Download or read book Civil Society Elites written by Håkan Johansson and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2024-01-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book introduces a groundbreaking concept - civil society elites - and serves as an essential resource for scholars, researchers and students interested in the complexities of power and influence within contemporary civil societies. Through a series of unique empirical studies, the authors offer a comprehensive examination of the individuals occupying the upper echelons of influential civil society organisations and movements. By delving into the factors that propel individuals into key positions and examining the connections between civil society leaders within and across sectors, the book offers insight into the mechanisms that shape access to powerful positions in civil societies. As a reflection of current debates on elites and populism, the book furthermore explores the expression and conceptualisation of counter-elite positions and criticism of civil society elites. With its original approach, the book serves as a catalyst for further research into inequalities, power structures and elites within civil societies.

Download or read book Civil Society Elites written by Astrid Norén-Nilsson and published by Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative volume is the first systematic study of civil society elites in Southeast Asia (and indeed anywhere in the world). Spanning two previously separate areas of research - civil society and elites - it sheds new light on power inequalities within and beyond civil society, identifies different types of elite formation and elite interaction within and beyond civil society, and traces interactions and integration with elite groups from party politics, the state, and the business sector. This tightly edited volume, produced by a research team ranging from senior scholars to promising younger academics, analyses how such processes are influenced by reliance on foreign funding and explores how they play out in two settings - where the political space for civil society is generally shrinking (Cambodia) and where it is relatively expanding (Indonesia). However, the volume offers more than a rethinking of civil society in Cambodia and Indonesia; it looks beyond. It thus challenges a view of civil society entities as relatively isolated from the state and from political and economic society, revealing power relations that link them. Suggesting a new direction for civil society research, the book will be of great interest to the many researchers working on civil society, elites and contemporary Southeast Asian politics as well as those engaged in other areas of society in Cambodia and Indonesia. Policymakers, donors and not least civil society activists themselves will find the volume highly relevant to their work.

Download or read book Intelligence Elites and Public Accountability written by Vian Bakir and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a definitive overview of the relationships of influence between civil society and intelligence elites. The secrecy surrounding intelligence means that publication of intelligence is highly restricted, barring occasional whistle-blowing and sanitised official leaks. These characteristics mean that intelligence, if publicised, can be highly manipulated by intelligence elites, while civil society’s ability to assess and verify claims is compromised by absence of independent evidence. There are few studies on the relationship between civil society and intelligence elites, which makes it hard to form robust assessments or practical recommendations regarding public oversight of intelligence elites. Addressing that lacuna, this book analyses two case studies of global political significance. The intelligence practices they focus on (contemporary mass surveillance and Bush-era torture-intelligence policies) have been presented as vital in fighting the ‘Global War on Terror’, enmeshing governments of scores of nation-states, while challenging internationally established human rights to privacy and to freedom from torture and enforced disappearance. The book aims to synthesise what is known on relationships of influence between civil society and intelligence elites. It moves away from disciplinary silos, to make original recommendations for how a variety of academic disciplines most likely to study the relationship between civil society and intelligence elites (international relations, history, journalism and media) could productively cross-fertilise. Finally, it aims to create a practical benchmark to enable civil society to better hold intelligence elites publicly accountable. This book will be of great interest to students of intelligence studies, surveillance, media, journalism, civil society, democracy and IR in general.

Download or read book Civil Society Elites A Research Agenda written by Håkan Johansson and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: This editorial introduces the thematic issue on 'civil society elites', a topic that has been neglected in elite research as well as civil society studies. It elaborates on the concept of 'civil society elites' and explains why this is an important emerging research field. By highlighting different methodological approaches and key findings in the contributions to the thematic issue, this article aims at formulating an agenda for future research in this field

Download or read book Dynamics of Democratization written by Graeme Gill and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author assesses the main theories developed to account for and explain why and how authoritarian regimes give way to democratic ones. The book takes issue with the predominantly élite-centred focus of much of the literature, and illustrates how an understanding of democratization can be gained only if the role of civil society is taken into account.

Download or read book Elites in an Egalitarian Society written by Trygve Gulbrandsen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on two unique survey studies of elites in Norway, this book examines whether elite attitudes towards central national issues have changed in the wake of international and national events and developments since 2000. The chapters examine elite integration and relations between elites and citizens in Norway as a means to discuss the continued viability of the Nordic welfare state model. This insight into how elites relate to central issues in Norwegian society and how they look upon citizens’ political interest and competence in general, will be of interest to academics within sociology and political science, as well as journalists and commentators and policy makers.

