Higley And Burton Analysis

“Higley and Burton provide a comprehensive and rigorous framework through which scholars can make sense of the varieties of elite rule. Their hard-headed analysis of the forces that lie behind liberal democracy is all the more necessary given that U.S. foreign policy is now dedicated to the spread of such institutions around the world.”
—Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University
This compelling and convincing study, the capstone of decades of research, argues that political regimes are created and sustained by elites. Liberal democracies are no exception; they depend, above all, on the formation and persistence of consensually united elites. John Higley and Michael
Burton explore the circumstances and ways in which such elites have
formed
in the modern world. They identify pressures that may cause a basic change in the structure and functioning of elites in established liberal democracies, and they ask if the elites clustered around George W. Bush are a harbinger of this change. The authors’ powerful and important argument reframes our thinking about liberal democracy and questions optimistic assumptions about the prospects for its spread in the twenty-first
century.
JOHN HIGLEY is professor of government and sociology at the
University of Texas at Austin and chair of the Research Committee on
Political Elites of the International Political Science Association.
MICHAEL BURTON is professor of sociology at Loyola College in
Maryland.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5360-6
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ELITE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

“This important study represents the culmination of Higley and Burton’s work—the first book-length exposition of the mature version of their elite theory buttressed by the close examination of an astonishing number and variety of historical cases. Well argued, clearly written, and astute, this book is easily accessible for undergraduates, general readers, and all those interested in elites or democratic transitions.”
—Thomas A. Baylis, University of Wisconsin, Madison

HIGLEY &
BURTON

SOCIAL SCIENCE • INTERNATIONAL
STUDIES
ELITE TRANSFORMATIONS
SERIES EDITOR: JOHN HIGLEY

ELITE

FOUNDATIONS
OF LIBERAL

DEMOCRACY

JOHN HIGLEY
&
MICHAEL BURTON

Elite Foundations of
Liberal Democracy

Elite Foundations of
Liberal Democracy

John Higley and Michael Burton

R OW M A N & L I T T L E F I E L D P U B L I S H E R S , I N C .

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Oxford

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright ᭧ 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
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Higley, John.
Elite foundations of liberal democracy / John Higley and Michael Burton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-7425-5360-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7425-5360-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5361-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7425-5361-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Elite (Social sciences) 2. Democracy. I. Burton, Michael G., 1940–
II. Title.
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Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

1

Elites and Regimes

1

2

Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes

33

3

Settlements among Disunited Elites

55

4

Colonial Origins of Consensually United Elites

107

5

Convergences among Disunited Elites

139

6

Elites and Liberal Democratic Prospects

181

Bibliography

207

Index

219

About the Authors

229

v

Acknowledgments

This book results from many years of discussions and collaborative research with scholars who have engaged in the study of elites and politics. The scholar who exerted the greatest influence on us was our direct and indirect mentor, the late G. Lowell Field, a political scientist of great originality.
Another has been Joseph Lopreato, a close student of Pareto’s thought, who introduced both of us to the political sociology of elites. A third has been
Jan Pakulski, a creative and insightful student of elites in his country of birth,
Poland, and in his adopted country, Australia. Others with whom we have worked and who have influenced our thinking about elites are Heinrich Best,
Leonard Broom, Bill Case, Maurizio Cotta, Jean-Pascal Daloz, Bill Domhoff, Egil Fivelsdal, Knut Groholt, Trygve Gulbrandsen, Richard Gunther,
¨
Eva Etzioni-Halevy, Charles Kadushin, Alan Knight, David Lane, Ursula
Hoffmann-Lange, Gyorgy Lengyel, Juan Linz, Ian McAllister, Gwen Moore,
¨
John Peeler, Peter Rutland, Anton Steen, Ulf Torgersen, John Uhr, Jacek
Wasilewski, and Włodzimierz Wesołowski. Over the years we have profited from the thinking of scholars clustered in and around the Research Committee on Political Elites of the International Political Science Association, which was founded and long led, illustriously, by Mattei Dogan. This hardly exhausts the list of scholars from whom we have learned much, and we are deeply grateful to those we have mentioned and the many more who have given us much time and warm collegiality. Last but hardly least, Desley Deacon and Joan Burton were pillars of support during the many years we have tried to understand elites and politics.
We dedicate this book to our grandchildren, Philip and Mathilde, and J. B. and Owen.
John Higley and Michael Burton
November 2005 vii 1
Elites and Regimes

