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This chapter surveys the types and characteristics of economic elites from a conceptual and empirical way and develops proposals for reducing their capacity to internalize (privatize) the economic surplus and mobilize it for useful social needs. It discusses various analytical approaches such as merit-oriented, power-built and class-based to elite formation and provides statistical measures of the super-rich based both on income shares of the top percentiles and the size of wealth-holdings belonging to billionaires. The chapter discusses talent-based and rent–based compensation of the very rich and the consequences of the appropriation of the economic surplus by a minority on the economy and on the workings of democracy. Finally, it examines progressive taxation and maximum wage proposals to curb the economic power of elites in a democratic society.

If there is agreement on the importance of political and social conditions in facilitating and constraining democratization, there is also disagreement about the effects that specific conditions play. This chapter revisits some theories in social movement as well as democratization studies, focusing on the interaction of political and social conditions during eventful democratization. In particular, it looks at the ways in which the characteristics of the political regime influence the dynamics of eventful protests, thus singling out some similarities but also differences between the Eastern European (German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia) and the MENA cases (Tunisia and Egypt). Particular attention is paid to the ways in which protests produce alliances, by changing the assessment of pros and cons by potential allies (including economic elites and the military). It points at the ways in which opportunities are constructed in action, emerging from the protest itself. Beyond the regime characteristics, the chapter also stresses the specific dynamics of the interactions between social movements and their context.

This chapter addresses the question of what caused the Dust Bowl by looking at the social and economic developments driving the changing relations of humans to one another and to the land globally in the period immediately preceding it. A distinguishing feature of the new imperialism was the marked increase in the rate of territorial acquisition by Europe, the United States, and Britain. The racially justified expropriation of the land and people enriched and increased the capacities of Global North nations and their economic elites—who financed, carried out, and benefited from this expropriation—to reinforce their rule. As David Naguib Pellow writes, “natural resources are used and abused to support racial hegemony and domination and have been at the core of this process for a half-millennium.” Thus, expropriation, exploitation, and domination paved the way directly to the Dust Bowl and the global crisis of soil erosion by the 1930s.

This chapter explores how the emergence of the corporate form blended nicely with the laissez faire ideology of an expanding class of economic elites in the growing American industrial economy. For the laissez faire gurus of the Gilded Age, the ultimate repository of virtue was the marketplace. For Gilded Age elites who believed that economic liberty and individual liberty were inextricably linked, the logical next step was to afford corporations the status of personhood. Laissez faire minimalism yielded undeniable benefits for society. By almost every conceivable measure, the United States economy grew during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The American Mining Congress came up with its own standards for mine safety, and persuaded Congress to establish a mine safety program in the Bureau of Mines to adopt those standards and pre-empt more stringent state standards.

This concluding chapter argues that the imperial origins of modern mainstream environmentalism resulted in a segregated environmental movement worldwide, and led to a stark divide between what activists and scholars refer to as “the environmentalism of the rich” and “the environmentalism of the poor.” Political and economic elites have an outsized influence and control over government and international environmental agencies. Indeed, mainstream environmental organizations are supported by, and dependent upon, the patronage of the wealthy, which impacts their priorities and strategies. The Dust Bowl did not arise because there was a lack of awareness of the issue or the technical means to address it. Like dust-bowlification today, the ultimate source of the crisis was social, not technological, thus requiring massive social change to address.

This chapter explores the impact of a specific type of economic elite in the technocracy on contemporary urban planning. These are the financial and advanced business services (FABS) such as legal, tax, property, and other advisory firms — the ‘technicians’ who keep the financial capitalist system afloat. The chapter argues that this diverse landscape of private experts is becoming increasingly influential in shaping public planning policies and private corporate strategies in real estate development, yet they operate as unaccountable actors, far from any transparent democratic process. The role of the FABS industry is characterised by this sector's ability to generate power and strategic knowledge that determines urban and regional development. The chapter develops and exemplifies its argument in the context of Luxembourg and its vastly dynamic financial economy.

This chapter considers how the armed forces declined in power throughout Latin America in the early 1990s, but the processes of demilitarization in El Salvador and Guatemala were unique. While demilitarization followed civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, these are the only two cases in Latin America in which the United Nations played a major role in brokering negotiated settlements to end the armed conflicts and in monitoring peace agreements that set in motion processes of demilitarization. In both countries political opposition to continued military domination, including armed insurgencies, was a constant feature from the 1960s onward. Moreover, economic elites who traditionally looked to the military to protect their business interests increasingly expressed concern about the liability of supporting a large, well-equipped military without a mission.