The New Power Elite: Inequality, Politics and Greed

278 Pages·2018·1.33 MB·English

by  Alan Shipman

The New Power Elite
ANTHEM’S KEY ISSUES IN MODERN
SOCIOLOGY
Anthem’s Key Issues in Modern Sociology series publishes scholarly texts
by leading social theorists that give an accessible exposition of the major
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Editorial Board
Harry F. Dahms – University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA
Thomas Faist – Bielefeld University, Germany
Anne Rawls – Bentley University, USA
Giuseppe Sciortino – University of Trento, Italy
Sirpa Wrende – University of Helsinki, Finland
Richard York – University of Oregon, USA
The New Power Elite
Inequality, Politics and Greed
Alan Shipman, June Edmunds and Bryan S. Turner
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
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© Alan Shipman, June Edmunds and Bryan S. Turner 2018
The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-787-7 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-787-0 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter One Elites under Siege
Chapter Two Power, Networks and Higher Circles
Chapter Sources of Stability: Elite Circulations and Class
Three Coalitions
Chapter Four Rousing Rebellion: Elite Fractions and Class Divisions
Chapter Five Politics and Money
Chapter Six Inequality: Causes and Consequences
Chapter Elites and Democracy
Seven
Chapter Giveaways and Greed
Eight
Afterword: The Best and the Rest
References
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
6.1 Distribution of average income growth during expansions, US, 1949–
2012
6.2 Average household real income, US, 1979–2011
Tables
2.1 Degree of closure and extent of ties
4.1 UK latent class structure
4.2 Yesterday’s harmonious trajectory
4.3 Today’s discordant trajectory
5.1 Phases of political and commercial elite orientation
7.1 Redistributive options among three classes and the state
PREFACE
The key questions about today’s elites are easy to ask. How did a few
spectacularly wealthy bankers and fund managers, whose magic money tree
crumbled to sawdust in 2008, get themselves bailed out with public funds that
no health service or infrastructure commission could dream of? Why did
democratically elected governments allow the ‘1 per cent’, and those at even
more exquisite decimal places, to flee further enriched from a market
meltdown that would traditionally have culled their ‘capital’? Why, when
voters in America, Europe and Asia turned against governments that had
made them pay twice for corporate excess, did they rally behind dissenting
members of the elite rather than traditional anti-elitist parties? What enables
the domination of politics and business by an unchosen few – skewing the
distributions of power, wealth and status even further skywards – when such
pyramids were meant to be flattened long ago by democratization,
meritocratic selection and social mobility?
The New Power Elite derives answers from the latest empirical evidence
on rising concentrations of economic and political power, allied to new
theories of how elites maintain, apply and justify their ascent over the rest of
society. It traces contemporary turbulence to the membership and internal
dynamics of elites – economic, political and social – and the way they
manage their connections to the rest of society. The composition and conduct
of decision-making ‘higher circles’ remains central to explaining how
national and multilateral political arrangements remain stable for long
periods, interspersed with phases of abrupt change. It also sheds light on why
the patterns of change are often common across countries that differ in
strength of democracy and civil society, and why they typically raise
fractions of the previous elite to greater prominence, despite mass protest
aimed at bringing the whole elite down to earth. Sixty years after C. Wright
Mills’s pioneering probe of the Power Elite in the United States, we offer
new and internationally applicable ideas on the importance of friction within
the elite in sparking and steering wider social change; the shifting
relationship between power and money within elites; the alternative ways in
which elite fractions enrol ‘middle’- and ‘working’-class elements in their
power struggles; and the typical developmental consequences of elites
alternately forming and breaking up distributional class coalitions.
Elites and Classes
We make the case that elite analysis, while complementing rather than
substituting class analysis, was too long subordinated to it. Social classes and
the (distributional) coalitions formed between them are important for political
stability, economic progress and the phases of instability that punctuate that
progress. But elites, possessing an agency and cohesion that classes
inevitably lack, are instrumental in creating and maintaining these coalitions.
Intra-elite tensions and rivalries play an equally essential part in breaking up
and realigning them. In every country, when a sizeable ‘middle class’
emerges as a third force between landowners and peasants, it plays a key role
in creating the stable political arrangements that push economic development
into industrialization. Renegade elite fractions, whose only reinforcements
once came from the ‘mass’, now have a safer intermediate group to turn to
for support in seeking political change (achieved by replacing the incumbent
fraction or forcing it in a new direction).
Successful coalition-building invites its own destruction because an
expanding middle class becomes divided, with upper and lower elements
losing shared interest while finding affinity with classes above and below.
While middle-class expansion usually means a shrinking working class, this
too can become divided. Those who gain a measure of protection from the
employers and professionals above them lose antagonism towards them, and
may aspire to join them; those who lack such protection lose any loyalty to
the boss, but may be open to alliance with an elite that can battle that boss
from above. Elite-driven policy responses, especially the promotion of
globalization and technological innovation often treated as ‘exogenous’, can
lead to a re-expansion of the working class whose legally protected ‘insider’
and unprotected ‘outsider’ elements make it even more easily divided. The
simultaneous sharpening of competing class interests and fraying of intra-
class cohesion enables increasingly powerful elites to divide, rule and
prolong their own ascendancy.
The shift (with advancing industrialization) from a simple owner/worker
division to as many as seven discernible classes widens the available options
for elites to build coalitions, and for renegade fractions to split them by
reviving class antagonism. We give past and contemporary examples to
illustrate the theoretical possibilities in action, linking strands of economic
history and historical sociology which ‘political economy’ has only just
started to connect. Social sciences’ continued focus on class, while helping to
understand the increasingly complex stratification below the elite level, has
led to neglect of the agency that mobilizes class interests and converts them
into policy – which can only be exercised by smaller numbers that have
floated above the class system.
The Argument in Brief
Chapter 1 gives an overview of the global reaction against elites since the
start of the century, observing that holders of concentrated power and wealth
sought to ground this in expertise and accountability precisely when publics
were ceasing to view these as justifications. Rising expectations of what elite
rule should deliver, alongside political and economic limits on what they
could do, led to increased questioning of elites’ competence and sensitivity
towards their corruption, turning their unrepresentativeness from a source of
prestige into a further incitement to revolt. A charge sheet emerges,
summarized in the table below, which at first suggests an existential
challenge to elites’ long rule.
Why rising elite power/wealth did Why rising elite power/wealth causes
not previously cause instability instability now
Elites appeared to merit their Elites no longer merit the widening
widening income and wealth differential, which appears to arise
differential over classes below, e.g. through luck, disproportionate
through personal achievement or reward or theft from others
public service
Elite power and wealth did not rise at Elite power and wealth is now gained
the expense of lower classes but was at the expense of the classes below
gained from sources (like foreign them, through capture of economic
conquest) not open to the classes and political rewards that rightly