Elitist Perspective Research Articles

Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition

Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition

The Nigerian Leadership Question and the Quest for National Development: The Elitist Perspective

The roles of leaders in any given organized society are vital for the development and sustenance of such society. Leaders are expected to have a clear vision and well articulated agenda on how to ensure that followers key into this agenda using the instrument of mass mobilization and effective communication. For Nigeria getting leadership right has been a recurring debate since its independence in 1960. The country has had more of sectional leaders, self seeking and dictatorship than nationalists as leaders. Nigeria political landscape is dominated by the governing elite who share similar orientation on the need to preserve the political system for continuous perpetuation of control over the polity. This study examines the Nigerian leadership question within the framework of the elite theory. The paper analyzed the applicability of the elite theory in the face of Nigeria leadership question and its quest for development. It further examined whether the elite theory has been misapplied in solving the Nigerian challenges and made recommendations. The study found out that the elite theory is applicable in explaining the Nigerian leadership question. The study adopted both primary and secondary sources of data. The data collected were analyzed using content analysis and descriptive methods. The study revealed that corruptions, self serving policies, nepotism, weak institutions, constitutional abuse among others are the major problems affecting leadership in Nigeria.

Healthcare reforms, inertia polarization and group influence

Healthcare systems performance is the focus of intense policy and media attention in most countries. Quebec (Canada) is no exception, where successive governments have struggled for decades with apparently intractable problems in care accessibility overall, poor performance, and rising costs. This article explores the underlying causes of the disconnection between the high salience of healthcare system dysfunctions in both media and policy debates and the lack of policy change likely to remedy those dysfunctions.Academically, public policies’ evolution is usually conceptualized as the product of complex, long-term interactions among diverse groups with specific power sources and preferences. In this context, we wanted to examine empirically whether divergences in stakeholders’ views concerning various healthcare reform options could explain why certain policy changes are not implemented despite consensus on their programmatic coherence.The research design was an exploratory sequential design. Data were analyzed narratively as well as graphically using a method derived from social network analysis and graph theory.Results showed striking intergroup convergence around a programmatically sound policy package centred on the general objective of strengthening primary care delivery capacities. Those results, interpreted in light of political science elitist perspectives on the policy process, suggest that the incapacity to reform the system might be explained by one or two groups’ having a de facto veto in policy-making.

Mass Opinion and Immigration Policy in the United States: Re-Assessing Clientelist and Elitist Perspectives

We argue that widely accepted elitist and “clientelist” models of immigration policy in the United States unduly minimize popular pressure on policy-making. These models portray majority opinion in ways that fail to recognize divergence between the public’s abstract goals for immigration policy and its support for the concrete policy changes needed to achieve them. As a result, they obscure many important instances in which immigration policy accords with public preferences despite counter-pressure from elites and organized lobbies. We demonstrate this point by identifying and explaining gaps between generalized attitudes and beliefs about specific policies in the domains of both legal and illegal immigration, showing that status quo legal admissions policies are not starkly at odds with majority preferences and that, contrary to interpretations of most commercial polling on the topic, majorities reject specific aspects of legalization programs that organized lobbies insist on as components of a “grand bargain” to overhaul an immigration system widely viewed as “broken.” Appreciating the nuance in mass opinion toward immigration policy helps explain policy stagnation that confounds elitist models and suggests that forging ahead with immigration reform will require persuading the public and not only successful bargaining among elites and interest groups.

Writing the History of Development (Part 1: The First Wave)

The rise of neoliberalism and the end of the Cold War ushered in a prolonged crisis of “development” as applied to the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Faced with an impasse, historians and other social scientists set out on a novel journey to examine development as history . They proposed using history as the methodology for understanding development, rather than constructing development theories to explain history and model the future. In this first of a two-part article, some of the most important contributions to the “first wave” of writing the history of development are examined. Poststructuralist analysts were the first to lay out a genealogical framework, but they were soon followed by scholars in the field of U.S. diplomatic history who initiated a parallel investigation of the history of modernization. Much of the scholarship produced in the 1990s centered on the importance of discourse, particularly high policy statements, theories, and ideologies. The concern with discourse shaped the new field in crucial ways: researchers fixed their attention on conceptual or intellectual frameworks, and perceived development from a Western and elitist perspective. Consequently, development’s totalizing claims and undifferentiated impact were accepted largely at face value. The limitations of this type of approach had become manifest by the end of the decade.

The Elitism of Bertrand de Jouvenel. A Reinterpretation of Jouvenel’s Political Theory Through the Elite theory

This paper aims to reassess Bertrand de Jouvenel’s political theory from an elitist perspective. Even if Bertrand de Jouvenel is commonly regarded as a liberal philosopher, I will however compare his thought with that of two main elitist thinkers: Gaetano Mosca and Roberto Michels. In the realistic vision of democracy developed by Jouvenel, popular participation is completely illusory. As Gaetano Mosca argued, any society is steadily ruled by an oligarchy. Not only cannot the entire electoral body fully participate in political life, but also MPs are deluded into thinking they can wield any kind of power. Moreover, they become, according to Jouvenel, selfreferencing institutions dominated by a political class which takes advantage of public services for its own interests. The analysis on modern political parties developed by Jouvenel is close to that of Robert Michels. They are viewed as powerful organizations whose aim is to perpetuate their own ruling class. Starting from this elitist analysis, Jouvenel focuses on concepts such as “common good” and “totalitarian democracy”. The common good is viewed as a rhetorical expression to justify the implementation of welfare and redistributive policies whose consequence is the creation of a hypertrophic bureaucracy. The political oligarchy capitalizes on the whole situation in order to retain its own privileges. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n11p15

Un gouvernement des pairs ?