In March 2003, armies of the United States and the United Kingdom, accompanied by small military units from allied countries such as Australia, invaded Iraq to replace its tyrannical Baathist regime with ‘‘freedom and democracy,’’ as U.S. president George W. Bush repeatedly promised. The new Iraq political order would be stable and have an open and pluralistic civil society, wide protections of civil liberties, rule of law with an independent judiciary, and civilian control of the military. It would be, in short, something like a liberal democracy. Of course, the invaders had additional goals: to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, combat international terrorism by preventing Al Qaeda from operating in or through
Iraq, ensure Western access to Iraq’s large petroleum reserves, and ignite democratic reforms in the Middle East by making Iraq into a democratic showplace. But after the Baathist regime was destroyed within three weeks of fighting, weapons of mass destruction were not found, evidence that Al
Qaeda was active in Iraq did not materialize, Baghdad and other cities were extensively looted, Iraq’s petroleum exports declined markedly, and insurgencies against the occupying forces took root. As justification for the invasion, and the large costs in blood and treasure that followed, only the goal of helping the Iraqi people to institute a strong democracy remained. In service to this, the occupying forces followed the conventional recipe for creating such a democracy: constitute an interim government as broadly representative of Iraq’s many population segments as possible, design a liberal democratic constitution and gain popular ratification of it, hold elections at the earliest possible moment for a representative parliament, encourage the emergence of a robust civil society by investing in its organizations, and above all, implant democratic beliefs and values among the Iraqi people.
That Iraq could be transformed into something like a liberal democracy was never a serious possibility. The sine qua non of liberal democracy is a
1

2

Chapter 1

well-articulated, internally accommodative, and relatively secure political elite—what we call a consensually united elite. No liberal democracy has ever emerged without the formation of such an elite, and the odds that one would form in Iraq, or that Iraq could somehow escape this rule of politics, were next to zero. Discordant and disorganized, the dozens of small and weakly articulated elite groups that led or vied for leadership of Iraq’s clashing religious sects, tribes, and ethnic groups had radically different experiences of the Baathist regime, ranging from profitable association with it, to murderous subjugation by it, to long overseas flight from it. They distrusted, indeed despised, each other, and they lacked any experience of cooperating peacefully in political matters. It was virtually inconceivable that they could reach the kind of basic elite accommodation that is liberal democracy’s main foundation.
There were, instead, just three realistic possibilities. One was that the splintered elites of the Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurdish tribes and religious communities would establish separate political entities after much bloodshed and population re-settlement. Practically speaking, Iraq would cease to exist. The second was that a flimsy interim government would be stitched together long enough to hold elections, helter-skelter, of a not very representative parliamentary body from which would come a highly unstable government lacking popular support and confronting fanatical enemies. The third was that a faction or narrow coalition of factions would seize power and create an authoritarian regime, almost certainly of a theocratic kind, that would bear no more resemblance to liberal democracy than its Baathist predecessor. As the U.S.-led occupying forces looked in growing desperation for a way to extricate themselves from the morass created by their invasion, they could claim only to have unseated Saddam Hussein and preached the conventional gospel of liberal democracy, however irrelevant it was to Iraqi conditions and liberal democracy’s actual elite foundations.
The elite foundations of liberal democracy are this book’s subject. We locate the genesis of liberal democracy in the formation and persistence of a consensually united elite, investigating how this type of elite forms and why it persists. We also examine the origins and persistence of elites that are incompatible with liberal democracy. We are hardly the first to connect liberal democracy to elites. Starting with Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940s, social scientists such as Robert Dahl, Giovanni Sartori, Seymour Martin Lipset,
Dankwart Rustow, Juan Linz, Alfred Stepan, Robert Putnam, Larry Diamond, and many others have in their writings about liberal democracy or its close cousin, consolidated democracy, stressed the importance of an internally accommodative and secure political elite. Many students of third wave transitions to democracy have also emphasized the centrality of elite strategies, choices, and pacts in such transitions.
Yet ambivalence about the relative importance of liberal democracy’s elite versus mass foundations is widespread. Studying democratization tout court,

