Globalization and the Emergence of a Transnational Oligarchy (original) (raw)
Related papers
2002
The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of recruitment of elites and to investigate the nature of the links between recruitment and training of elites and economic development. We show that there was a key shift at the turn of the nineteenth century in the way the Western world trained its elites, with a second shift taking place after World War II, when meritocracy became the basis for recruitment of elites. Although meritocratic selection should result in the best being chosen, we show that meritocratic recruitment leads to class stratification and auto-recruitment. We analyze whether stratification resulting from meritocratic selection is optimal for the development of a country, and show that it is dependent on the type of technological changes occurring in the country.
Global Economic Elites?-The Globalization-Hypothesis and its Empirical Proof
2010
Does globalization lead to global markets for managers and towards internationalized career systems? The rise of global elites is an assumption of the mainstream of the globalization theories (Moss-Kanter 1999;. The hypothesis of the globalization literature emphasize that a transnational management is emerging out of a global "war of talents" as a new world class of economic elites. The central recruitment criterion to become part of the new world class seems to be performance .Examined the hypotheses of the globalization literature by using data on the migration of managers from the U.S., East Asia and Germany and analysis about the globalization of management, the data show that no significant brain drain between these countries is taking place and "brain circulation" of insiders with short-term stays abroad is the dominant career pattern. Also there can be illustrated that within the exclusive career systems of MNC the recruitment process is not only based on performance and economic calculus, instead it exhibits patterns of value-oriented social closure as a result of unwritten rules and hidden factors of organizational and economic institutions.
2004
The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of recruitment of elites and to investigate the nature of the links between recruitment of elites and economic development. The main change that occurred in the way the Western world trained its elites, is that meritocracy became the basis for their recruitment. Although meritocratic selection should result in the best being chosen, we show that meritocratic recruitment leads to class stratification and auto-recruitment. We analyze whether stratification resulting from meritocratic selection is optimal for the development of a country, and show that it is dependent on the type of technological changes occurring in the country.
Globalizing Political and Economic Elites in National Fields of Power
Historical Social Research, 2018
»Die Globalisierung politischer und wirtschaftlicher Eliten in nationalen Feldern der Macht«. The article contributes to the discussions about global elites from a field-theoretical and empirical perspective. The examination of comparative biographical data on political and economic elites in two countries from the Global North (Germany and the US) and the Global South (Brazil and India) shows that elites in all four countries are globalizing. However, this process is strongly embedded in specific historic and socio-cultural structures of national fields of power. Emerging powers from the "Global South" seem to establish their own "schools of power" for the educational reproduction of their national elites. Therefore, speaking of a homogenous global elite is misleading and obscures the multiple conflicts between elite factions in national fields of power, as well as between national elites from different countries and world regions. Consequently, field-theoretical research on elites must be embedded in a comprehensive analysis of power, conflict, and class-relations on the national as well as on the global level of the capitalist world system.
The Effects of Elite Recruitment on Social Cohesion and Economic Development
2010
The aim of this paper is to analyze whether the recruitment of elites in the Western world leads to social cohesion, or to the opposite --social stratification. We show that the main change that occurred in the way the Western world trained its elites is that meritocracy became the basis for their recruitment. Although meritocratic selection should result in the best being chosen, we show that meritocratic recruitment actually leads to class stratification and auto-recruitment. In consequence meritocracy and the democratization of higher education do not lead to social cohesion. We then check the effects of the recruitment of elites and social stratification on economic growth. We show that these effects are dependent upon the type of technological changes occurring in the country.
Globalization, Social Stratification and the Elite
We analyse the impact of globalization upon social stratification in advanced economies from a model in which (i) households differ in their skill and capital endowments, and (ii) there is a minimal consumption under which they are excluded from the labour market. We make a distinction between North-North globalization (NNG) and North-South globalization (NSG). NNG generates tax competition and NSG changes income distribution in favour of skilled labour and capital owners. We show that the economy is divided between four types of households: the excluded, the rentiers, the 'classical' (whose working time increases with real wage) and the 'non-classical' (whose working time decreases with real wage), and we introduce the elite whose capital endowment is higher than a threshold value. NNG makes the groups of rentiers and excluded to expand whereas NSG has an inverted-U impact on the dimension of these two groups. As regards the elite, globalization induces an increase ...
Global Capitalism Theory and the Emergence of Transnational Elites
The class and social structure of developing nations has undergone profound transformation in recent decades as each nation has incorporated into an increasingly integrated global production and financial system. National elites have experienced a new fractionation. Emergent transnationally-oriented elites grounded in globalized circuits of accumulation compete with older nationally-oriented elites grounded in more protected and often state-guided national and regional circuits. Nationally-oriented elites are often dependent on the social reproduction of at least a portion of the popular and working classes for the reproduction of their own status, and therefore on local development processes however so defined, whereas transnationally-oriented elites are less dependent on such local social reproduction. The shift in dominant power relations from nationally-to transnationally-oriented elites is reflected in a concomitant shift to a discourse from one that defines development as national industrialization and expanded consumption to one that defines it in terms of global market integration.
Economía, 2016
Economic elites have not received enough attention in the economic literature. The obvious reason is limited access to information. This paper seeks to contribute to contemporary knowledge on elites in two ways. First, it employs a new unique data set on the world economic elite covering 2002-2014 to develop a method of measuring the degree of elite circulation; second, it provides a theoretical explanation of the observed facts. The empirical finding is that the world economic elite is subject to a low degree of circulation. Despite increased globalization, liberalization, longterm economic growth, and the recent Great Recession, the core of the elite remains mostly unchanged. Our theory attempts to explain this fact by introducing the analytical distinction between market competition and elite competition, which is a kind of meta-competition. Thus, the following relationship is derived from the theory: The low level of elite circulation, that is, the low meta-competition, underlies the oligopolistic market structures that we observe in the real world.