Social Background in Elite Analysis: A Methodological Inquiry

Lewis J. Edinger and Donald D. Searing

American Political Science Review, 1967, vol. 61, issue 2, 428-445

Abstract: This paper attempts to comment empirically upon certain assumptions about the relationship between social background patterns and attitudinal patterns in elite analysis. All political systems are more or less stratified and their elites constitute that minority of participating actors which plays a strategic role in public policy making. As the incumbents of such key positions they have a far greater influence than the masses in structuring and giving expression to political relationships and policy outputs at various levels of authoritative decision making. They wield this influence by virtue of their exceptional access to political information and positions and their consequently highly disproportionate control over public policy making and communication processes which relate society to polity and governors to governed.Usually exceeding no more than about five percent of the members of a political community, such elites not only know a good deal more about the internal workings of the pertinent system than do the rest of its members, but they can do a good deal more to give shape and content to general input demands and supports, as well as to formal governmental rulings at the national or sub-national level. Therefore, their behavior patterns represent a crucial dimension of behavior patterns in a political system, providing important clues to characteristics making it like or unlike other systems.

Date: 1967
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