Download or read book Civil Society Elites written by Håkan Johansson and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-28 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book introduces a groundbreaking concept - civil society elites - and serves as an essential resource for scholars, researchers and students interested in the complexities of power and influence within contemporary civil societies. Through a series of unique empirical studies, the authors offer a comprehensive examination of the individuals occupying the upper echelons of influential civil society organisations and movements. By delving into the factors that propel individuals into key positions and examining the connections between civil society leaders within and across sectors, the book offers insight into the mechanisms that shape access to powerful positions in civil societies. As a reflection of current debates on elites and populism, the book furthermore explores the expression and conceptualisation of counter-elite positions and criticism of civil society elites. With its original approach, the book serves as a catalyst for further research into inequalities, power structures and elites within civil societies.

Download or read book Dynamics of Democratization written by Graeme Gill and published by Palgrave. This book was released on 2000-04-13 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author assesses the main theories developed to account for and explain why and how authoritarian regimes give way to democratic ones. The book takes issue with the predominantly élite-centred focus of much of the literature, and illustrates how an understanding of democratization can be gained only if the role of civil society is taken into account.

Download or read book Peru written by John Crabtree and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While leftist governments have been elected across Latin America, this 'Pink Tide' has so far failed to reach Peru. Instead, the corporate elite remains firmly entrenched, and the left continues to be marginalised. Peru therefore represents a particularly stark example of 'state capture', in which an extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a few corporations and pro-market technocrats has resulted in a monopoly on political power. Post the 2016 elections, John Crabtree and Francisco Durand look at the ways in which these elites have been able to consolidate their position at the expense of genuine democracy, with a particular focus on the role of mining and other extractive industries, where extensive privatization and deregulation has contributed to extreme disparities in wealth and power. In the process, Crabtree and Durand provide a unique case study of state development, by revealing the mechanisms used by elites to dominate political discussion and marginalize their opponents, as well as the role played by external actors such as international financial institutions and foreign investors. The significance of Crabtree's findings therefore extends far beyond Peru, and illuminates the wider issue of why mineral-rich countries so often struggle to attain meaningful democracy.

Download or read book Civil Society Elites in the Italian Third Sector written by Cecilia Santilli and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2024-11-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book unveils the hidden elite of Italy's third sector, offering a rare glimpse into the lives and minds of civil society's most influential leaders. Bridging elite and civil society studies, it presents pioneering research on these powerful yet understudied figures. Through in-depth analysis, the chapters reveal surprising insights about the elite's composition, attitudes, career trajectories, and views on power. Essential reading for scholars of democracy, civil society, and social policy, this volume challenges conventional wisdom about leadership in the nonprofit world. By illuminating the dynamics of Italy's third sector elite, it reshapes our understanding of civil society's role in modern democracies.

Download or read book Democratisation in Britain written by John Garrard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratisation in Britain is a novel reinterpretation of British social and political history since 1800 in light of the continuing debate about democratisation. As such, the book goes far beyond standard histories of political reform. In common with the politics in Northern Europe, North America and Australasia, Britain's democratisation began early and in highly favourable circumstances. The process took place in stages, only half-consciously and in the context of a generally benign economic cycle. The country possessed a vibrant civil society at most levels of its adult population, along with a flexible, competitive and opportunistic set of political elites. Partly as a result, the popular expectations and demands released by democratisation were modest and untroublesome. Countries undergoing democratisation since 1918 have been far less fortunate, and the process in thereby much more difficult. Thus this book may be seen as portraying an 'ideal type' against which to compare and contrast these later experiences. Democratisation in Britain combines the disciplines of political science and history, and will be of interest to scholars and students in both fields.

Download or read book The New Custodians of the State written by William Genieys and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Custodians of the State uses contemporary France to reassess sociological theories of political and policymaking elites. Based on detailed case studies drawn from social policy and national defense sectors, it concludes that a new type of sectorally-based elite has risen to prominence in France since the 1980s. Genieys suggests that programmatic elites found in specific policy sectors, made up of individuals linked both by common career paths and the resulting skills and expertise, should be seen as new guardians of state power.Like their technocratic predecessors, programmatic elites maintain a high degree of independence with respect to electoral politics and to civil society; like them, they share an ideological commitment to protect and expand the role of the state in French society. Unlike them, however, these new guardians of the state are structured around specific policy programs and limited in scope to a given sector. Competition among programmatic elites at the highest levels of the state emerges as the chief driving force behind innovation for social change.The New Custodians of the State introduces programmatic elites both as real-world actors and as an analytic category and highlights the limits of elite power by analyzing the defeat of efforts by the French Ministry of Defense. This book presents a thought-provoking critical case study that suggests that models presenting either a single unified state elite or those that herald or decry the demise of the state require modification. The work will be of interest to students and scholars of France, and its society and government as well as anyone interested in the policymaking process in other countries with respect to domestic policy or national defense.

