Elites in the United States

Résumé du document

One of the arguments that have been laid down to explain the defeat of John F. Kerry on the US-Presidential elections in 2004 was his elitist side. Being a White Anglo-Saxon from the North-East, Kerry really corresponded to the image of a politician who would run the country in a technocratic way, far from the realities of the Americans. Going back to the imaginary of the Americans, it seems to us particularly interesting to check out if the elite à la Kerry really rules America. Are the composition and functioning way of the American elite that linear and monolithic? Or do we have to deal with a very complex problem that is genuinely difficult to analyse in a country such as the United States of America? The purpose of this paper is to analyse the structure and scope of the American elites with the help of several social scientists that wrote on that topic between the 1950es till nowadays. The first author that first pointed out the existence of clear and distinct power elite in the United States of America was Charles Wright Mills in the year 1956. His purpose was to figure out first to what extent the American elite had developed in the 18th, 19th and 20th century and secondly what the main features and dangers of the 1950es elite were.

Extraits

[...] The very notion of a “power elite” The first author that first pointed out the existence of clear and distinct power elite in the United States of America was Charles Wright Mills in the year 1956. His purpose was to figure out first to what extent the American elite had developed in the 18th, 19th and 20th century and secondly what the main features and dangers of the 1950es elite were. His starting point was a quite pessimistic one but represented the ground of his theory: “America is now in considerable part more a formal political democracy than a democratic social structure, and even the formal political mechanisms are In the post-World War II context, Mills was confronted with the rise of a new model of power partition between the elites. [...]

[...] Elites in the United States One of the arguments that have been laid down to explain the defeat of John F. Kerry on the US-Presidential elections in 2004 was his elitist side. Being a White Anglo- Saxon from the North-East, Kerry really corresponded to the image of a politician who would run the country in a technocratic way, far from the realities of the Americans. Going back to the imaginary of the Americans, it seems to us particularly interesting to check out if the elite à la Kerry really rules America. [...]

[...] In effect, US-governments share a great deal of responsibility in the apparition of such biased negotiations. To reuse the example cited by Parenti, the Nixon Administration did freely extend the “business advisory branch of government”[15] in its size and scope in order to see it translate “industry wishes into government writ”[16] But Parenti evokes widely tougher and clearer manner in which governments get rid of their regulating responsibilities, in that they “Transfer public power to favoured producers who can more readily control their markets without being held democratically accountable by the public for the sovereign authority they exercise”[17] This marks the consecration of the erosion of the public authority by the private sector. [...]

[...] But one has not to forget the numerous and influent or to put it like Domhoff: very large and very active public affairs and public relations departments of the giant corporations”[21] These one have a direct influence on the American citizens and contribute in a constant way, to convey the message of a society in which: “It's moral to have a profit system because then, truly, the deserving get rewarded”[22] All this proves the existence of a strong and persistent action of the organised but discrete corporate elite, which achieve through so to say knowledge institutions to gain support for their enterprises. As we have seen in this work, there is no evidence of a clear definition or a concrete description of what an elite is. We have pass through the theories of several authors and come closer to this conclusion : that one could eventually argue, that the power elite is situated at the intersection point of the economic and political spheres. [...]

[...] As two Stanford University scientists cited by Michael Parenti showed in their analysis of incidents allegedly caused with the goodwill of the bureaucracy: executive decision-making too often sacrifices the safety and welfare of the public to the short-term interests of the government bureaucracy and the large industrial interest to which it has become allied”[12] Moreover the fact that the meetings of the advisory committees that are consulted when an administration or an agency is planning to implement a new regulation not open to the press or public”, a situation that favours gossips and conspiracy theories over this obscure issue. One can then note a harsh paradox of the active participation of political leaders in this fight against the general interest incarnated in the body of the government. Indeed, politicians have often numerous reasons for supporting the corporate interests, be it to raising funds for their political campaign or to limiting what they perceive as an intrusion in the firms' internal affairs alongside the government. [...]