Elites and Regimes

3

Samuel P. Huntington describes the beliefs and actions of elites as ‘‘the most immediate and significant explanatory variable’’ for explaining democratization’s waves, but he lists twenty-seven additional variables that affect the causal chain. Huntington posits that no one variable is necessary or sufficient, and that each case of democratization has a unique combination of multiple causes.1 Similarly, Larry Diamond describes elites as the ‘‘preeminent’’ variable for explaining democratization, but he quickly adds that elites are ‘‘not the whole story’’ and that historical legacies, mass conditions, and structural variables—previous democratic experience, economic development level, political culture, civil society, state institutions and party systems, citizen trust and patience—also figure prominently.2 Ruth Berins
Collier accords elite strategies a central role in democratization, but she gives equal if not greater weight to mobilized classes, especially working classes, as well as historical memories, symbolic frames, social organization, and power resources.3 Huntington, Diamond, and Collier are emblematic of the many scholars who hold that democratization, and especially the emergence of liberal democracy, cannot be explained without investigating elites, but that much else must be brought in.
We contend that liberal democracy’s elite and mass dimensions are more separable and sequential. A political elite whose members and factions are disposed toward mutually deferential and restrained political behavior always forms before liberal democratic precepts and practices are adopted by any large number of citizens. The bundle of political behaviors and institutions that constitute liberal democracy is primarily an elite creation to which mass publics gradually and slowly accede. This is, of course, a tautology: if elites choose to practice liberal democratic politics, then liberal democratic politics will be practiced. But it is a matter of record that elites seldom make this choice. Consensually united elites have formed infrequently in modern history, and there is little reason to believe that they will become less rare during our new century. Disunited elites that produce authoritarian regimes or illiberal democracies have been the rule historically, and they are likely to remain so.
How an internally accommodative and secure political elite originates, and why it persists, has received comparatively little study. Reflecting the abiding influence of conventional democratic thought, an elite propitious for liberal democracy has usually been seen as the gradual outgrowth of socioeconomic modernization, by which democratic beliefs and values are spread among citizens and an increasingly vibrant civil society and a democratic political culture are created. Liberal democracy’s elite dimension has been viewed as stemming from, or being inextricably entwined with, its mass dimension. We argue, by contrast, that in modern history consensually united elites, and thus liberal democracies, have originated in just three ways and circum-

4

Chapter 1

stances. All three have been uncommon and one is no longer a realistic possibility:
• Settlements of basic disputes among warring elites that are deliberate and sudden and depend upon highly contingent elite circumstances and choices • Colonial opportunities for local elites to practice a cautious and limited representative politics during long periods of home rule while also leading politically complex movements for national independence
• Convergences toward shared norms of political behavior among disunited elites competing for support amid economically prosperous electorates that are averse to drastic alterations of the status quo
Seen through this elite optic, liberal democracy’s prospects are more limited than conventional ideas about its genesis in socioeconomic modernization, mass democratic beliefs and cultures, and robust civil societies lead many to expect. Elite settlements, which have been exceedingly rare historically but nonetheless seminal for liberal democracy, are likely to remain infrequent.
Colonial home-rule opportunities to form consensually united elites and lay the basis for liberal democracies are not available in our postcolonial world.
Convergences among disunited elites to a consensually united configuration require a level of general well-being, and thus an aversion to radical alternatives, that few countries with disunited elites are likely to attain anytime soon. Elite analysis has always been notably cautious about prospects for desirable political outcomes like liberal democracy. Its originators—Gaetano
Mosca (1858–1941), Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), and Robert Michels
(1876–1936)—derided nineteenth-century democratic and Marxian theories for their utopian forecasts of happy egalitarian endpoints to human history.
They contended that because elites are inevitable in all modern societies, such forecasts are nonsense. The most that can be hoped for is a relatively liberal but still quite unequal political order governed by capable, cooperative, and enlightened elites. Mosca and Pareto noted, however, that elites vary greatly in their behaviors and qualities among societies and within them over time.
Most often, elites act in ways and display qualities that are inimical to a liberal and somewhat democratic order. Studying how elites vary and uncovering the origins of elites conducive to such an order should be a priority in social science. Still, the early elite theorists added, it is not enough to focus just on elites because in the final analysis elites and non-elites are interdependent. Elites are seldom, if ever, omnipotent; they must obtain non-elite support for most undertakings. To do this, elites need to devise and deploy political formulas tailored to independently existing non-elite interests and sentiments. Nevertheless, elites usually have considerable leeway to activate

