10.1 Subject field of the political elites comparative study
Political practice shows that the process of distribution and implementation of power does not imply an equal participation of all citizens of the state. Real political power is concentrated in the hands of a minority – the elite forming the development of society and making important political decisions. In political science the elite is subdivided into two components: “power elite” and the “political elite”. Power elite include various groups directly or indirectly involved in government processes in various areas of society (political, economic, military, ideological and other elites).
Consequently, the political elite is only a part of the power elite, which is characterized by the following features: a small, self-sufficient social group; high social status; a significant amount of state and government information; direct participation in the exercise of power; organizational skills and talent.
The emergence and existence of the political elite depends on the following factors:
– psychological and social characteristics of the people, their unequal abilities, ability and desire to participate in politics;
– division of labour law, which requires professional management, a defined specialization;
– high social importance of administrative work and the appropriate incentives;
– extensive use of administrative activity for social benefits (because it is directly related to the distribution of values);
– the practical impossibility of implementing a comprehensive control over the political leaders;
– the political passivity of the broad population, whose main interests lie outside the usual policy.
The dependence of the society development dynamics on the effectiveness of political decisions made by the elite, requires careful selection of the citizens to perform power-management functions. In Western countries, the politics has long become a profession, so the process of the formation of elites draws serious attention.
In this regard, the various countries have developed their unique concept of elite recruitment. Comparative politics identifies the two most typical systems today that are conventionally used in practice: entrepreneurial (business); guild system.
Entrepreneurial elite system of education is focused on the personal qualities of the candidate, his ability to please people. Selection of candidates for positions of power is carried out on the property status of different groups in society. The system is characterized by openness, democracy, a limited number of filters. A competition is expected between the candidates for senior positions, in which each candidate must rely on their own ingenuity, wit, activity. On the second plan extend professional competence, the quality of education, etc. This system is well suited to the demands of the time and the date. A significant drawback is the possibility of joining the policy for random individuals, adventurers, capable of producing only the external effect.
The guild system involves the slow progress of the candidate up the ladder of power. This is due to a variety of formal requirements for applicants for a senior management position: level of education, the party experience, experience of working with people, etc. The selection of candidates is carried out of certain social groups or parties. A closed recruitment system, focused on a narrow circle of decision makers. It is very conservative; there is no competition, so it tends to reproduce the same type leaders, condemning the elite of the gradual extinction, becoming a closed caste. Nevertheless, this selection system ensures a high degree of predictability in the policy, reducing the possibility of conflict within the elite.
A special kind of guild system is a nomenclature system. It originally developed in the Soviet Union and then spread to other socialist countries. Its main feature is that the appointment of any level of virtually was carried out only with the consent of the party organs. The candidate consistently moved up the career ladder, climbing step by step. Under such a system conflicts within the elite have been eliminated, to ensure continuity of policy. However, this system has cultivated servility leadership candidate, flashy activism etc. Therefore, over time, the closed nature of the nomenclature system has led to the degradation of the political elite.
The modern elite is divided into four groups: the ruling, the higher, the middle and the administrative. The ruling elite are those who directly possess state power. The higher elite consist of those who directly participate or have a significant influence on the decision-making process. There are not so many of them, these are 100-200 people who occupy strategic posts in the government, major political parties, pressure groups, and also include legislators. Affiliation to the middle elite is determined by three indicators – income level, professional status, education. The administrative elite is the top layer of civil servants holding senior positions in ministries, departments and other government bodies. The administrative elite includes those highly educated managers who remain neutral and do not show their party sympathies.
The structure and social representativeness of the political elite are volatile. Changes that take place in society under the influence of his progress have a great influence on the composition of the elite. In the preparation of the political elite, a huge role belongs to the parties that nominate from their midst political leaders capable of upholding the interests of particular social groups. The role of the ruling elite as an integral part of the political elite clearly demonstrates its functions, which depend on the characteristics of the elite itself:
– strategic – the definition of a political program of action by generating new ideas reflecting the interests of society, classes, strata, etc.
– organizational – implementation of the developed course, the embodiment of political decisions in life;
– communicative – an effective representation, expression and reflection in political programs of interests and needs (political, economic, cultural, regional, professional, etc.) of various social groups and strata of the population, as well as their implementation in practical actions.
