This book critiques and extends the analysis of power in the classic, Who Rules America?, on the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication in 1967—and through its subsequent editions. The chapters, written especially for this book by twelve sociologists and political scientists, provide fresh insights and new findings on many contemporary topics, among them the concerted attempt to privatize public schools; foreign policy and the growing role of the military-industrial component of the power elite; the successes and failures of union challenges to the power elite; the ongoing and increasingly global battles of a major sector of agribusiness; and the surprising details of how those who hold to the egalitarian values of social democracy were able to tip the scales in a bitter conflict within the power elite itself on a crucial banking reform in the aftermath of the Great Recession. These social scientists thereby point the way forward in the study of power, not just in the United States, but globally. A brief introductory chapter situates Who Rules America? within the context of the most visible theories of power over the past fifty years—pluralism, Marxism, Millsian elite theory, and historical institutionalism. Then, a chapter by G. William Domhoff, the author of Who Rules America?, takes us behind the scenes on how the original version was researched and written, tracing the evolution of the book in terms of new concepts and research discoveries by Domhoff himself, as well as many other power structure researchers, through the 2014 seventh edition. Readers will find differences of opinion and analysis from chapter to chapter. The authors were encouraged to express their views independently and frankly. They do so in an admirable and useful fashion that will stimulate everyone’s thinking on these difficult and complex issues, setting the agenda for future studies of power.

The author is convinced that there is a ruling class in America today. He examines the American power structure as it has developed in the 1980s. He presents systematic, empirical evidence that a fixed group of privileged people dominates the American economy and government. The book demonstrates that an upper class comprising only one-half of one percent of the population occupies key positions within the corporate community. It shows how leaders within this "power elite" reach government and dominate it through processes of special-interest lobbying, policy planning and candidate selection. It is written not to promote any political ideology, but to analyze our society with accuracy.

This book looks systematically at the extent to which Jews, women, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and gay men and lesbians have entered the higher circles of power that constituted what sociologist C. Wright Mills called 'the power elite.' It examines why and how the power elite has diversified, the pathways taken by those who have entered the power elite, and the effect this diversification has had on the way power works in the United States.

This book demonstrates exactly how the corporate rich developed and implemented the policies and government structures that allowed them to dominate America in the 20th-century. Written with unparalleled insight, Domhoff offers a remarkable look into the nature of power during a pivotal time, with added significance for the current era.

This open access book describes how elite studies theoretically and methodologically construct their object, i.e. how particular conceptualizations of elites are turned into research practice using different methods for collecting, dealing with and analyzing empirical data. The first of four sections focuses on what Mills named the power elite and includes Bourdieu’s field of power. The second section addresses studies of the domain of economic power, whereas the third section centers on research on elite education. The fourth and last section highlights research on symbolic power, either within social fields or as a dimension of social structure at large, areas where recognition is essential. All sections comprise empirical case studies of elites and power, whereby each of which makes explicit the various methodological choices made in the research process. Through focusing on methodological approaches for the study of elites and power and on how such approaches relate to each other as well as to the theoretical perspectives that underpin them, this book will be a valuable source for social scientists.

Elites have always ruled – wielding inordinate power and wealth, taking decisions that shape life for the rest. In good times the ‘1%’ can hide their privilege, or use growing social mobility and economic prosperity as a justification. When times get tougher there’s a backlash. So the first years of the twenty-first century – a time of financial crashes, oligarchy and corruption in the West; persistent poverty in the south; and rising inequality everywhere – have brought elites and ‘establishments’ under unprecedented fire. Yet those swept to power by this discontent are themselves a part of the elite, attacking from within and extending rather than ending its agenda. The New Power Elite shows how major political and social change is typically driven by renegade elite fractions, who co-opt or sideline elites’ traditional enemies. It is the first book to combine the politics, economics, sociology and history of elite rule to present a compact, comprehensive account of who’s at the top, and why we let them get there.

First published in 1956, The Power Elite stands as a contemporary classic of social science and social criticism. C. Wright Mills examines and critiques the organization of power in the United States, calling attention to three firmly interlocked prongs of power: the military, corporate, and political, elite. The Power Elite can be read as a good account of what was taking place in America at the time it was written, but its underlying question of whether America is democratic in practice as it is in theory continues to matter very much today. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

A look at the top 300 most powerful players in world capitalism, who are at the controls of our economic future. Who holds the purse strings to the majority of the world's wealth? There is a new global elite at the controls of our economic future, and here former Project Censored director and media monitoring sociologist Peter Phillips unveils for the general reader just who these players are. The book includes such power players as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, and Warren Buffett. As the number of men with as much wealth as half the world fell from sixty-two to just eight between January 2016 and January 2017, according to Oxfam International, fewer than 200 super-connected asset managers at only 17 asset management firms—each with well over a trillion dollars in assets under management—now represent the financial core of the world's transnational capitalist class. Members of the global power elite are the management—the facilitators—of world capitalism, the firewall protecting the capital investment, growth, and debt collection that keeps the status quo from changing. Each chapter in Giants identifies by name the members of this international club of multi-millionaires, their 17 global financial companies—and including NGOs such as the Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission—and their transnational military protectors, so the reader, for the first time anywhere, can identify who constitutes this network of influence, where the wealth is concentrated, how it suppresses social movements, and how it can be redistributed for maximum systemic change.

This book locates US elites as members of corporate elite networks and drivers of corporate elite interests, arguing that studying the social sources of US power plays an important part in understanding the nature of their decisions in US foreign policy. Exploring the decisions taken by American elites on the Iraq War, the author argues that the decisions and agendas US elites pursued in Iraq were driven by corporate elite interests – embedded in them as individuals and in groups through the corporate elite networks they were rooted in – which they prioritised, using democracy promotion as a cover up. Using elite theory, membership network analysis and content analysis, this book explains who these elites were, how their backgrounds and social influences impacted their world-views, and what this looked like in a detailed exploration of their decision-making on the ground in Iraq. Nouri examines the nature of US power, what drives it, what it looks like and its legacies. This volume provides valuable understandings and lessons to scholars and students of International Relations studying democracy, US foreign policy, post-colonialism, elite theory, US imperialism, neoliberalism, orientalism, Iraqi politics, and the making of the Iraq constitution.