Power Elite Research Articles

THE INTEREST-BASED RELATIONS OF THE RULING ELITES AS THE DETERMINING MAIN VARIABLE IN U.S.-EGYPT RELATIONS

This study is based on the claim that the main determinant in US-Egypt relations during the Hosni Mubarak era (1981-2011) was the mutual interests of the power elites of both countries. The process that began at the political level between the two countries during the Sadat era evolved into economic and political relations between the political elites, gaining a social dimension during the Mubarak era. The relations between the power elites of the two countries have been influential in determining foreign policy relations. In this study, case analysis and process analysis research techniques have been utilized. The relations between the US and Egypt are evaluated according to the basic concepts of Neo-Gramscian theory, including material resources, institutions, ideology, historical bloc and dominant social classes. The hypothesis that the most decisive dynamic in the political determination between the US and Egypt are the mutual interest relationships and ideological alignments among the dominant social classes will be explained.

The lordscape: Mapping seigneurial jurisdictions in the late-medieval Low Countries

This article explores the relationship between the spatial distribution of elite power and geophysical factors in two regions within the Low Countries between c.1350 – c.1650. It does so through a focus on seigneuries, bundles of territory and rights through which premodern lords and ladies across Europe held jurisdiction and economic prerogatives over local subjects. Historians have often assumed that the uneven distribution of such jurisdictions in different regions was connected to the fertility and commercial potential of the landscape. This article pioneers a structured, transregional approach to test this hypothesis, by quantifying and visualizing the spatial distribution of seigneuries in connection with three geophysical features – soil fertility, proximity to waterways, and relief – within and between two Netherlandish principalities, Guelders and Hainault. Through visualization and quantification of the spatial clustering of seigneuries, the analysis confirms that these institutions gravitated towards areas that were most fertile and commercially viable. In addition, the data suggest a hierarchy in the relative importance of geophysical features. Soil fertility emerges as the prime factor, with relief (Hainault) and waterways (Guelders) as secondary (interdependent) factors.

Elegizing an Aristocracy: The Anglo-Irish Protestant Gentry in the Poetry of Richard Murphy

The Irish poet Richard Murphy was a minority within a minority: an Anglo-Irish Protestant of the landed gentry. His privilege, property, and Anglican background set him apart from the common people of an independent Ireland which was Catholic, Gaelic, and nationalist in character. As the last major poetic representative of his culture, Murphy holds a special place in the Irish literary tradition. However, he lived and wrote during a time of significant decline for his patrician caste. His poems documenting the decay of Ireland’s once powerful and prominent Protestant elite is the subject of this paper’s critical inquiry. With greater consideration for the cultural climate and historical circumstances of his time, a clearer and more accurate understanding of Murphy’s conception of the complex facets of Irish identity will be achieved in this analysis.

Consensus Over Political Divisions: Polish Input in the Debate on Multiculturalism and Immigration to the European Union

Multiculturalism as an ideology holds that Western societies ought to become mosaics of races, ethnicities and religions. At least from the mid-1980s, multiculturalism has set out the contents and limits of public debate and policy on immigration in Western democracies. That ideological supremacy has been effectively questioned only by the public reactions to the 2015 EU immigration crisis. Political rhetoric on immigration has changed more than actual policy. Meanwhile, in Poland, its deep political divisions notwithstanding, the mainstream elites of power and opinion have remained quite uniformly sceptical about the generally lax Western approach toward immigration, both regarding its ideological underpinnings and resulting policies. The scope of the Polish debate on immigration seems also much less constrained by the strictures of political correctness than has been the case in the West. The present article documents that transpolitical consensus, tracing its roots back to the historical experience specific to Poland and Central Europe.