– integrative – strengthening the stability and unity of society, the stability of its political and economic systems, preventing and resolving conflict situations.
In modern political literature, several approaches to the study of elites are used. In general, they can be reduced to two main: meritocratic (Latin meritus – the best and Greek cratos – power); authoritative.
Meritocratic approach has its origins in the elitist concept of V. Pareto. His credo was aptly stated by K. Mannheim: “Elite is a hierarchy based on their own achievements”. As part of the meritocratic approach there exist technocratic, organizational and administrative areas.
The founders of technocratic theories are considered to be A. Bogdanov and T. Veblen. The fundamentals of organizational and management theories have been laid by J. Berchem. According to him, as a result of rapid technological progress there has been a revolution in political power and public administration: a new ruling class – managers was put forward.
Political elites can be classified according to various criteria:
In the selection process (recruitment):
– open (entrepreneurial) elite;
– a closed elite (the guild).
By occupation:
– political;
– economic;
– military;
– bureaucratic;
– cultural information.
In a place in the political system:
– ruling;
– opposition (counter-elite).
By the nature of intra-relations:
– associations (with a high degree of integration);
– ideologically united;
– consensually united;
– separate (with a low degree of integration).
According to the degree of representativeness:
– a high degree of representativeness;
– low degree of representativeness.
By ruling resources:
– traditional;
– modern.
By the occupied positions in the management hierarchy:
– higher;
– medium;
– marginal;
– administrative.
Summarizing, we can say that modern democratic elite should be open, mobile, constantly updated. Otherwise, it will degenerate as a consequence of bureaucracy and corruption.
10.2 Classical and modern approaches to the comparative study of political leadership
Political leadership as a way of organizing and implementing power through the submission of the exclusive powers to the individual subjects of the policy derives from the very nature of human. Political leadership is the impact on other people, while having its own characteristics:
– constancy;
– magnitude (political leader affects the entire group, organization or state);
– the impact of a political leader should be based on the credibility, trust of his supporters and recognition of management competency.
In addition, the political leadership is also the administrative status, social position, associated with the adoption of political decisions (leadership position).
The concept of “political leadership” is associated with the concept of “political leader”, but is not similar. The political leader is a person who directs the political process, performs the functions of public management, political organization or movement that can change the course of events and the orientation of political life as a whole and in its individual aspects. The political leader is different from other types of leaders because his activity is connected with the political power and the process of power relations.
Political leadership means the position associated with the adoption of government decisions, administrative status and the pattern of social groups behavior, as well as the model of interaction between the individual and society, as a result of which the latter has a significant impact.
Talking about the features of political leadership, Warren Bennis, a well-known American expert in the field of management and leadership challenges, has divided key leadership functions into four groups:
1) Care management: the ability to present the result so that it is attractive to followers.
2) Value management: the ability to transmit the value of an idea, image or vision so that they are understood and accepted by followers.
3) Trust management: the ability to organize their activities with constancy and consistency so that it provides complete trust in subordinates.
4) Self-management: the ability to understand and to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses in order to strengthen their weaknesses, attracting other resources, including other people’s resources.
This phenomenon has both positive and negative traits. Positive lines are shown in the following:
– Mobilization and inspiration of people, inactive by nature and lacking a clear idea of the purpose they seek.
– Consolidation of society by providing motivation of their activities in accordance with the objectives and tasks.
– Organization of society. The leader sets an appropriate hierarchy of responsibilities and functions.
The negative features include:
– Under certain conditions, the power is concentrated in the hands of one person, which causes negative consequences, both political and moral.
– Leadership deprives the initiative and creativity of the masses of people, stifling them by its authority, which ultimately leads to a decrease in the level of self-confidence of ordinary citizens, and excessively high self-esteem leaders.
The political analysis of the phenomenon of political leadership is associated with the following points:
– Personality traits of leaders, which can be summarized into three large groups – the natural, moral and professional qualities.
– Tools and mechanisms through which they exercise authority.
– The specific situation faced by the leader in his political activity.
