6 - Elites in the nation state

Summary

The debates over community power structures also raged at the national level. Pluralist, elitist, and Marxist class theorists argued about the nature of the nation state and the extent to which a cohesive capitalist class dominated the decisions of government officials. Their initial objective was to identify the most powerful actors involved in state policies. Each conjectured about various mechanisms for creating unified collective actions by state managers, political parties, corporate organizations, interest groups, social movements, class segments, and other social formations. As with most approaches examined in this book, few researchers worked from an explicitly structural perspective. However, several recent studies used network methodologies to examine interactions among national policy elites. These analyses yielded new insights into the formation of coalitions and their ability to influence and dominate state policies. This chapter extends the discussion of interorganizational relations, begun in Chapter 4 and continued in Chapter 5, to consider policymaking networks in the nation state.

The state as an object of inquiry

Today, few scholars believe that the state is subject to “relatively clear-cut empirical identification and delineation” (Nordlinger, 1981). Conceptually, a state is a specialized institution of a society that exercises sovereignty, that is, the capacity to make and implement laws for a population (Eckstein and Gurr, 1975: 4).