Elite

Identifying putative elites is a key but problematic task because observing that a sub-set of a population functions as an elite insofar as policy formulation is concerned is easier than identifying who the members of that sub-set are. It seems that elite identification is a product of the intellectual and conceptual framework that is deployed to do so. Kakabadse et al (2011), for instance, typologise elite identity according to four theories. In classical theory, elites are composed of ‘people who have the highest indices in their branch of activity (“the strongest, the most energetic and the most capable”) within society’ (Kakabadse et al, 2011, p 3), which means that the constitution of elite groups is liable to change. In critical theory, elites are a product of ‘access to wealth and power’ (Kakabadse et al, 2011, p 3), which makes them hard to displace. In democratic theory, elites are those whose acquired skills are deployed or deployable for the common good. Elites can consequently be removed through democratic processes. In network theory, elites are constituted through ‘strong social, political or professional ties’, and so membership is ‘evolving [and] dynamic’ (Kakabadse et al, 2011, p 3). There is considerable literature that identifies a shift from economic through corporate to education elites, whereby actors made powerful through and within a capitalist landscape move their attention to the framing of public policy in ways that suit their interests. This means that elite actors are not obliged to directly participate in policy making but they may influence it through supranational institutions like the World Trade Organization (Gaus and Hall, 2017). This phenomenon, like its underlying neoliberal ideology, is global yet enacted locally by those acting in ways that reproduce a neoliberal orthodoxy (Courtney, 2017b; McGinity, 2017). In practice, it is not possible to disentangle the reproduction of neoliberalism from neoconservatism, whose definition foregrounds the reproduction of advantage and so is central to any discussion of elites.