Suspicious activity reporting in emerging economies: the case of Iran

PurposeCountries with high levels of corruption can experience collusion between powerful elites and accountants to conceal, disguise and clean the proceeds of criminality. This study investigates the willingness of accountants to report evidence of money laundering in an emerging economy, Iran, notwithstanding potential personal and professional risks implicit in such due diligence. It evaluates the relevance of personal characteristics of accountants to the propensity to report, and the implications for policy makers in terms of audit team composition.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology is quantitative. Data was gathered by means of a suspicious activity scenario-based questionnaire administered to 1,128 of Certified Public Accountants in Iran, of which 281 responses were received. Four hypotheses were tested relating to the implications, if any, of gender, age, education and working experience for the propensity to report red flags indicative of money laundering.FindingsData revealed that accountants were generally more willing to report activity indicative of money laundering than was anticipated in an environment perceived to be characterised by professional and personal risks. Older accountants are more risk averse and more likely to report suspicious activity than younger counterparts who tend to disregard borderline indicators of money laundering. A significant red flag indicator of money laundering is a client's reluctance to provide information regarding controlling shareholders, debtors and creditors or to explain contrived and opaque corporate structures. Audit teams may be more effective when gender-balanced: female accountants tend to be more willing to report suspicious activity than male counterparts, reducing the risk of interference by powerful elites.Research limitations/implicationsThe time frame over which the research was conducted was a single year; if it had been conducted over several years it may have revealed more nuanced and evolving reporting behaviour. The study was limited to Iran: a cross-comparison with another emerging economy or economies may have revealed useful contrasts.Originality/valueThe study contributes to behavioural accounting research in emerging economies. Limited empirical data is available regarding the influence of personal characteristics of accountants on their willingness to report suspicious activity in corrupt environments where personal safety and professional security may be at risk from powerful elites. It evaluates the implications of these for suspicious activity reporting policy, and for improving the effectiveness of the scrutineering role of audit teams. An innovative questionnaire was designed which may be suitable for future comparable research in emerging economies.

“There, seated upon the toilet, apparently in the midst of defecation, was the president of the United States”: Toilets and elite politics in the USA and UK

What can we learn about elite politics from the humble toilet? How do the relations between toilets, bodies, and waste materially and discursively reveal, and become enrolled within, the summits of state political power? While there has been a growth in research on the political geographies of the body, including work on toilets, and a long history of research on elite politics, the two intellectual concerns and debates have not been brought together. Yet the toilet and the bathroom, in both their material and discursive reproduction, provide intriguing insights into the seemingly sanitised, even disembodied domain of elite politics. We explore the space, use, and meaning of the toilet in two powerful contexts: the White House in the United States, and Downing Street in the United Kingdom. Shaped by differences in cultural and political context, we study the ways in which toilets feature in the working of elite power, and how that connects to gender, sexuality, race, nakedness, humour, and space in the (re)making of the political. By making the toilet an object of study we aim to shed light on this often forgotten and silenced, yet inevitable geography of elite politics.

Laws Used to Excessively Impede Naming and Shaming in Business and Human Rights: Elite Power?

Abstract This article explores the use of laws to unduly silence critics of corporate human rights abuses. It considers the hypothesis that state and business elites align their interests, fuelling the employment of regulations to excessively impede naming and shaming activities. This article draws on socio-legal and critical legal studies to demonstrate how laws, while typically perceived as protective, can also serve to empower corporations and suppress dissent. It reviews examples of such collusion and calls for further case studies to better understand the interplay between business interests and regulatory practices.

The conflict within: the politics of parliamentary election management in Iran

ABSTRACT Scholars of comparative politics have long been interested in understanding conflicts that arise among elites within authoritarian contexts. Such conflicts are particularly puzzling when they occur in the context of authoritarian elections and within state administrative institutions like the electoral management body (EMB). Using previously unanalysed primary sources provided by Iran’s Ministry of Interior, which document the inner workings of Iran’s 2000 parliamentary election management, this study investigates intra-elite conflict associated with this important election. I found that within the dual EMB structure, where elected and unelected members coexist, elected administrative members can access information on irregular activities by unelected members more than those outside of this body. These information resources encourage elected members to take the risk of accusing more powerful elites – the unelected members of the regime – of electoral fraud. This is particularly evident during the reformist (moderate opposition) Presidency. My findings suggest the importance of examining intra-elite conflict within administrative institutions – EMBs – for a better understanding of political contestation within otherwise opaque authoritarian regimes.