The dominance of the merits or shortcomings in the nature of political leadership is determined by the content of the concrete historical situation in which it is developed, the level of economic development of society, the state of its civil institutions, geopolitical and geo-economic situation in the country and, finally, the state of the intellectual gene pool of the political elite and society in general, which is drawn from the leadership resource.
The concept of political leadership involves two aspects: the formal job status associated with the possession of power, and subjective actions to the assigned social role. Moreover, the first aspect, assuming a modicum of personal activity is key to the assessment of the individual as a political leader. The second aspect – the personal qualities and the actual behaviour on the post occupied – mainly determines only the preservation of the power positions, and is used to assess a leader as effective or inconclusive, great or ordinary, good or bad. Given all this, the separation of the political leadership of its institutional fixed position, given the authority, is illegal.
Thus, the political leadership is an ability of a person (group of people) in collective political activities to unite and direct the actions of the group, which accepts and supports his actions.
In order to understand the place, role and features of modern political leadership, it is first necessary to understand the essence of the changes that engulfed the world today.
At the end of the XX century, the modern capitalist world has entered its highest stage – globalization, the era of full unification of mankind under the power of big capital, the conversion of the world into a single economic market dominated by transnational corporations (TNCs).
This development of modern society soon led to a number of changes in the nature of political leadership. Among the most prominent of them are the disintegration of the patriotic views of many political leaders. Globalization is not just a random connection of phenomena, but systemic global change of modern civilization, including political, economic, informational sphere.
Acting in these areas and capturing almost all their sides, globalization exerts its influence on the political leadership. Thus, the transformation of the world into a single economic, cultural, cultural, information and political entity is to change perceptions of our society in almost every representative. The portrait of a political leader radically changes.
A modern political leader, no matter what views he holds, falls under the influence of globalization. He changes under the influence of ethics changes, sometimes without him realizing it. So the nature of these changes can be seen in the change of political leaders’ communication style, the change in their clothing style. When conservative formal suit is displaced with pullovers and jackets. If we talk about the speech of politicians, it becomes more dynamic, frequent, filled with foreign words (sometimes even out of place), it becomes more democratic. All the behaviour of political leaders becomes more open under the influence of the ideas of the open world.
The relation of globalization and evolution of the modern political leadership is impossible not to recognize. Thus, the process of formation of the leaders in our time is contradictory and multifaceted. The main conclusion that we must and can do in concern of the relatively modern leadership is how to understand the nature of leadership? How to understand its dynamic nature? To do this, you must carefully examine these aspects of social life and the humanities, as political management, geopolitics, psychoanalysis, etc. At first glance, it has no relation to the current leadership, but it is in these areas that a set of basic laws of its nature lies.
10.3 Methods and tools of the comparative study of political elites and political leaders
The effectiveness of empirical research depends not only on the adequacy of the concepts, but also on the quality of the methods and tools. The approaches to the classification of comparative methods to study elites and leaders may be different. In particular, sometimes there are distinguished methods for collecting empirical data and methods of research itself. The most optimal is the separation of techniques to those that are used out of contact with the object, and those that require such. To the category of “contactless” one can include analysis of statistical data, network analysis, cognitive mapping, method of constructing semantic space, method of expert evaluation, indirect survey. Among the “contact” methods can be referred to observation and direct interview, involving direct contact of the respondent and the interviewer.
The starting point of comparative research is its zero phase – collecting primary empirical information, which is not proper analysis procedure, as it is a collection of primary socio-demographic and other data about the object (family background, education, religion, party affiliation, regional ties, experience, marital status and so on). In implementing the objectives of the research, these data are subject to quantitative treatment.
Statistical data analysis is the primary research step, since stays beyond the scope of the materials collection and required performances of heuristic tasks.
Analysis of the documents. In this case, document is any information, printed and handwritten, in electronic form, on magnetic tape, on film, any material object intended for fixing the transmission and storage of information.
Document analysis can be considered a variation of the comparative biographical method, which task is the comparative study of the life and the career path of a political leader or a high-end community, which is the object of the study.
The main source of information are the personal papers of politicians, they are also called the method of personal documents. This method was borrowed from sociology; consequently, on this basis, with the involvement of psychological techniques a comparative psychobiography method originated, which is currently gaining increasing use in comparative politics.
