American Elites

This detailed and fascinating portrait of America's elite leaders is based on interviews with more than 1800 members of ten strategic leadership groups - including federal judges, business executives, religious leaders, high-level bureaucrats, military leaders, labor union chiefs, lawyers, leading journalists, and motion picture and television magnates. The results of the survey - the most comprehensive ever conducted on America's elite groups - enable the authors to examine and analyze elite groups' structure and current social and political tensions in American society.

The authors begin by examining elite theory in political science and sociology. Rejecting power elite, ruling class, and "new class' theories, they propose the concept of competing "strategic elites" as the most accurate characterization of the structure of power in the U.S. Their study compares the backgrounds, ideological differences, and predominant personality characteristics of members of the different elite groups and reveals that leadership groups in the U.S. are sharply divided in complex ways on various issues. Catholic religious leaders, for example, are quite liberal on economic issues but very conservative on cultural issues while the Hollywood elite is moderate on economic issues, quite liberal on cultural issues, and much more alienated from American society than are members of other leadership groups.

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