This article reviews contemporary elite theory in political sociology and political science. The concept of ‘elites’ is based on the notion that every society holds a ruling minority, a group that controls and disputes the most important power sources. Not only do elites dispute power (reaching different levels of conflict and violence), but new elites also enter the game through different mech...

Political elite’s relations for maintaining power is an important key to analyse the government’s behaviour. This paper presents a new network policy among the Iranian political elite using Social Network Analysis Method. How do they make the network? Is there Elite to Elite family relation based on ideological united or common interests? Network boundary is the political elites who have kinshi...

We build a dynamic political economy model with a two-class society: workers and the elite. In the model, the formation of the elite, the rate of innovation and …scal policy are endogenous. We focus on the con‡ict within the elite over two fundamental engines of economic growth: innovation and public investment. The model creates a mapping between institutions and economic outcomes which is con...

Political sociologists have distinguished between Weberian states in which elite promotions are based on meritocratic criteria and states in which personalistic networks dominate government careers, linking these different career types to state structures and capacity. While researchers also recognize that elite networks are important even in highly bureaucratized states, there is little system...

This article considers the elite in Brazilian society as a core feature of political culture and examines its involvement in the development of democracy in post authoritarian Brazil from a socio-political and institutional point of view. Brazil’s elite have been criticized as having an ambiguous attitude towards democracy. Some scholars have suggested that Brazil’s elite exhibit no discernible...

Elite theory‟s origins lie most clearly in the writings of Gaetano Mosca (18581941), Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), and Robert Michels (1876-1936). Mosca emphasized the ways in which tiny minorities out-organize and outwit large majorities, adding that “political classes” – Mosca‟s term for political elites – usually have “a certain material, intellectual, or even moral superiority” over those th...

A characteristic feature of Russian post-communist transformation is a high rate of elite continuity that invites an explanation of the demise of the Soviet Union as the result of a rational choice made by its ruling elite. This paper proposes a political-economic model where predatory ruling elite uses costly coercion to raise revenue from the working population, while resistance of the popula...

In early modern Europe, as every schoolchild learns, states and elite families were often closely interlocked. Yet family history and state theory are generally studied separately today. I try' here to unite them by underlining the central role of family lineages and gender identities in the formation of patrimonial political structures, focussing on the Netherlands, a precocious and influentia...

The problems of weak state structures, including state territoriality, in the South Caucasus has highly influenced political developments and the building of a democratic state. This paper explains the difficulty of recovering statehood in the cases of Armenia and Georgia, both in the context of post–Soviet state transformation and post–conflict state-rebuilding. It argues that recovering state...

Indonesia seems perpetually condemned to “live in interesting times,” as the famous Chinese curse goes. The past decade has seen the country attract global notoriety as a land of recurrent economic shocks, ethnic confl icts, terrorist bombings, separatist rebellions, and natural catastrophes. Political authorities have appeared too corrupt and inept to respond effectively. Thus, when Susilo Bam...