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Comparative Political Elites

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Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance

Synonyms

Elites; Latin America; Leadership; Power and politics

Definition

Political elite members are individuals who influence or make political decisions that have consequences at the national level. De jure elite members control the top positions in the three powers of the state, while de facto members exercise influence from the shadows, based on their prominent role in society. Political elites vary across countries in their number, recruitment, circulation, integration, and diversity.

Section

Public Administration and Policy in Latin America.

Introduction

In 1976, Robert Putnam complained that the comparative study of elites remained overly theoretical, with few studies conducting empirical analyses. Such description is currently untenable. In the last decades, research on comparative elites has observed a notorious increase in the number of studies using longitudinal elite surveys and quantitative techniques to analyze data for different regions. Latin Americanists have followed...

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Acknowledgements

FONDECYT Project N°3160357 generously funded this research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Ignacio Arana Araya

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  1. Ignacio Arana Araya
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Correspondence to Ignacio Arana Araya .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

    Ali Farazmand

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Araya, I.A. (2018). Comparative Political Elites. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20928-9_1269

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