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In historical perspective, the history of Finland's political class is one of gradual growth. Parliamentary salaries and public party financing were established before 1967, thus laying the foundations for an increasing professionalization – qualitatively and quantitatively. It is now possible to distinguish an inner core of professional politicians, consisting of about 1,000 elected politicians, their assistants, party functionaries, and journalists, and a much more sizable outer fringe. Thus, despite an unfavourable preferential voting system, improving the individual candidates standing vis-\'e0-vis the party, a Finnish political class acting for itself has been firmly established – at the cost of a deepening chasm between this political class and its constituency.

This chapter suggests that in Mexico, the organizational networking approach grossly undermeasures the extent to which power elite circles are linked across policy arenas. Three broad networking sources are significant to establishing influential personal relationships across all Mexican power elite boundaries: educational, career, and family. Mexico's geographic pattern is typical of most countries other than the United States: a centralized capital city where most of the intellectual, political, and economic resources are concentrated. Wealth is an important variable in the family networking process. Educational settings are the most important source for networking among Mexican power elites, but only politicians and intellectuals establish extensive friendships with one another through education. A new type of politician at the end of the twentieth century, the hybrid politico, is increasingly characterized by provincial roots and experiences outside the three urban centers.

This chapter presents striking evidence that supports the belief that mentors are crucial actors in determining many characteristics of the power elite. The general literature on mentoring in postmodern societies concludes that collectivist cultures like Mexico give stronger support to mentoring than individualistic, organizational cultures, and that mentoring is a “key resource for the development of power in organizations,” affecting a protégé's rank, career track, and position of power. Mentors play multiple roles among power elites. In Mexico, the mentor has functioned as a recruiter, as a networker, and as a socializer. Family is the dominant locale for mentor-disciple relationships among capitalists; consequently a kinship connection produces this linkage. There is a powerful linkage in Mexico between influential leadership and mentors.

This chapter divides Mexico's power elite into two major generations, those born between 1910 and 1940, and those born after 1940. The most striking variable across Mexican power elite groups is a leader's age. A generational portrait of Mexico's power elite reveals how overall recruitment patterns are changing. The most pronounced generational division within Mexico's power elite is the dramatic difference between power elites born before or after 1940. The dramatic change in the socioeconomic background of Mexico's top leadership is paralleled by an equally dramatic regional shift in elite residence. Three types of Mexican intellectuals appeared in the second half of the twentieth century: public intellectual, private intellectual, and international intellectual. The older generation of power elites was exposed to historical experiences incorporating civil violence, political instability, and economic nationalism. The younger generation of leaders lost sight of a fundamental issue in Mexico: social and economic inequality.

This chapter addresses the importance of networking within Mexican power elites. Networking through kinship ties occurs more commonly among Mexican capitalists than among any of the four other power elite groups. The two groups among Mexico's power elite who operate within the most institutionalized structured setting are military officers and the clergy. Organizational positions do not account for the majority of identifiable networking sources among elites. Organizational networking theorists imply that formal positions are the only source of personal networks. Comparative analysis of corporate board membership does reveal significant similarities among Mexican, North American, and other countries' corporate leaders. The peculiar structures of each group strongly flavor the nature of the networking source. Mexicans who exercised the most influence within their respective areas of responsibility in the last third of the twentieth century have close ties to one another, ties which affect their personal and professional relationships.

This chapter examines the significance of family and career, as well as several experiential social processes that have an impact on socialization (e.g., residence and major societal events). Mexican power elites, not surprisingly, have identified family as their most important source of values. The socializing influence of elite family backgrounds originates from the fact that privileged backgrounds occur disproportionately among power elites as compared to the general population. An institutional environment not only influences the values and attitudes of those who have sought initially to make an institution their career, but it can prompt a person established in one career to shift laterally to another. Major social, economic, and political events influence power elite values. The revolution's impact is largely indirect, having formed the most important generation of mentors to Mexico's power elite, rather than the power elite itself.

This chapter emphasizes those representative prototypes of the power elite who will dominate in the immediate future and who will mentor the next generation. It discusses what they represent and suggest their consequences for Mexico's future. Drawing comparisons across each of the power elite groups indicates that some groups represent a well-defined shift in elite leadership, while others can claim only modest differences from their predecessors. Intellectuals—both public and private—share some qualities with a third type of cultural power elite, the international intellectual. Demographic patterns favoring urbanization are not likely to change in the twenty-first century. The most dramatic structural shift in the experiences of Mexico's power elite corresponds with the most influential ideological shift in the last three decades, an emphasis on political and economic liberalization. As Mexican leadership marches into the next millennium, networking and mentoring will continue to be vibrant features of power elite circles.

This book addresses the existence and importance of power elite in Mexico. It determines the extent of and the means by which power elites are linked to each other within and across their respective groups. Evidence of mentors and their influence on the formation of power elite circles are given. It also explores the sources of socialization in the formation of elite ideas and attitudes. Today, Mexico is deeply engaged in the process of a democratic transformation. The most examined theories interlock empirically, based on highly developed theoretical arguments, involving the exchange between leading capitalists. The existence of a Mexican power elite affects the importance of elite decision making in Mexican society. Elite decisions contribute heavily in determining the success and legitimacy of a political model. Five power elite groups, politicians, intellectuals, clergy, military officers, and capitalists, were the most influential elite actors in Mexico during the last three decades.

