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 Do Global Elites Have in Common?

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.

Go to Editor View