How Elites Determine Development
The Role of Elites in Economic Development is a volume of 15 essays edited by Alice H Amsden, Alisa DiCaprio and James A Robinson. This book grew out of a United Nations University conference held in Helsinki in the summer of 2009, where more than 150 scholars participated in examining the place elites hold in society and in determining economic processes. As a result, it is safe to say that the selected essays capture the cutting edge of elitefocused research, not just in terms of how elites affect economic development as the title suggests, but just as much in terms of the role elites play in development writ large.
This book also contains some of the final published words of Alice Amsden, an intellectual titan whose work on east Asian development serves as the touchstone for how scholars and policymakers think about late industrialisation. As those who are familiar with this literature recognise industrialisation in countries
like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan was the product of elite-driven enterprise, whereby a small group of technocrats and business leaders navigated the state towards high rates of economic growth.
Coming at a time when scholars and policymakers were convinced that ideologies and factor endowments determined development outcomes, Amsden’s work brought the messy fi eld of politics – and elite-driven politics in particular –back into focus. In doing so, she called into question the prevailing neo-liberal
consensus at the time that freeingmarkets is central for development. She will be sorely missed and this
volume is a testament to her scholarly success, confi rming that elite studies
will continue to be a vibrant fi eld in development studies, attracting the attention of many excellent thinkers from around the world.
A Brief Primer on Elites
In the introductory chapter by DiCaprio, elites are understood to be “a distinct social group within a society which enjoys privileged status and exercises decisive control over the organization of society” (p 4). Defi ning elites in such a manner harkens back to C Wright Mills’ understanding of a “power elite”, whereby a precious chosen few are able to influence all spheres of society and governance (1956). Impressively tracing
the long intellectual history of this powerelite theory from its 19th century Italian foundations to the present, DiCaprio conspicuously avoids engaging the serious challenges to the notion that a power
elite ever exists. That is to say, a separate school of thought on elites claims that nosingle group exercises decisive control over the organisation of society; instead, there are groups who can dominate
certain contested domains. This school of “diffuse elite theory” is best captured
in Robert Dahl’s Who Governs? (1961) – a benchmark book that is not mentioned
even once in this entire volume. Dahl’s painstaking research of a small American
city revealed the spaghetti bowl that comprises local politics in America –
instead of a small cabal determining the organisation of society, nested groups of
elites come to dominate certain specific spheres of policymaking with very little
cross-over between them. In Dahl’s understanding of elites, elites who decide education policy are distinct from those elites who determine sanitation and those groups of elites are distinct from those who are in charge of meting out of justice,
for example. In contrast, those in the power-elite school would expect the
same small group of people to be making decisions in both education policy and sanitation.Whether intentional or not, what emerges is that many of the subsequent chapters in the book underscore how the
thrust of elite-focused research needs to go beyond debates as to whether the
“power elite” is the correct model or whether Dahl’s disaggregated understanding of elites is more appropriate.
Instead, these researchers explore under what conditions does a cohesive decisionmaking elite body emerge and perpetuate, which necessarily requires weighing the opposite question as well – under what conditions should we instead
expect an incongruent and fragmented struggle between elites? In so doing,
this volume shows that the study of elites in the 21st century is going beyond
Mills and Dahl in a promising and fruitful new direction.
The Role of Elites in Economic Development is a volume of 15 essays edited by Alice H Amsden, Alisa DiCaprio and James A Robinson. This book grew out of a United Nations University conference held in Helsinki in the summer of 2009, where more than 150 scholars participated in examining the place elites hold in society and in determining economic processes. As a result, it is safe to say that the selected essays capture the cutting edge of elitefocused research, not just in terms of how elites affect economic development as the title suggests, but just as much in terms of the role elites play in development writ large.
This book also contains some of the final published words of Alice Amsden, an intellectual titan whose work on east Asian development serves as the touchstone for how scholars and policymakers think about late industrialisation. As those who are familiar with this literature recognise industrialisation in countries
like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan was the product of elite-driven enterprise, whereby a small group of technocrats and business leaders navigated the state towards high rates of economic growth.
Coming at a time when scholars and policymakers were convinced that ideologies and factor endowments determined development outcomes, Amsden’s work brought the messy fi eld of politics – and elite-driven politics in particular –back into focus. In doing so, she called into question the prevailing neo-liberal
consensus at the time that freeingmarkets is central for development. She will be sorely missed and this
volume is a testament to her scholarly success, confi rming that elite studies
will continue to be a vibrant fi eld in development studies, attracting the attention of many excellent thinkers from around the world.
A Brief Primer on Elites
In the introductory chapter by DiCaprio, elites are understood to be “a distinct social group within a society which enjoys privileged status and exercises decisive control over the organization of society” (p 4). Defi ning elites in such a manner harkens back to C Wright Mills’ understanding of a “power elite”, whereby a precious chosen few are able to influence all spheres of society and governance (1956). Impressively tracing
the long intellectual history of this powerelite theory from its 19th century Italian foundations to the present, DiCaprio conspicuously avoids engaging the serious challenges to the notion that a power
elite ever exists. That is to say, a separate school of thought on elites claims that nosingle group exercises decisive control over the organisation of society; instead, there are groups who can dominate
certain contested domains. This school of “diffuse elite theory” is best captured
in Robert Dahl’s Who Governs? (1961) – a benchmark book that is not mentioned
even once in this entire volume. Dahl’s painstaking research of a small American
city revealed the spaghetti bowl that comprises local politics in America –
instead of a small cabal determining the organisation of society, nested groups of
elites come to dominate certain specific spheres of policymaking with very little
cross-over between them. In Dahl’s understanding of elites, elites who decide education policy are distinct from those elites who determine sanitation and those groups of elites are distinct from those who are in charge of meting out of justice,
for example. In contrast, those in the power-elite school would expect the
same small group of people to be making decisions in both education policy and sanitation.Whether intentional or not, what emerges is that many of the subsequent chapters in the book underscore how the
thrust of elite-focused research needs to go beyond debates as to whether the
“power elite” is the correct model or whether Dahl’s disaggregated understanding of elites is more appropriate.
Instead, these researchers explore under what conditions does a cohesive decisionmaking elite body emerge and perpetuate, which necessarily requires weighing the opposite question as well – under what conditions should we instead
expect an incongruent and fragmented struggle between elites? In so doing,
this volume shows that the study of elites in the 21st century is going beyond
Mills and Dahl in a promising and fruitful new direction.
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