What Do Global Elites Have in Common?
Research seminar
- Date: Dec 6, 2022
- Time: 11:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Kevin L. Young
- University of Massachusetts Amherst
What kinds of traits do elites have in common across the world? To date,
existing studies have emphasized their shared positions of extreme social
prominence. They stress shared control of powerful organizations, ownership of
large stocks of wealth, and connections to other elites. Yet these shared
characteristics themselves define what constitutes an elite—thus leaving us in
a tautological circle. My research takes a more granular approach, focusing on
organizational leadership roles and command over resources on the one hand, and
underlying attributes such as race, gender, skin colour, and education, on the
other. I analyze these factors and their interactions across different samples
of globally prominent elites, drawing from leaders of corporations,
international organizations, civil society organizations and the super-rich.
Analytically, I use network analysis measures to ascertain how global elites
relate to one another using a variety of network prominence measures. My
approach gives us a significantly better understanding of who constitutes the
elite, which is important given elites’ power and ability to make discretionary
decisions that disproportionately affect the lives of other people through
their control of resources and organizations.