From Darkness to Sunshine: Blind Babies, Families and the Sunshine Homes, 1918–1939

This article examines the contrast between the interwar British state's emphasis on motherhood and the justification for the institutional care of a relatively small group of blind babies. After the First World War, concerns about the state of the nation were addressed in part by legislation and an increase in the number of organisations which purported to help mothers to bring up healthy babies. The interest in mothers who gave birth to blind babies centred on the poor mother's ability to cope with a visually impaired infant. The authorities’ concerns, anxieties about the association between impaired senses and learning difficulties expressed by eugenicists and unease surrounding the long-term social and economic costs of blindness supported early intervention. The narrative of the overwhelmed and neglectful mother was juxtaposed with the benefit of institutionalisation, which justified the removal of some blind infants from their homes. The metaphor of the dark home and unenlightened mother was replaced by one of light and knowledge emanating from the brightly painted environs of the Sunshine Homes for Blind Babies. During the interwar period, positive reports and articles in newspapers, magazines and charitable propaganda, supported by powerful elites including the British royal family, presented the Sunshine Homes for Blind Babies as caring spaces full of the love of dedicated professional nurses, and kind, wealthy benefactors; there were no reports produced to suggest anything but the most positive experience for the infants. Essentially, a blind infant's biological family was metaphorically, and in some cases literally, replaced by a new institutional family of carers and visitors.

Value model of political communications of the Russian elite in conflictual and deviant polysubject environment

The article, based on the results of a comprehensive political analysis, substantiates that in the modern socio-political reality, the formation of a multipolar world, the problem of the effectiveness of political communications are closely related to the potential of political and administrative power elites. The communicative qualities of a modern politician are enhanced by value-civilizational and moral parameters, the ability of strategic vision and the ability to maintain civilizational and value discourse in the political and economic system and direct it towards sustainable advanced development of society. This, in turn, involves the analysis and development of parameters for diagnosing the quality of modern Russian political and administrative elites, their moral and professional adequacy and aptitude; so is the actualization and solution of the problem of deviations at the elite level of political power. In order to form a value model of political communications of the Russian elite, it is necessary to comprehensively consider management systems based on specific values (including management of public values), identify and position public values as determinants of socio-political development, develop mechanisms to counteract the value degradation and marginalization of national elites, take into account the propensity of the Russian government to identify internal and external enemies in the previous stages of development, and also to the uncritical borrowing of the models of democracy alien to the Russian cultural and civilizational code, and the image imitation of elite qualities.

Neighborly Surveillance: The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and the Development of a Post-Jim Crow Ideological Apparatus

The relations of production in Deep South regions like the Mississippi Delta require a high degree of control over race and class configurations. While the overt, de jure White supremacy that marked the post-Reconstruction era allowed for effective repression of dissent, the promise of federal intervention and grassroots organizing during the years of the civil rights movement required White elites to recalibrate methods of control. By integrating theories of racialization of space, internal colonialism, and Althusser’s (2006) notion of the ideological state apparatus, I suggest that this transition from overt to implicit control was accomplished by creating a culture of neighborly surveillance in which everyday Whites were deputized to surveil and report on civil rights organizing at the grassroots level. By neighborly surveillance, I refer to surveillance between and amongst private citizens enacted outside the purview of the formal state but in the interest of the powerful elite who control the state. I document this process through analysis of the archives of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an official state agency tasked with spying on and counteracting civil rights activity. These records demonstrate the extent to which non-state actors assumed the roles originally exercised by the de jure Jim Crow regime. Beyond augmenting understandings of the civil rights movement-era US South, this article contributes analytical insights to social and ideological transitions in other post-colonial, post-authoritarian spatial contexts.