This chapter describes the role of mentors in national education and education's important influence on power elite values and attitudes. In Mexico, there are substantial differences in the curricular content and ideological setting of private and public universities, and even within specific institutions, regardless of funding sources. Two public institutions have educated the largest and most diverse group of Mexican power elites, the National Preparatory School and the National University. Two kinds of professional schools are responsible for educating a large portion (more than a third) of Mexico's leaders: military academies and religious seminaries. Education provides a source of many future military mentors, career officers who themselves offer the vast majority of instruction in the armed forces. The most notable Mexican seminary in the power elite is the Palafoxian Seminary in Puebla.

This chapter addresses the importance of education abroad to Mexican power elites. Mexico conforms with global educational patterns, both in the increasing percentage of elites who study abroad and in their choice of the United States as the site for those studies. Mexicans shifted from a European to a United States-based educational experience in the 1970s. It is apparent that educational experiences abroad potentially influence the attitudes of Mexico's power elite, regardless of whether they occurred in a regular university setting or in a controlled professional environment. The importance of higher education as a power elite credential increased the likelihood that greater numbers of Mexican power elites would obtain graduate training.

This chapter concentrates on the foreign educational experiences of elite clergy, politicians, and military officers. The experiences of future bishops who played a critical supporting role in persuading ordinary Mexicans to demand fair elections and political accountability are explained. The chapter also examines the officer corps, who studied in the United States. The only impact shared by Mexican power elites from military and nonmilitary backgrounds who study in the United States is their exposure to a different methodological approach which is typical of American graduate and higher education. The critical impact of education on the elite mentoring process and the impact of individual professors on specific students were nonexistent among priests at the Gregorian University. It is clearly shown that educational experiences abroad may enhance, moderate, or alter the differences in elite attitudes.

This chapter examines the evidence for open-air assembly places existing at cemeteries of the 5th and 6th centuries in eastern and southern England. Contrasts are drawn between the types of cemetery (i.e. primarily inhumation or cremation), and types of legal assembly taking place at these sites. A small number of associated sites are identified and discussed, but it is argued that in general ‘folk’ cemeteries were not reused by later Anglo-Saxon communities as places of legal assembly. Examination of the available evidence identifies some of the features of palimpsest landscapes and attempts to provide an explanation for their continued significance through the early medieval period. Particular emphasis is given in this discussion to the role of elite power, and its appropriation of the symbolic landscape.

This chapter explores the significance of a professional organizational milieu, where the policy consequences of interactions between networking and socialization are analyzed. It incorporates the special characteristics of power elite networking to demonstrate how influential Mexicans use their informal associations in formal institutional settings to influence major policy decisions. In the private sector, the most influential organizations are not company bureaucracies but corporate boards and the Mexican Council of Businessmen. Individual Mexican agencies evolved their own organizational cultures, and that these cultures contributed to a dramatic change in government macroeconomic policy and to producing the leadership which engineered those new directions. The networking sources of prominent political power elites in the three economic agencies are varied, reflecting the patterns found among all political power elites. The Mexican Council of Businessmen provides an opportunity for an intellectual exchange among capitalists and between capitalists and leading political figures, including the president.

This chapter details Mills's political radicalization during the last decade of his life. Although he had been an opponent of perhaps the most popular war in U.S. history and always harbored deep suspicions of the powers that be, until the early 1950s it is fair to say that despite his adherence to a “third camp” politics he was far more tolerant of the United States as a liberal democracy than he was of Stalinist regimes. His main political ties were with labor progressives such as J. B. S. Hardman, social democrats such as Hans Gerth, and mildly dissident liberal academics such as Richard Hofstadter, Irving Howe, and Daniel Bell. However, from the publication of The Power Elite in 1956 to his last book, The Marxists, published posthumously in 1962, Mills' project looked forward to the creation of a new Left, one nestled deeply in the American grain of populism—a more egalitarian society marked by radical democracy—but not the American celebration to which many 1930s radicals had given their enthusiastic approbation.

Profiling New York–based venture capitalists and VC firms that have been established in the city since the early 2000s, the chapter examines their risky but privileged perch between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Interviews with VCs are juxtaposed with the post–World War II history of venture capital as a distinctive form of investment and management. The VCs’ equally distinctive commitment to New York is then contrasted with the increasing geographical dispersal of their investment funds to other regions of the world. Meanwhile, the integration of some corporate and VC members of the tech “community” into New York’s business establishment suggests the formation of a local tech-financial elite, updating C. Wright Mills’s critique of the institutional bases of power.

This chapter discusses the legal background of theaters in late Ottoman Egypt, starting with a microhistory of the Comité des Théâtres. Its administrative history highlights the process by which khedivial theaters became state institutions overseen financially and administratively by the Comité des Théâtres. Financial experts expressed cultural preferences through indirect censorship of the program within the Opera House. The preferences of the khedives were also taken into consideration—when and if there was no cost involved—and some favored Arab impresarios could use the Opera House. In this way, patriotism in Arabic was staged in the stage of the symbolic Opera House within the colonial frames. As a consequence, “culture” attained a double function as both legitimizing and mirroring elite power. The chapter also considers private theaters and their legal environment.

Chapter 1 introduces the unrivaled political and economic power of America’s Central Bank, the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Bank is a mutant institution of government. It has enjoyed anonymity from Americans for most of its history even though it wields unparalleled power on domestic policy that is largely free of the traditional system of checks and balances, which routinely grind down presidential and congressional proposals. The exceptionalism of Fed power stands out among the three branches of government within the United States and among democratic capitalist countries. Instead of studying the Federal Reserve as merely a state agency implementing technical monetary and interest rate policy, this book analyzes the Fed as a powerful political institution with its own interests (and market favorites), which its leaders pursue and which contribute to rising economic inequality and racial disparities. The Fed’s exceptional independent capacity and favoritism were spotlighted in its responses to the 2008–2009 Great Recession and the economic and financial turmoil created by the start of the coronavirus in 2020.