Elites and Regimes

5

or muffle non-elite interests and sentiments, at least for a time, and non-elite populations are unable to achieve anything of importance in politics without elite leadership and organization. In this chapter we elaborate these components of elite analysis, distinguishing basic types of political elites and regimes associated with them, and outlining the three ways in which consensually united elites, liberal democracy’s sine qua non, form.

ELITE INEVITABILITY
The early elite theorists contended that the existence of political elites is inevitable in all at least moderately complex societies. Thoroughly egalitarian social and political orders are impossible; there will always be elites who accrue greater power and privilege than anyone else. Both factual and normative reasons for this inevitability were given. Mosca emphasized the ways in which tiny minorities out-organize and outwit large majorities, adding that ‘‘political classes’’—his term for political elites—usually have ‘‘a certain material, intellectual, or even moral superiority’’ over those they govern.4
Pareto postulated that in a society with truly unrestricted social mobility, elites would consist of the most talented and deserving individuals; but in real societies, elites consist of those who are most adept at using the two modes of political rule, force and persuasion, and who enjoy important advantages such as inherited wealth and family connections.5 Michels rooted the inevitability of elites (‘‘oligarchies’’) in the imperatives of large organizations: all such organizations need leaders and experts in order to operate efficiently, and as these individuals gain control of funds, information flows, promotions, and other aspects of organizational functioning, power becomes concentrated in their hands.6 This is still more inevitable, Michels lamented, because the apathy, ignorance, and narrowly self-interested behavior of rank-and-file organization members make them easy prey for manipulation.
Mosca and Pareto surveyed history to demonstrate the inevitability of political elites. Michels showed that even in an avowedly egalitarian mass organization like the German Social Democratic Party before World War I, the emergence of an elite was unavoidable. A century after the three theorists wrote, their inevitability contention has not been refuted. The many dramatic upheavals and changes that have occurred during the past hundred years have nowhere produced a society without political elites. Yet the contention lacks sharpness and force; it is regarded more as a platitude than an axiom, and the body of theory to which it points has few adherents.
A key problem is confusion over the sense in which political elites are inevitable. By stipulating that such elites are characterized by group consciousness, cohesion, and conspiracy—the so-called three C’s—some scholars have given the elite concept too restrictive a meaning.7 This makes
the

6

Chapter 1

inevitability contention carry more freight than the classical theorists intended. Few doubt that unitary three-C’s elites have headed communist, fascist, and militaristic regimes.8 But an inconclusive debate about the existence of such elites in the United States and other Western democracies has put the inevitability contention in limbo for many scholars.
The contention’s progenitors did not hold that a unitary elite is always and everywhere present. They said only that an elite of some kind is inescapable. Mosca stressed the variability of elite organization, cohesion, and collective will, and he did not view most European elites of his time as highly organized, self-conscious, unitary groups.9 Pareto denied that elites are necessarily ‘‘homogeneous’’ and ‘‘concrete units’’ whose members hold meetings to plan their actions or otherwise act with a ‘‘single will.’’10 Far from stipulating the form that elites take, the inevitability contention stood simply as an orienting proposition for theory and research: in all modern societies, political power is necessarily concentrated in a few persons, but the configurations these persons form vary importantly among societies and within them over time.
While some scholars have read too much into the inevitability contention, others have trivialized it. Mosca and Pareto employed the elite concept as an abstraction that referred to the conglomeration of politically effective actors in a society. Their concern was with the persistence, transformation, or disintegration of elites conceived as structured and dynamic wholes. Unfortunately, much research on elites has lacked this focus on overall structure and dynamics. The strong tendency has been to atomize elites by studying the sociological characteristics of elite individuals—their ethnicity and gender, family background, education, career, and religious and other affiliations—to see how representative they are of the population at large and if, when summed, these sociological characteristics shed light on political changes in which researchers are interested.
Despite tendencies to make too much or too little of the inevitability contention, most scholars today use the elite concept to designate a strictly factual category—people and groups who are powerful and privileged for whatever reason.11 In leaving the extent of elite consciousness, cohesion, conspiracy, and other variable properties for investigation, the preference is for a minimalist definition that equates elite status with the holding of strategic positions in large organizations and powerful sociopolitical movements. In step with Michels, elites are seen as arising from the functional imperatives of such organizations and movements, although his dim view of rank-andfile interests and capacities is typically not part of current reasoning. While the members of any large organization or movement share some broad understandings and interests, they seldom agree about the allocation of specific tasks and statuses or about the desirability of specific policies and actions. Consequently, organizations and movements are always in danger