Offshore Citizenship: “Diversified Citizenship Portfolios” and the Regulatory Arbitrage of Global Wealth Elites

AbstractThis paper reads the sale of citizenship via citizenship‐by‐investment (CBI) programmes through an offshore lens. Scholarship on offshore industries has long positioned citizenship sales as part of offshore capitalism—without exploring the phenomenon in any depth. Research on CBI, in turn, has with some notable exceptions neglected the phenomenon's offshore nature. This paper argues that CBI is an outgrowth and increasingly integral part of offshore capitalism, offering a new form of what Susan Roberts calls “regulatory arbitrage”, aiding elite wealth accumulation and power. The paper establishes this relationship by examining the countries and firms selling citizenship, their marketing strategies and customers and, crucially, the nature of the product which rests on the three “offshore pillars”, as described by Ronen Palan—virtual residency, easy incorporation, and secrecy. Conceptualising CBI as an offshore provision can transform how the phenomenon is understood and opens new avenues of thinking about its socio‐structural role and impact in an unequal world.

Sub-Imperialist India in Washington's Anti-China "Pivot"

Bernard D'Mello describes India's role as a collaborator in the U.S. anti-China Indo-Pacific project. This role, he elaborates, grows directly from the imperial/sub-imperial relationship between the United States and India, which manifests itself in border disputes, military exercises, diplomacy, economic ties, and more, has heightened hostilities in the Indo-Pacific region while benefiting the power elite of both countries.

Decentralization as spectacle: An empirical reflection from Pakistan

AbstractMotivationLocal government can develop democracy and community participation if institutions support it. But when a military regime takes over following a coup d'état, it may use familiar methods of patronage, corruption, and exploitation of kinship ties to render decentralization a spectacle—that is, done for show, but without substantial change. Local elites may then capture local administration and extract public resources.PurposeDoes decentralization as spectacle bring positive change — when the military hold power and the state is laden with corruption, patronage, and kinship ties?Methods and approachesWe analyse how respondents experienced two periods of local government, including post‐election public interactions between representatives and their constituents.Data comes from responses to qualitative interviews with 70 key informants from the Qambar Shahdadkot and Larkana districts of Sindh, Pakistan. We analysed the themes generated by responses to questions.FindingsSome 40% of respondents reported those who came into local government power aimed first and foremost to promote the interests of their own class. Some 29% of respondents reported local government made empty promises to provide services with public participation.Pakistan's decentralization has been a spectacle, to serve powerful elites. Local government has been captured by local elites.Policy implicationsDecentralization, muzzled by the military, is mere spectacle, and predatory to boot. Donor agencies should explore possibilities for change at the local level; for example, where local networks and informal governmentality can build up trust amongst hyper‐local communities.

Neither private property nor public service: Critical reflections on the conceptual framework of public service media

Public service media (PSM) have long been seen as the necessary counterweight to the failures of a market model. Given the rise of private corporate power over communications systems, PSM have long been claimed to the be the ‘heart of a heartless world’ – spaces dominated not by the relentless logic of capital but by broader ambitions that involve citizen participation, social improvement and knowledge acquisition. This article offers a different interpretation. It argues that at their very best, PSM have improved an otherwise anaemic commercial landscape; at their worst, they are simply an accessory to state actors and contaminated media markets that reproduce elite power. Media practices and institutions based on the public service idea all too often lack the accountability and indeed the fundamental democratic oversight of the publics in whose name they operate. This article seeks first to contrast the values and structures of public service media with those of wholly commercial models and illustrates some of the ‘defensive’ arguments and initiatives that have been developed in response to threats to PSM. The article then explores a series of arguments that problematise what is often a reflexive defence of PSM. It considers whether being non-commercial necessarily positions an institution as pro-public and focuses on the role of the state in the creation of PSM institutions. It argues that the gap between normative accounts of public service and their institutional structures is not an accident or an aberration but reflects the structural imbalances of power built into PSM. Finally, the article analyses the different ways in which ‘the public’ has been conceptualised and deployed in the operational models of PSM, often as the ‘masses’ or as individuals in need of enlightenment or as sovereign consumers, but rarely as active agents of social change.