Psychobiography (from the Greek psyche – soul and Greek biographia – biography; the history of life; life) is a method of psychological analysis of the biographies and personalities of specific historical figures and the corresponding genre of biographies, which pays special attention to mental factors of life and creativity of people.
The characters of political psychobiography are political leaders, and the result – not just psychological portraits of politicians, but also the ability to identify basic attitudes, values, particularly the decision-making style based on psychobiography. The advantage of this method is that it involves the consideration of policy in its relationship with the existing social models of political culture and mentality of the dominant guidelines of certain segments of the elite. Psychobiography method differs from its “big brother” with greater emphasis on the psychological dimension of the political career, the influence of the inner world of the policy on acceptance of the important decisions involving domestic peace policy (politicians) with its activities. This method allows us to study the personal composition of the political elite, while the psychobiography method analyses the quality of its composition.
Next, a method for constructing semantic space. It was developed in the 1990s, by the Russian expert Vladimir Petrenko. The scholar involves the construction of a multi-dimensional picture of the priorities of semantic consciousness of politicians on the basis of the semantic analysis of texts (public speeches, spontaneous performances, interviews, etc.).
An even more complete picture of the consciousness of a politician can be obtained by the method of cognitive mapping, which involves the study of the personal thinking of a particular person.
For the comparative study of elite human capital and a leader’s personal measurements, along with the political science methods there are used various psychological strategies: distant psychological analysis,
D. Winter technique of motivation studying, observation, various methods of studying values, case-study.
In the past decade, a popular non-contact method is network analysis that allows you to record not only the location of a particular member of the political elite in the system of power relations, but also to analyse its possible links with other actors, revealing on this basis, the allocation of resources in the political space.
Monitoring involves the collection of information about an object in direct contact, it can be used both independently and in combination with other methods. In the studies of the inner world of the leaders and qualitative composition of the elite – installations, orientations, behaviour pattern – monitoring is necessary, since it allows you to explore weakly formalized characteristics and can make up for the shortcomings of formal methods. Observations are standardized and non-standardized, unincorporated and incorporated, hidden and open. In the course of political and comparative studies of elites and leaders can all these kinds of observations be carried out.
A survey method is widely used in comparative linguistics, particularly active – within the reputational approach. The survey is applicable in cases where the carrier of the sought information is a specific person. Questionnaires and interviews stand for a variety of survey.
Next, consider the heuristic tools helpful in terms of identifying the essential characteristics and the causal relationships of the elites and leaders, such as classifications, typologies and ideal types, which logically and meaningfully systematize the knowledge about the object. The simplest form of systematization – a classification based on different, sometimes arbitrarily selected foundations. Typologies and ideal types, on the other hand, are established on theoretical grounds.
One of the first examples of the construction of ideal types of leadership is considered to be a dichotomy lions-fox, which grew out of the respective ideas of Machiavelli and was proposed by an classic Italian sociologist, scholar of elite studies Vilfredo Pareto. Modern researcher J. Scott expanded Pareto dichotomy to include such common behaviours as enforcing (lions), directive (bears), persuasive (foxes), the expert elite (owls). Unlike Pareto, Scott connected this classification not with personal characteristics but with the types of controlled elite group resources.
The most famous example of the construction of ideal types is believed to be Max Weber’s pair of professional politicians-professional officials. As attributive qualities of a politician, Weber singled out loyalty to politics, sense of responsibility for the consequences of their activities.
The classical and modern literature shows a wide palette of different typologies of elites and leadership. In many elite typologies, such parameter as the degree of the elites integration plays an important role.
In general, the most heuristically productive and promising areas of political comparative elite research are the following:
– the development of new methodological approaches and research strategies to build innovative models of theoretical and empirical analysis of the power groups like complex, highly dynamic entities;
– a comparative study of the mechanisms and channels of recruitment in the study of not only institutional forms, but also the elite networks;
– the definition of the role and influence of various segments of the elite in the policy of the national and global levels and the study of the interaction of elite actors at global and national levels;
– The study of qualitative and personnel staff of the elite through a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods.
Control questions
Self-control questions