Elites and Regimes

7

of ruinous internal conflicts. To survive and prosper, they need hierarchical systems of communications, through which decisions flow from those who make them to those who implement them. And they require hierarchical systems of rewards and punishments to ensure that decisions are obeyed. If we call the persons who command these hierarchical systems elites, we can say that organizations and movements beyond some minimum size and complexity necessarily create elites. Because, moreover, such organizations and movements are concentrations of power in the wider society, their commanders have disproportionate societal power and influence, and they almost always enjoy disproportionate privileges and protections.
Political elites can be defined as persons who are able, by virtue of their strategic positions in powerful organizations and movements, to affect political outcomes regularly and substantially. They are the principal decision makers in the largest or otherwise most pivotally situated organizations and movements in a sociopolitical unit; they include not only the familiar ‘‘power elite’’ triumvirate of top business, government, and military leaders but also top position holders in parties, professional associations, trade unions, media, interest groups, religious groups, and other powerful and hierarchically structured organizations and sociopolitical movements. At the national level, the outcomes that elites affect are the basic stability or instability of political regimes, the forms and workings of political institutions, and the main policies followed by governments. The ability to affect these outcomes regularly and substantially distinguishes elites from all other people in a society. A lone political assassin can affect political outcomes substantially, but not regularly. By contrast, even when they do not hold high government office, elites’ views and possible actions must be weighed when officeholders make decisions that affect regime continuity, institutional forms and workings, and the success of government policies. A citizen voting in democratic elections can affect political outcomes regularly, but not substantially. By contrast, although probably no elite person or group affects every aspect of a regime’s operation or a government’s policies, elites are able to exert significant influence on aspects that are salient to their interests and locations, so that without their support or opposition outcomes would be quite different.12 Put most simply, elites are persons and groups who have the organized capacity to make real and continuing political trouble.
Using this organizational-positional definition of political elites, researchers have estimated that political elites number fewer than ten thousand people in the United States;13 roughly five thousand in medium-sized countries like France,14 Australia,15 and Germany;16 and about two thousand in small countries like Denmark17 and Norway.18 This last estimate of two thousand elite persons is probably the most plausible for all countries during the early modern historical period and for all but the most populous developing countries today. It is important to underscore that this is a narrow and specifically

8

Chapter 1

political definition and identification of elites. It does not consider all those in a society who enjoy high occupational, educational, or cultural statuses to be elites. This latter meaning of elites is, however, widely employed. For example, in his recent critique of America’s ‘‘denationalized elites,’’ Samuel
P. Huntington refers to tens of thousands of university professors as comprising but one segment of these elites, and he mentions a ‘‘new global elite’’ numbering about twenty million people, of whom 40 percent—some eight million—are Americans whom Huntington regards as part of America’s denationalized elite.19 This book, by contrast, concentrates on political elites and understands them in a much more restricted sense—as the few thousands of people who occupy a modern society’s uppermost power positions.