When authoritarian innovations fail: Labour governance in Myanmar's reform era and beyond

The concept of authoritarian innovations provides a means of interpreting labour governance practices that claim to uphold democratic values and international labour standards while restricting labour participation and genuine voice in the workplace. Two underexplored dimensions of this literature are (a) how authoritarian practices are utilised by power elites in ‘hybrid’ state formations and (b) under what conditions they may be discarded in favour of a return to direct forms of coercion and violence. In this article, we examine these questions with reference to Myanmar, where there was a decade of experimentation with democracy before a reversion to military-dominated authoritarian rule in February 2021. In the first half of that decade, space opened under a military-led government for decidedly more democratic labour relations, although labour governance reforms were designed and operationalised in ways that constrained the strength and reach of trade unions. In the second half, a democratically elected civilian-led government presided over the contraction of the space available to organised labour. By tracking the alignment of meso-level authoritarian practices against the changing macro-level character of Myanmar's political landscape, this article contributes to theoretical debates within the emerging literature on authoritarian innovations in labour governance.

For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor- Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving By Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean. Oxford University Press. $55. January 2023. ISBN: 0190074507.

For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor- Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving By Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean. Oxford University Press. $55. January 2023. ISBN: 0190074507.

The Significance of a Feminist Geopolitical Analysis in Mahasweta Devi’s The Hunt and Douloti the Bountiful

In the inspiration of bringing alternatives to Critical Geopolitics and Subaltern Geopolitics, Feminist Geopolitics has been employed in this paper. Feminist geopolitics traverses upon the discriminated, marginalized community’s lives and events as well as it connects their exploitation with power production. This feminist geopolitics’ analytical approach demonstrates connections of geopolitics power production with everyday life of Indian tribal people. While reading Indian Tribal community as a subaltern in the works of Mahasweta Devi, through feminist geopolitics we have analyzed violence, displacement, and resistance of tribal women. In geographical imaginaries, the land of tribal protects and strengthens women; simultaneously the tribal land displaces and destroys. The article investigates two questions, 1. What is the role of land in the lives of tribal women? 2. What is the need of mother land for tribal women? It also focuses on two women, whom the dominant geopolitics had marginalized once, but then, the research gap states, how one (woman) could survive through epitomic influence on geography and another could not survive due to displacement. Moreover, the gap insists on how the power relation operates inside and outside the tribal border as well as the interest, knowledge and power of elite’s invades the tribal community after the independence. The qualitative method (textual analysis) is used for research analysis, and Arya (2020) defines that “textual analysis is a type of qualitative analysis that focuses on the underlying ideological and cultural assumptions of a text” (Arya, 2020, p. 173). Hence, this method utilizes the theoretical approaches of the feminist geopolitics theory for the study of the two short stories of Mahasweta Devi. In this article, Imaginary Maps (1995) a collection of short stories by Mahasweta Devi, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak from which The Hunt (1995) and Douloti the Bountiful (1995) (two stories) have been analyzed for discussion.

The ministry of satire: How political comedians went from critics of democracy to its defenders

ABSTRACT This essay illustrates how critical content has shifted in political satire in the post-broadcast era. Today, in addition to critical content, we find a significant presence of constructive content, where satirists are not just critiquing the power elite, they are schooling them on what they should be doing. In what the author refers to as the “ministry of satire,” political comedians have increasingly taken on the role of conservators of democratic institutions. Drawing on a range of examples of satirists defending democracy, rather than simply critiquing its inadequacies, this article argues that satire has entered an entirely new content mode, one that can be observed outside of the US as well. Today it is common for satirists to paint themselves as more patriotic than politicians.

Legacy media outlets also stand in dock over Gaza: How RNZ, ABC and other Western media failed to challenge Israeli war narratives

As Israel faces charges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention, for many people Western media institutions also stand in the dock. Critics have pointed to a media failure to effectively challenge a narrative that framed Israel’s actions in terms of an erroneous claim to Israeli ‘self-defence’, a de facto diplomatic cover for war crimes, ethnic cleansing and probable acts of genocide. In the Pacific, news leaders at Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), by alleged omission, story framing, inaccuracies, passive editorial stances, including a refusal to adjudicate contentious claims when the evidence was available, fall into the category. Such failures call into question claims of due impartiality, a fundamental tenet media outlets use to anchor their credibility as trusted sources of news. Failure to adequately create awareness of Israeli crimes also raises questions over whether state-funded public broadcasters are fulfilling the informational needs of democratic citizenship and serving the public interest, or whether they are serving the interests of a Western power elite.