Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Political science 209
means limited to the United States of America; the theme is common in the
study of British58 and French59 politics.
A first problem is to establish an operational definition of elite membership
which is acceptable to common sense and is also precise enough for analysis
and comparison. Common sense can agree quickly on some people who are of
the political elite: but it is not easy under any system (except the ancient
Spartan system of citizens and helots, or the corresponding South African sys-
tem of legally enacted apartheid) to define a ‘cut-off point’. Three methods
have been tried in the United States of America: by reputation, by position,
and by known participation in particular decisions: and none of them has
proved wholly satisfactory. In BritaidO and France it would be natural to in-
clude also some analysis of kinship and of education; and this already indicates
the difficulties of international cornparison.
Some of the most fruitful work has been done on the change of elites through
time, for instance in seventeenth and eighteenth century England. This is
mainly the work of historians, but historians are beginning to use the statistical
tools of the social sciences, and there is no clear frontier between this sort of
history and (for instance) the analysis of the changing pattern of politics in
Norway in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, made familiar by the work of
Stein Rokkan and Henry Valen.61
On the other hand, there has been little success in dealing with the challenge
posed by Wright Mills’ title, the power elite. American sociologists and political
scientists have taken quite opposite views of the American regime: that the elite is
relatively closed and compact, and is capable of united action; or that it is
relatively open and pluralistic, and is virtually incapable of combined action.
One problem is that of obtaining access for research purposes to centres of
decision-making ; but procedural difficulties arise even when access is allowed.
What is a ‘decision’? what is ‘influence on a decision’? how can one establish
interpersonal standards of measurement in these respects ? Enough has been
done in the laboratory of ‘community power-studies’ to indicate where the
difficulties lie.
Much less has been done in studying the character of regime or elite in the ab-
stract, as a set of norms. There have been various American studies (not partic-
ularly successful) of the ‘operating code’ of Communist elites, and there is
much loose talk about the ‘norms’ of the old British social elite. But studies of
political culture62 have not so far been successfully linked to the study of
political elites.
Governments. The study of governments is in one sense more straightfor-
ward than the study of regimes. The government is within the constitution;
that is to say, the system itself, in so far as it is a constitutional system, contains
rules regarding the legitimacy of governments. But these rules consist of a com-
bination of law, custom, and the interpretation of precedents, and they are by
no means free from ambiguity. The struggle for office often illustrates and
broadens the meaning of the constitution.
Nevertheless, types of government can be distinguished in institutional terms,
and profitable comparisons and generalizations can be made, at least so long as