ELITE VARIATION
The different kinds of political elites found among societies and within them over time were a central focus of classical elite analysis. Mosca asserted that
‘‘the varying structure of ruling classes [elites] has a preponderant importance in determining the political type, and also the level of civilization of the different peoples.’’20 Mosca contrasted elites in feudal societies, whose status rested on heredity and military valor, with those in modern bureaucratic societies, where, he thought, elite status rests primarily on wealth. Pareto stressed the ‘‘order’’ or ‘‘system’’ of elites and how it often overrides the
‘‘conscious will’’ of individual elite members in shaping their actions.21 He contrasted a ‘‘Byzantine’’ elite that operated strongly centralized and dictatorial regimes in earlier times with the ‘‘pluto-democratic’’ elite that is found in modern industrial societies. Most famously, Pareto also followed Machiavelli in distinguishing between elites that display the character syndromes of foxes or lions. Foxlike elites are cunning and shrewd and rule principally through artful persuasion, deception, and fraud; leonine elites are bold and resolute and rule primarily through force. But because foxlike elites rely too much on persuasion and lionlike elites too much on force, the two kinds of elites rise and fall, displacing each other in an endless series of cycles.22 Both
Mosca and Pareto discussed the openness and social homogeneity of elites, observing that they have differed greatly in these respects throughout history. However, their distinctions were vitiated by the use of vague concepts.
Mosca referred to the varying spiritual unity, energy, and practical wisdom of historical elites, while Pareto’s distinctions between elites with differing character syndromes and psychological propensities defy empirical validation and are nothing more than ‘‘an inspired guess.’’23
A number of scholars drew on twentieth-century political developments to improve and update Mosca’s and Pareto’s distinctions. For example, Raymond Aron distinguished between Western and Soviet elites, although he

Elites and Regimes

9

simultaneously acknowledged profound differences between such Western elites as the British and the French, and he mostly ignored elites in developing countries.24 Combining the modal political orientations and social compositions of elites during the hundred years that followed Germany’s national integration in 1871, Ralf Dahrendorf distinguished between successive authoritarian, totalitarian, and cartel elites, although his focus on German affairs has militated against a wider use of his distinctions.25 Robert D.
Putnam combed many studies of political elites, and from them he distinguished what he called consensual, competitive, and coalescent elites, which he tied, respectively, to Communist, stable democratic, and multiethnic regimes.26 Other scholars distinguished broadly similar types of twentiethcentury elites.27
In these typological efforts, two dimensions of elite variation stand out: the extent of structural integration and the extent of value consensus. Structural integration involves the relative inclusiveness of formal and informal networks of communication and influence among the persons and factions making up a political elite.28 Value consensus involves the relative agreement among all these persons and factions about norms of political behavior and the worth of existing governmental institutions.29 Focusing on elite integration and consensus causes one to run into terminological problems, however.
First, labels commonly used to designate well-integrated and internally consensual elites are confusing. ‘‘Cohesive’’ is one frequent label; it connotes, however, a social glue and sticking together that particular factions may display but that entire political elites seldom possess. Another label, ‘‘unified,’’ implies oneness, or a systematic whole. This captures well enough the outward appearance of elites in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or the
North Korea of Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il, while the term ‘‘disunified’’ is reasonably apt for the intensely conflicted character of elite relations in most countries and times. But when used to label political elites in today’s liberal democracies, ‘‘unified’’ glosses over their very real power competitions and policy disagreements. It is better to distinguish semantically between united and disunited political elites, making further distinctions as necessary based on this dichotomy. Dense and interlocked networks of communication and influence, along with basic value agreements and a shared code of political behavior, characterize united elites. Conversely, the persons and factions forming disunited elites are clearly divided and separated from each other, they disagree fundamentally about political norms and institutions, and they adhere to no single code of political behavior.
United and disunited elites can be identified, in part, by studying interaction networks. For example, researchers have found that elites in liberal democracies such as the United States, Australia, Norway, the former West
Germany, and today’s reunified Germany interact through complex formal and informal networks that are most dense within functionally differentiated

