This handbook presents a comprehensive view of the current theory and research surrounding political elites, which is now a pivotal subject for academic study and public discourse. In 40 chapters by leading scholars, it displays the field’s richness and diversity. The handbook is organized in six sections, each introduced by a co-editor, focusing on theories about political elites, methods for studying them, their main structural and behavioral patterns worldwide, the differentiation and integration of political elite sectors, elite attributes and resources, and the dilemmas of political elites in this century. Forty years since Robert Putnam’s landmark Comparative Study of Political Elites, this handbook is an indispensable resource for scholars and students engaged in the study of this vibrant field.

This book presents in-depth analyses of the data gathered for 26 years by the Political Elites of Latin America project (PELA), the most comprehensive database about the topic in the world. Since 1994, PELA has conducted around 9,000 personal interviews with representative samples of the Legislative Powers of 18 Latin American countries, generating a unique resource for the study of political elites in a comparative perspective. Now, this contributed volume brings together studies that dig into the data gathered by PELA to discuss important topics related to the challenges faced by representative democracy in Latin America. After an introductory chapter that presents the potential of the PELA database, the book is structured in two parts. The first addresses in eight chapters important aspects of representative democracy such as political ambition, political trust, satisfaction with democracy, clientelism and the quality of democracy. It then discusses three relevant issues in Latin American political dynamics such as executive-legislative relations, women's participation as representatives, and the meaning of China and the United States in national politics. The second part addresses in five chapters studies of seven national cases that are representative of regional heterogeneity. These chapters aim to examine parliamentarian elites’ attitudes in different political systems with regard to a variety of relevant issues such as institutional trust, satisfaction with democracy, Executive-Legislative relations, clientelism, and gender questions. Furthermore, these chapters intend to evince the evolution of such attitudes in the course of the last two decades. Politics and Political Elites in Latin America: Challenges and Trends will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative politics in general and, more particularly, to those interested in the challenges faced by representative democracy not only in Latin America, but in many parts of the world.

This provocative and groundbreaking book challenges accepted wisdom about the role of elites in both maintaining and undermining democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world. John Higley traces patterns of elite political behavior and the political orientations of non-elite populations throughout modern history to show what is and is not possible in contemporary politics. He situates these patterns and orientations in a range of regimes, showing how they have played out in revolutions, populist nationalism, Arab Spring failures to democratize, the conflation of ultimate and instrumental values in today’s liberal democracies, and American political thinkers’ misguided assumption that non-elites are the principal determinants of politics. Critiquing the optimistic outlooks prevalent among educated Westerners, Higley considers them out of touch with reality because of spreading employment insecurity, demoralization, and millennial pursuits in their societies. Attacks by domestic and foreign terrorists, effects of climate change, mass migrations from countries outside the West, and disease pandemics exacerbate insecurity and further highlight the flaws in the belief that democracy can thrive and spread worldwide. Higley concludes that these threats to the well-being of Western societies are here to stay. They leave elites with no realistic alternative to a holding operation until at least mid-century that husbands the power and political practices of Western societies. Drawing on decades of research, Higley’s analysis is historically and comparatively informed, bold, and in some places dark—and will be sure to foster debate.

Contemporary Western societies are witnessing ground-breaking social, economic and political changes at an accelerating pace. These changes are challenging the way democracy works and the role that political elites play in this system of government. Using a theoretical and empirical approach, this volume argues that political elites are urged to develop new strategies in order to achieve interest aggregation, to safeguard collective action, and to maintain elite autonomy and stability. The adaptive capacities of political elites are assessed through case studies, comparative and longitudinal analyses of their social structure, their recruitment patterns, and their attitudes. The book includes contributions from reputable scholars in the field of elite research and specialists on individual political systems across Europe and the US. It provides an analytical framework demonstrating that political elites are inevitable and potentially able to respond successfully to varying challenges. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, democracy, comparative politics, political participation and European Politics.

“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests. But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests. Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.