Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T23:12:36.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Elite Integration in the United States and Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

John Higley  and
Gwen Moore
John Higley
Affiliation:
Australian National University
Gwen Moore
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Taking its point of departure in the elitist paradigm and the much-discussed relationship between elite integration and stable democratic political systems, this article offers a typology of fragmented and integrated national elites and investigates the structure of the “consensually integrated” elite type. It is hypothesized that “consensually integrated” elites have largely similar structures consisting of personal interaction networks which are more inclusive and less class-based, and which contain more extensive and centralized connections among all major elite groups, than the plural elite, power elite or ruling class models of elite structure separately depict. Support for these hypotheses is found in a comparison of the network structures of two consensually integrated national elites, the American and Australian, as these structures are revealed by issue-based sociometric data taken from closely comparable elite samples and studies in the two countries.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 581 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alba, Richard D. (1972). “COMPLT—A Program for Analyzing Sociometric Data and Clustering Similarity Matrices.” Behavioral Science 17: 566.Google Scholar
Alba, Richard D. (1973). “A Graph-Theoretic Definition of a Sociometric Clique.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 3: 113–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alba, Richard D., and Moore, Gwen (1978). “Elite Social Circles.” Sociological Methods and Research 7: 167–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aron, Raymond (1950). “Social Structure and Ruling Class.” British Journal of Sociology 1: 1-16, 126–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz, Morton S. (1963). “Decisions and Non-Decisions.” American Political Science Review 57: 632–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barton, Allen H., Denitch, Bogdan, Kadushin, Charles, Moore, Gwen, Parsons, Wayne, and Weiss, Carol (1981). “Backgrounds, Attitudes and Activities of American Elites.” In Denitch, B. (ed.). National Elites: What They Think, What They Do. London: Sage (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Bottomore, T. B. (1964). Elites and Society. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, and Huntington, Samuel P. (1964). Political Power USA/USSR. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W. (1977). Ruling Class, Ruling Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. (1958). “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model.” American Political Science Review 52: 463–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. (1961). Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. (1967). Pluralist Democracy in the United States: Conflict and Consent. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Dahrendorf, Ralf (1967). Society and Democracy in Germany. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Domhoff, G. William (1967). Who Rules America? Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Domhoff, G. William (1970). The Higher Circles: Governing Class in America. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Domhoff, G. William (1978). The Powers That Be. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Esping-Anderson, Gosta, Friedland, Roger and Wright, Erik Olin (1976). “Models of Class Struggle and the Capitalist State.” Kapitalistate Nos. 4-5: 186–220.Google Scholar
Field, G. Lowell, and Higley, John (1978). “Imperfectly Unified Elites: The Cases of Italy and France.” In Tomasson, Richard (ed.), Comparative Studies in Sociology, Vol. 1, pp. 295–317.Google Scholar
Field, G. Lowell, and Higley, John (1980). Elitism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony (1973). The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Higley, John, Field, G. Lowell and Gröholt, Knut (1976). Elite Structure and Ideology: A Theory with Applications to Norway. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Higley, John, Deacon, Desley and Smart, Don (1979). Elites in Australia. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Hough, Jerry F., and Fainsod, Merle (1979). How the Soviet Union is Governed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hunter, Floyd (1959). Top Leadership, U.S.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Kadushin, Charles (1968). “Power, Influence, and Social Circles: A New Methodology for Studying Opinion Makers.” American Sociological Review 33: 685–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kadushin, Charles (1979). “Power Circles and Legitimacy in Developed Societies.” In Denitch, B. (ed.). Legitimation of Regimes. London: Sage Studies in International Sociology 17, pp. 127–40.Google Scholar
Katz, Elihu, and Lazarsfeld, Paul F. (1955). Personal Influence. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Suzanne (1963). Beyond the Ruling Class: Strategic Elites in Modern Society. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend (1968). The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lijphart, Arend (1978). Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Charles E. (1977). Politics and Markets. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lukes, Steven (1974). Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McConnell, Grant (1966). Private Power and American Democracy. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
McRae, Kenneth D. (1974). Consociational Democracy. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miliband, Ralph (1969). The State in Capitalist Society. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright (1956). The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Gwen (1979). “The Structure of a National Elite Network.” American Sociological Review 44: 673–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parry, Geraint (1969). Political Elites. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Porter, John (1965). The Vertical Mosaic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Presthus, Robert (1973). Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Prewitt, Kenneth, and Stone, Alan (1973). The Ruling Elites: Elite Theory, Power, and American Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Purcell, Susan Kaufman, and Purcell, John F. H. (1980). “State and Society in Mexico: Must a Stable Polity Be Institutionalized?” World Politics 32: 194–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. (1976). The Comparative Study of Political Elites. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Rigby, T. H. (1968). Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Arnold M. (1967). The Power Structure. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Therborn, Göran (1978). What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Walker, Jack L. (1977). “Setting the Agenda in the U.S. Senate: A Theory of Problem Selection.” British Journal of Political Science 7: 423–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.