The New Power Elite
Inequality, Politics and Greed
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.
Alan Shipman is an economist, currently with the Open University, UK, who has also worked as an emerging markets analyst, and industrial and social researcher.
June Edmunds lectures in sociology at the University of Sussex, UK, and is an affiliated senior research fellow at the Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.
Bryan S. Turner is professor of the sociology of religion at the Australian Catholic University, an honorary professor at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and an emeritus professor at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA.
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