10

Chapter 1

sectors (business, trade unions, state administration, the media, etc.) in which elite persons are engaged in the same kind of activity and share similar skills and information.30 Such dense sector networks can, of course, be expected in most modern societies, and in themselves they do not measure a political elite’s overall integration. More telling is whether these sector networks overlap and interlock to form webworks and central circles through which all important sector elites are tied together and obtain mutual access to key political decision makers. Researchers have uncovered the existence of such webworks and central circles in the liberal democracies mentioned above.
Research on elite networks in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia before their state socialist regimes collapsed has revealed a different pattern. There, networks were so centralized in the party-state, and they ran so conspicuously through the party secretary or president, that one could speak of a single and relatively seamless network.31 These nomenklatura systems licensed individuals for elite positions according to their party credentials.
There was, in effect, a semiformal but inclusive and highly centralized hierarchy of elite authority. In his analysis of power structure in the People’s
Republic of China during the early 1990s, for example, Kenneth Lieberthal concluded that through a maze of personal and factional ties and networks,
‘‘power at the top is highly concentrated in a very small number of individuals, roughly twenty-five to thirty-five, who wield ultimate authority in the executive, legislative, and judicial sphere.’’32
Researchers who studied ties among elite sectors and factions in Brazil and
France during the 1960s and early 1970s traced another broad pattern. Peter
McDonough’s 1972–1973 survey of Brazilian elites depicted militarygovernmental, business, church, and urban labor elites that were relatively isolated from each other and polarized over political game rules, such as the freedom of political opposition and the limits of executive power.33 Bernard
E. Brown’s more limited survey study of French elites during the mid1960s—just a few years after their conflicts toppled the Fourth Republic and the withdrawal from Algeria spawned considerable intra-elite violence— showed an absence of extensive personal contacts between the main elite factions and their ‘‘lack of agreement concerning the basic political institutions of the nation.’’34 Similarly, a study of French elites during the early 1970s by
William R. Schonfeld traced extensive personal ties among members of each main sector elite but a distinct lack of ties across sector lines, with each sector elite tending to be ignorant about, and dismissive of, the other sector elites.35
While network and survey studies like these are nearly impossible to carry out for elites in historical societies or in contemporary societies where investigations of elite interactions are forbidden, the network studies that have been done point to the existence of several configurations of united and disunited elites.
Studying the extent of value consensus is the second way to distinguish

Elites and Regimes

11

between united and disunited elites. A voluntary, mostly tacit consensus about the norms and rules of political behavior is the hallmark of elites that manage to ‘‘tame’’ politics.36 Giuseppe Di Palma regards restrained partisanship as their key norm, according to which:37
• Elites recognize the right of oppositions to exist, to be heard, to bargain the content of decisions, to veto decisions, and to enjoy representation proportional to their size and influence
• Elites agree to disagree when decisions cannot or should not be reached
• Elites maintain significant autonomy in relation to non-elite bases of support • Elites emphasize technical and procedural feasibilities, rather than ultimate rights and wrongs, in problem solving
• Elites practice and retain enough secrecy to allow for flexibility when bargaining, fashioning compromises, and seeking innovative solutions to problems
Writing about American elites during the 1960s, Kenneth Prewitt and Alan
Stone identified a similar norm or set of values:38
• Elites regard bargaining and compromise as the acceptable ways to operate politically
• Elites regularly acknowledge and endorse the society’s core political, economic, and social values
• Elites regularly affirm a commitment to the structure of power, rather than to particular personalities or policies
In a consensually united elite, such norms and commitments are reinforced and perpetuated because of the inclusive and integrated network of interactions in which most of the elite’s members participate. They have access to each other and to the most central decision makers through a finely spun web of interaction channels, the bulk of them informal. Through friendships and other personal ties; through frequent, intensive, and wideranging organizational contacts; and also through common recreational and social activities in exclusive and privileged settings, elite members know each other well, and this familiarity disposes them toward many reciprocities in tackling common problems, conflicts, and disagreements. Their operational code is ‘‘politics as bargaining’’ according to the principle of do ut des—give to get.39 Over time this bargaining enables elite persons and factions to achieve their divergent aims and inclines them to view the totality of political outcomes as positive sum. It disposes them to prize and uphold the institutions that process bargaining outcomes. As Robert Putnam has observed,
‘‘Elite commitment to ‘the system’ is doubtless . . . related to the gratifica-