Résumé Depuis les travaux de l’école élitiste, les partis et a fortiori leurs dirigeants sont souvent étudiés en fonction de relations hiérarchiques d’autorité, elles-mêmes contraintes par la quête du pouvoir. Or, l’étude de ces dirigeants gagnerait à porter davantage sur les relations existant entre « pairs » au sommet des organisations. En se fondant sur l’exemple du Parti socialiste, cet article fait ainsi appel à la notion de collégialité empruntée à la sociologie des organisations pour rendre compte de la tension entre égalité formelle et différenciations entre dirigeants. Ces relations conditionnent en effet leurs activités : négociation, délibération, décision.

Friend or foe? Right-wing populism and the popular press in Britain and the Netherlands

The popular press is supposed to display more sympathy for populist parties. This article investigates whether popular newspapers have a stronger tendency than serious newspapers to share the anti-establishment position of populist parties. It also tests the assumption that populist parties and the popular press share a tendency to personalize politics. The popular press in Britain and in the Netherlands are compared. The focus is on the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) and the Dutch newspaper the Telegraaf, and the British National Party (BNP) and The Sun. The analysis shows that the popular newspapers do not have an anti-elite bias. The Telegraaf and The Sun are overall even more oriented towards elitist perspectives than the quality press. The personalization thesis is not confirmed either. The results throw into doubt whether there is a single tabloid-quality spectrum based on subject matter or political orientation: subject matter and political orientation should not be conflated with differences in style.

Women’s empowerment and democratization: The effects of electoral systems, participation, and experience in Africa

This article investigates four hypotheses suggested in the literature on women's political empowerment, operationalized here as increased legislative representation. These hypotheses are that (i) electoral systems manipulate women's political empowerment; (ii) the presence of larger parties in proportional representation systems enhance women's political empowerment; (iii) increased popular participation empowers women in particular; and (iv) accumulated experience gained over several electoral cycles facilitates increases political empowerment of women. In Africa, as well as in other parts of the world, majoritarian systems discriminate against women, while the effect of large parties in proportional representation systems is more ambiguous, and popular participation and repetitive electoral cycles are increasing women's legislative representation. This article demonstrates the value of studying gender relations under democratization, even with a narrow institutionalist focus using an elitist perspective. Finally, it shows that institutions can travel over diverse contexts with constant effects.

America's best medical schools: a critique of the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Rankings of American medical schools published annually by the news magazine U.S. News & World Report are widely used to judge the quality of the schools and their programs. The authors describe and then critique the rankings on methodologic and conceptual grounds, arguing that the annual U.S. News medical school evaluation falls short in both areas. Three categories of program quality indicators different from those used by U.S. News are presented as alternative ways to judge medical schools. The authors conclude that the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of American medical schools are ill-conceived; are unscientific; are conducted poorly; ignore medical school accreditation; judge medical school quality from a narrow, elitist perspective; and do not consider social and professional outcomes in program quality calculations. The medical school rankings have no practical value and fail to meet standards of journalistic ethics.

A Woman of Mission: The Religious and Cultural Odyssey of Agnes Wintemute Coates

FOR MANY CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS the reconstruction of the past involves an often tenuous balance between the analysis of complex political, intellectual, and socio-economic forces and the chronicling of individual human lives. The dichotomy between the 'new history' and the old biography is in many ways a false one: abstract heories have no substance without concrete xamples,just as particular instances mean little unless located in a larger landscape. As Susan Mann Trofimenkoff has pointed out, biography can be used as 'the laboratory for testing certain generalizations about a given society, a given social movement, he process of social change. '• One of the limitations of traditional biography has been its tendency to focus on the 'great man' or, less frequently, the 'great woman' the result of both an elitist perspective and a lack of source material for less prominent persons. Consequently, the opportunity to explore the life of a relatively unknown woman who nevertheless embodied a number of significant characteristics of her time and place is not easy to resist. Agnes Wintemute Coates was such a woman. Sent to Japan in • 886 by the Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist church, Coates served as a teacher and then a school principal before her marriage to another Canadian missionary in • 893. Despite her responsibilities a a wife and a mother of six children, she remained actively involved in the

American Health Care: Paradigm Structures and the Parameters of Change

Recent commentary on the health care scene in the U.S. has moved increasingly toward explanations of why little or no change has occurred despite many declarations of "crisis." From Alford's (1975) elitist analysis in Health Care Politics to Navarro's (1976) marxist analysis in Medicine Under Capitalism, critics in and out of the social sciences have tried to make sense of the array of current problems and the apparent lack of response to or change in them. These analyses are in striking contrast to earlier commentaries (e.g., Schwartz, 1971; Garfield, 1970; Anderson, 1972; Citizens Board, 1972) which, while highly critical of then current health care arrangements, foresaw the potential for change within the system and often made recommendations for potential solutions. If these earlier analyses might be said to have been characterized by an unwarranted optimism regarding the potential for change, the more recent analyses have more than counter-balanced that orientation with an overwhelming skepticism regarding any significant change, short of major societal restructuring. Health care arrangements are seen in these analyses as rooted in the more basic distribution of power and control in the U.S. (from an elitist perspective), or in the fundamental economic structure of the society itself (from a marxist perspective). Thus no significant change should have been, nor can be expected.