The Europe of Elites is the first comprehensive study of how European political and economic leaders think and feel about Europe and about what course future European integration should take.

Explores European civilisation as a concept of twentieth-century political practice and the project of a transnational network of European elites. This title is available as Open Access.

The global financial, economic and sovereign debt crisis since 2008 has led to increases in political disaffection among citizens, a loss of legitimacy of political institutions, the discredit of mainstream parties and the rise of extremist or anti-system political alternatives. This comparative volume sheds greater light on this critical juncture in the recent history of the European Union (EU) by focusing on the evolution of attitudes of national political elites. It examines whether the crisis has affected the legitimacy of the EU integration project as perceived by national political elites and, consequently, if the elite consensus that constituted one of the most solid fundamentals supporting that project has been eroded. Analysing these changes across the different dimensions in which support for the EU is organized and its relationship with the evolution of support towards European integration among citizens in member states, the book addresses a basic question: How have these events affected the perceptions of the EU of national political elites? Ultimately, it sheds light on the evolution of the relationship between the perception of the EU and the national contexts, as well as the likely evolution of the project of European integration in the near future. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, EU politics, European integration, political parties, and more broadly to comparative politics, European studies and sociology.

Winner of the Harald Kaufmann Prize for Senior Researchers, 2018 This book examines the question of whether the process of European integration in research funding has led to new forms of oligarchization and elite formation in the European Research Area. Based on a study of the European Research Council (ERC), the author investigates profound structural change in the social organization of science, as the ERC intervenes in public science systems that, until now, have largely been organized at the national level. Against the background of an emerging new science policy, Europe’s New Scientific Elite explores the social mechanisms that generate, reproduce and modify existing dynamics of stratification and oligarchization in science, shedding light on the strong normative impact of the ERC’s funding on problem-choice in science, the cultural legitimacy and future vision of science, and the building of new research councils of national, European and global scope. A comparative, theory-driven investigation of European research funding, this book will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of knowledge.

A passionate account of how the gulf between France’s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an “American society”—one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on “the periphery.” As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.

Max Haller's impressive book presents an analysis of the process of European integration which keeps the relation between elites and citizens at the forefront. It is shown on the basis of new empirical data (surveys, interviews, analyses of documents and biographies) that European integration has been led since the beginning by the elites and that today there exists a considerable split between elites and citizens; this split is becoming more profound in the course of time. The book covers the following themes: - the structure, interests and behaviour of the different elites (political, economic, bureaucratic) - the expectations and perceptions of the populations concerning the integration process and the elites - the strategies of the elites to win the consent of the people, in view of widespread scepticism - proposals for reform of the EU, especially with regard to a strengthening of democratic elements which could reduce the split between elites and citizens. A timely and original read, this book will be a useful addition to the library of any political sociologist, political scientist or scholar of European integration.

This book argues that European Union institutional mechanics and the EU as a political unit cannot be properly understood without taking into account the elites that make the policy decisions. Spurred by globalisation, technological and economic development has provided the backbone for social and political transformations that have changed the social structures that unite and differentiate individuals and groups in Europe and their interface with extra-European actors. These developments are not only exemplified by the rise of the EU, but also by the rise of a set of transnational European power elites evolving in and around the European construction. This book maps out these EU and international interdependencies and provides a comprehensive picture of the European transnational power elites. Moving away from the majority of literature on European integration dominated by economics, law, IR and political science, the volume is written from a sociological perspective that takes into account the individuals that make the policy decisions, the formal and informal groups in which s/he is included, as well as the social conventions that regulate political and administrative activities in the EU. This book will be of much interest to students of EU studies, sociology, critical security studies, and IR in general.

This book helps to understand in which ways local governing elites are important for the success or failure of national democratic development. Although we know a great deal about the general importance of civil society and social capital for the development of sustainable democracy, we still know little about what specific local governing qualities or political capital that interact with democratic development. The collected data covers time series of surveys from between 15 to 30 political and administrative leaders in over a hundred middle-sized European and Eurasian cities. The study takes us across the 1980s and 1990s, going from cities in Sweden and the Netherlands - through the Baltic cities - to the cities of Belarus and Russia. The findings show the importance of local political capital based on commitments to core democratic values, informal governance networks, and the significance of initially connecting the community to global, non-economic relationships.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the Russian elite assimilated the ideas, emotions, and practices of the aristocracy in Western countries to various degrees, while retaining a strong sense of their distinctive identity. In On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825, Andreas Schönle and Andrei Zorin examine the principal manifestations of Europeanization for Russian elites in their daily lives, through the import of material culture, the adoption of certain social practices, travel, reading patterns, and artistic consumption. The authors consider five major sites of Europeanization: court culture, religion, education, literature, and provincial life. The Europeanization of the Russian elite paradoxically strengthened its pride in its Russianness, precisely because it participated in networks of interaction and exchange with European elites and shared in their linguistic and cultural capital. In this way, Europeanization generated forms of sociability that helped the elite consolidate its corporate identity as distinct from court society and also from the people. The Europeanization of Russia was uniquely intense, complex, and pervasive, as it aimed not only to emulate forms of behavior, but to forge an elite that was intrinsically European, while remaining Russian. The second of a two-volume project (the first is a multi-authored collection of case studies), this insightful study will appeal to scholars and students of Russian and East European history and culture, as well as those interested in transnational processes.

Legislators are entrusted with key parliamentary functions and are important figures in the decision-making process. Their behaviour as political elites is as much responsible for the failures and successes of the new democracies as their institutional designs and constitutional reforms. This book provides a comparative examination of representative elites and their role in democratic development in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It argues that as the drivers of the transformation process in CEE, individual and collective parliamentary actors matter. The authors provide an in-depth analysis of representatives from eleven national parliaments and explore country-specific features of recruitment and representation. They draw on an integrated dataset of parliamentary elites for individual, party family, and parliamentary variables over the 20 years following the collapse of Communism and develop a common framework for the analysis of variations in democratisation and political professionalisation between parliaments and political parties/party families across CEE. This unique volume will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, elite research, post-communist politics, democratisation, legislative studies, and parliamentary representation.