Download or read book Dynamics of Democratization written by Graeme Gill and published by Palgrave. This book was released on 2000-04-13 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author assesses the main theories developed to account for and explain why and how authoritarian regimes give way to democratic ones. The book takes issue with the predominantly élite-centred focus of much of the literature, and illustrates how an understanding of democratization can be gained only if the role of civil society is taken into account.

Download or read book Trust in the Capacities of the People Distrust in Elites written by Kenneth Good and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratization is a sociopolitical process and the society that may grow out of it where people make decisions on matters affecting them. It is an unending struggle to win such rights and power, to hold and to extend them. The contending classes are essentially the poor and weak majority of the people and the elite of wealth, status, and power. This book begins with the study of politics in democratic Athens 508-322 BCE, and how it revolved around the divisions between an uneducated poor majority of citizens and a small, wealthy elite. All citizens were deemed equally capable of holding political office, and life in democratic Athens was itself an education through the wide political experience a citizen necessarily acquired. The second study is of Britain’s centuries long and profoundly incomplete democratization, polarizing usually the urban poor, unequally against the Grandees, the oligarchy, and subsequent elites. A third exemplifier is South Africa, beginning in the 1970s-80s when two big processes were going on simultaneously: an external armed struggle led by the African National Congress (ANC), and a path-breaking domestic democratization represented by the United Democratic Front and the trade unions. The democratization that emerges here is a matter of aspiration and impulse by determined men and women, which fail more often than they succeed, yet appear again in other times and places. Two main models of democracy are in contention. A representative from revolving around free elections, in which competing elites "get themselves elected" utilizing their wealth and celebrity. The liberal form achieved preeminence in Britain and the United States over some 150 years, but is now under serious threat from its own dysfunctionalities and the alienation of its citizens from its institutions and their elitist, self-serving values. And there is the participatory model, now being approached again since the mid-1970s in many places, from Portugal, Poland and Czechoslovakia, to South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, and Iceland. Many such impulses will fail, but they offer hope, and on the record, immense satisfaction to their participants.

Download or read book The Dynamics of Democratization written by Graeme J. Gill and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2000 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most significant developments in the last three decades of the 20th century was the fall of many authoritarian regimes and their replacement by governments claiming democratic credentials. Although the most spectacular instance of this was the collapse of communism, epitomized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it had occurred in a much wider range of countries--from Spain and Greece to Uruguay and South Korea. An important part in this has been played by political elites, which have sought to manage the process of regime change with a view to restabilizing their positions and limiting the disruption. However, the author argues that real democratization has been achieved only in these cases where the management of the transition process has not been left wholly in the hands of the elites but rather, has been supervised by elements from the broader civil society. The Dynamics of Democratization provides a clear and accessible overview of the scale, scope, and character of democratization in the contemporary world. The book offers important new theoretical insights into, as well as providing a wide range of detailed case studies of, transition from Latin America, Southern Europe, and the former communist world.

Download or read book The New Power Elite written by Alan Shipman and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key questions about today's elites are easy to ask. How did a few spectacularly wealthy bankers and fund managers, whose magic money-tree crumbled to sawdust in 2008, get themselves bailed out with public funds that no health service or infrastructure commission could dream of? Why did democratically elected governments allow the '1%', and those at even more exquisite decimal places, to flee further enriched from a market meltdown that would traditionally have culled their 'capital'? Why, when voters in America, Europe and Asia turned against governments that had made them pay twice for corporate excess, did they rally behind dissenting members of the elite, rather than traditional anti-elitist parties? What enables the domination of politics and business by an unchosen few - skewing the distributions of power, wealth and status even further skywards - when such pyramids were meant to be flattened long ago by democratization, meritocratic selection and social mobility? 'Greedy Elites' derives answers from the latest empirical evidence on rising concentrations of economic and political power, allied to new theories of how elites maintain, apply and justify their ascent over the rest of the society. It traces contemporary turbulence to the membership and internal dynamics of elites - economic, political and social - and the way they manage their connections to the rest of society. The composition and conduct of decision-making 'higher circles' remains central to explaining how national and multilateral political arrangements remain stable for long periods, interspersed with phases of abrupt change. 'Greedy Elites' also sheds light on why the patterns of change are often common across countries that differ in strength of democracy and civil society, and why they typically raise fractions of the previous elite to greater prominence, despite mass protest aimed at bringing the whole elite down to earth. Sixty years after C. Wright Mills's pioneering probe of the Power Elite in the US, 'Greedy Elites' offers new and internationally applicable ideas on the importance of frictions within the elite in sparking and steering wider social change; the shifting relationship between power and money within elites; the alternative ways in which elite fractions enrol 'middle' and 'working' class elements in their power struggles, and the typical developmental consequences of elites alternately forming and breaking up distributional class coalitions.

Download or read book Organizing Civil Society written by Philip D. Oxhorn and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: