix V: Career Types of Obkom First Secretaries: A Codebook Appendix VI: Changes in Obkom First Secretaries in the Post-Brezhnev Period Bibliography Index

Paths to Power: Elite Mobility in Contemporary China. By David M. Lampton with Yeung Sai-cheung. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1986. xxii, 379 pp. $17.50 (cloth); $10.00 (paper). - Chen Yun and the Chinese Political System. By David M. Bachman. China Research Monograph 29. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1985. x, 177

Paths to Power: Elite Mobility in Contemporary China. By David M. Lampton with Yeung Sai-cheung. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1986. xxii, 379 pp. $17.50 (cloth); $10.00 (paper). - Chen Yun and the Chinese Political System. By David M. Bachman. China Research Monograph 29. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1985. x, 177

Paths to Power: Elite Mobility in Contemporary China. By Lampton. David M. [Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1986. 379 pp. Hardcover $17.50; paperback $10.00.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Cultural Nationalism, Elite Mobility and Nation-Building: Communitarian Politics in Modern Ireland

The purpose of this article is to show that, although generally ignored by scholars, cultural nationalism has been a significant ideological force that, promoting a distinctive communitarian vision of the nation, has regularly been adopted by a rising intelligentsia as a political option against the state. Taking Ireland as my case study, I first examine the three major cultural nationalist 'revivals' in order to delineate the distinctive character of cultural nationalism, the leadership role of the intelligentsia, and its recurring emergence in alternation with political nationalism. I go on to argue that the attraction of the intelligentsia to nationalism can be explained in terms of the patterns of recruitment practised by the British state in Ireland. I then identify an alternating cycle in which the communitarian goals of cultural nationalism periodically challenge the state-oriented objectives of political nationalism to provide a matrix of national development in opposition to the British state.

Central Asian elite mobility and political change in the soviet union

Central Asian elite mobility and political change in the soviet union

L'Angleterre de 1540 à 1880 : pays de noblesse ouverte

Il y a environ vingt ans, J. H. Hexter identifiait un des grands problèmes non résolus de l'histoire de l'Angleterre, celui de la continuité de l'élite foncière anglaise, qui réussit à maintenir son hégémonie politique et économique pendant sept siècles. L'explication la plus ancienne de ce phénomène est acceptée par les Anglais comme par les étrangers et reprise par les historiens. Or cette explication demande à être vérifiée.Il est en effet généralement admis depuis le xvesiècle, que ce qui distingue l'Angleterre du reste de l'Europe, c'est la liberté d'accès des nouveaux riches aux premiers rangs de la société et du pouvoir. En Angleterre, nous dit-on, plus que partout ailleurs en Europe, ces nouveaux riches ont plus souvent réussi à se hisser au niveau des grands propriétaires fonciers, les squires, qui, à leur tour, les ont absorbés plus rapidement et plus volontiers. En un mot, l'élite anglaise serait depuis lontemps une élite ouverte.

Privilege in the Soviet Union: A Study of Elite Life-Styles under Communism

Part 1: The Soviet Elite in the Seventies 1. A Problem of Definition 2. Special Elite Benefits Part 2: Privilege and the Law Since the Revolution 3. The Genesis of Privilege 4. Stalin and After Part 3: Social Movement and Comparison 5. Some Problems of Elite Mobility 6. International Perspectives

