Higley And Burton Analysis

“Higley and Burton provide a comprehensive and rigorous framework through which scholars can make sense of the varieties of elite rule. Their hard-headed analysis of the forces that lie behind liberal democracy is all the more necessary given that U.S. foreign policy is now dedicated to the spread of such institutions around the world.”
—Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University
This compelling and convincing study, the capstone of decades of research, argues that political regimes are created and sustained by elites. Liberal democracies are no exception; they depend, above all, on the formation and persistence of consensually united elites. John Higley and Michael
Burton explore the circumstances and ways in which such elites have
formed
JOHN HIGLEY is professor of government and sociology at the
University of Texas at Austin and chair of the Research Committee on
Political Elites of the International Political Science Association.
MICHAEL BURTON is professor of sociology at Loyola College in
Maryland.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5360-6
ISBN-10: 0-7425-5360-4
90000
9 7 80742 553606

ROWMAN &
LITTLEFIELD

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ELITE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

“This important study represents the culmination of Higley and Burton’s work—the first book-length exposition of the mature version of their elite theory buttressed by the close examination of an astonishing number and variety of historical cases. Well argued, clearly written, and astute, this book is easily accessible for undergraduates, general readers, and all those interested in elites or democratic transitions.”
—Thomas A. Baylis, University of Wisconsin, Madison

HIGLEY &
BURTON

SOCIAL SCIENCE • INTERNATIONAL
Mosca and Pareto surveyed history to demonstrate the inevitability of political elites. Michels showed that even in an avowedly egalitarian mass organization like the German Social Democratic Party before World War I, the emergence of an elite was unavoidable. A century after the three theorists wrote, their inevitability contention has not been refuted. The many dramatic upheavals and changes that have occurred during the past hundred years have nowhere produced a society without political elites. Yet the contention lacks sharpness and force; it is regarded more as a platitude than an axiom, and the body of theory to which it points has few adherents.
A key problem is confusion over the sense in which political elites are inevitable. By stipulating that such elites are characterized by group consciousness, cohesion, and conspiracy—the so-called three C’s—some scholars have given the elite concept too restrictive a meaning.7 This makes