Institutionalization and Style in Rajasthan Politics

The past decade has witnessed a spate of studies concerned with change, modernization and development. The differing conceptions of this phenomenon might strike one as similar to the reflections of the proverbial blind men upon the nature of the elephant. One school of thought, associated with the work of Lerner and Deutsch, has attempted to gauge modernity in terms of indices such as literacy, urbanization, access to mass media, etc.-the level of political development or modernization being conceived as a concomitant and function of scores a society would receive on these indices. Another class of efforts, which has drawn heavily upon selected aspects of Weber and Durkheim, has conceived modernization in terms of the increasing structural differentiation and functional specificity of roles in a society. Yet another approach, usually associated with the work of Talcott Parsons, has been to describe and show difference between tradition and modernity by using the pattern variables as criteria. Others have been primarily exercises in historical exegesis under a new and fashionable name. Although necessary and useful for the task of establishing descriptive criteria for the comparison of societies and polities, these conceptions appear to be inadequate in accounting for the continuity or collapse of social and political systems, even given systems which would get a more or less high rating on any of these scales. They do not account for phenomena such as social and political integration, legitimation, and institutionalization. This essay is a brief and preliminary attempt at analyzing the process of political institutionalization and styles of political action which have characterized Rajasthani politics over the past few decades. By political institutionalization is meant the development of accepted and routinized rules, procedures and patterns of behavior which permits the successful absorption of new configurations of political claimants and political demands in a given institutional sphere. In this conception, modernization is not a finite quality or process, but is continual. By political style is meant the manner and norms which regulate the way in which political beliefs are applied in politics and the way in which political goals are pursued. The bulk of the essay will focus upon these twin phenomena in the Rajasthan Congress Party. In so doing we will focus upon the mobilization of cosmopolitan elites in the early protest movements and the changed configuration of political organization and style since independence. The predominant groups in Rajasthan politics, both inside and outside

Undergraduate Origin as a Factor in Elite Recruitment and Mobility: the Foreign Service — a Case Study

HE MOST conspicuous example of a non-military closed personnel system in the administrative elite at the federal level is the Foreign Service, which in addition to controlling the administration of diplomacy in the United States also plays an important role in the foreign policy-making process within the State Department. Recruitment and promotion of members of this elite have been among the most persistent problems in the conduct of American diplomacy. Prior to 1924 the functions required by American involvement abroad were dichotomized into consular and diplomatic duties and these were carried on by separate personnel systems: the Consular Corps, which had been since the early part of the century a merit system characterized by selection on ability, promotion through ranks and tenure during good behavior, and the Diplomatic Corps, which did not have an adequate career system; officers were theoretically chosen on merit but the pay was so low that only men with independent means could afford to accept appointments as secretaries and the top positions were filled by political appointees. Generally this meant that the Corps was staffed by people from socially prominent or wealthy families who were attracted to diplomatic position by prestige considerations inherent in diplomacy?. Sixty-three per cent, for example, of all diplomatic officers in 1924 were graduates of Harvard-Princeton-Yale.2 Since the diplomatic duties were more directly related to the policy-making process than consular duties, the Diplomatic Corps was the more powerful of the two groups. But the small recruiting base of the Diplomatic Corps did not supply enough new members of sufficient quality to perform the function assumed by the Corps or to resist attacks on the Corps from the Consular Corps or by political and interest elites.3 As a result of this failure, the Diplomatic Corps was forced to give up its separate personnel system and to shift its recruiting base from one based on wealth, social position, and political influence to one based on merit. This change found expression in the Rogers Act which merged the Diplomatic Service and the Consular Corps into a single Foreign Service based on the selection of young officers through a rigorous examination both written and oral their promotion in competition with their peers and the selection of the best as ambassadors.4

Undergraduate Origin as a Factor in Elite Recruitment and Mobility: The Foreign Service. A Case Study

Undergraduate Origin as a Factor in Elite Recruitment and Mobility: The Foreign Service. A Case Study

Ministers of Modernization, Elite Mobility in the Meiji Restoration, 1868-1873.

Ministers of Modernization, Elite Mobility in the Meiji Restoration, 1868-1873.

Ministers of Modernization: Elite Mobility in the Meiji Restoration, 1868-1873

Ministers of Modernization: Elite Mobility in the Meiji Restoration, 1868-1873

Ministers of Modernization: Elite Mobility in the Meiji Restoration, 1868–1873

Ministers of Modernization: Elite Mobility in the Meiji Restoration, 1868–1873

Educational Channels and Elite Mobility: A Comparative Analysis

A detailed comparison of intergenerational mobility into one elite occupation-engineering -in Britain and the U.S. reveals contrasting patterns and indicates some of the mechanisms, especially education, that tend to be ignored in broad national comparisons. Changes in recruitment into engineering during the past forty-five years indicate increasing rigidity in the U.S. and a pattern of increasing fluidity in Britain. In addition, high status origins are more highly related to professional success in the U.S. than they are in Britain. The advantages of cumulative evidence based upon comparisons of particular occupational and educational institutions are suggested.