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Chapter 1

tions the system gives them. Leaders are more likely to agree on the rules of the game, because it is fundamentally their game.’’40 The members of a consensually united elite have plausible assurances that even after missteps, scandals, or defeats that weaken them, they will retain their lives, reputations, and at least some socially accepted and moderately comfortable status.
Recall, as but one example, the substantial courtesy and respect accorded by
American elites to Richard M. Nixon during the years after his forced and humiliating resignation from the presidency in 1974. In Robert Dahl’s apt formulations, a ‘‘well developed system of mutual security’’ and a ‘‘system of mutual guarantees’’ are bedrock features of elites that operate stable
‘‘polyarchies,’’ that is, elites considered here to be consensually united and the foundations of liberal democracies.41
Once created, a consensually united elite and the political regime it operates are remarkably persistent. Consider the record of the English-cumBritish elite once the fratricidal conflicts between its main camps were settled in the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the formally agreed Bill of Rights in
1689 (discussed in chapter 3). During the following three centuries, this elite maintained an unbroken record of restrained political competitions while the electorate before which its competitions were played out expanded from
250,000 privileged male landowners during the eighteenth century to the full adult citizenry of many millions after World War I. The British elite built and much later painfully but peacefully dismantled a world empire. It presided over the rise of an alienated and disgruntled industrial working class and gradually incorporated the leaders of that class into mainstream politics.
During the twentieth century the political regime operated by the British elite passed unscathed through the loss of Ireland, two world wars, the Great
Depression, a costly and potentially divisive insurgency in Ulster, and a host of other challenges. Throughout, there was continuity of political leadership and the peaceful government alternation of factions articulating rival interests. In Barry Weingast’s game-theoretic language, what the English-British elite achieved in the Glorious Revolution was a solution to the ‘‘coordination problem’’ of limiting and transferring state power.42 Since 1689, its integrated structure and value consensus have constituted a ‘‘Pareto-optimal’’ equilibrium in which those who break the rules are sanctioned negatively. The equilibrium has also been Pareto-optimal because it has solved two circulation problems that the classical elite theorists thought were probably insoluble.
First, it has facilitated the peaceful absorption of rising counter elites, providing they displayed a willingness to practice restrained partisanship. Second, it has effectively co-opted talented individuals by basing entry into the elite substantially on merit.
In sharp contrast, a professed consensus about the rightness of a distinct ideology, religious doctrine, or ethnic creed is the hallmark of another kind of united elite. Where this elite exists, politics also appear to be tamed, but

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this appearance is due to the coerced expression of a single belief system.
One elite group has gotten the upper hand and requires that all who possess or aspire to power conform their public utterances to its beliefs. This is an ideologically united elite, and we will mention examples below. But let us observe here that where there is neither voluntary consensus about the need for political restraint, as in a consensually united elite, nor the coerced and uniform profession of a single belief system, as in an ideologically united one, a political elite is disunited and politics are untamed.
A difficulty in studying the extent of elite value consensus lies in separating what is merely apparent from what is real. Thus, the doctrinal unanimity that denotes an ideologically united elite is probably always more apparent than real. Although its members insist publicly that they agree on all main aspects of a doctrine and the policies flowing from it, in fact they do not.
Behind the scenes, important factions dissent from the official line. But penetrating the veil of public unanimity and discovering what is really going on is extraordinarily difficult. Analysts can be reduced to pouring over photographs of ceremonial occasions to see who is standing next to whom and who is absent, or, quite recently, wondering why photographs of Kim JongIl no longer appeared on some walls in Pyongyang. The question to ask is whether the essentially coerced character of elite unanimity is indicated by the severe punishments of those who make heretical statements or who apparently lose secret power struggles.
Conversely, the voluntary consensus about norms of political behavior that denotes a consensually united elite may be more real than apparent.
Competing persons and factions in this type of elite regularly and publicly portray each other as political scoundrels. Significantly, they also frequently accuse each other of violating accepted political practices and demand that opponents behave more responsibly. The outward appearance is close to that of a disunited elite. Except perhaps when all or most elite members suddenly and overtly band together in a crisis, the consensus about norms is largely tacit. In a consensually united elite, moreover, behavioral norms undergo modifications as various challenges and quandaries arise, so that at any given time some norms, and practices flowing from them, are in real dispute. The question to ask is whether all or nearly all persons and factions act over time to keep avowed doctrinal and policy disagreements from exploding into winner-take-all confrontations—whether, that is, the pattern of elite behavior indicates a common, though seldom explicitly avowed, desire to keep politics tamed. If no such pattern is discernible, if mutual hatreds are regularly and publicly expressed, and if conflicts and confrontations have a violent character, a political elite is disunited.
Assessing the extent of structural integration and value consensus among elites to determine if they are fundamentally united or disunited is, in sum, not a simple matter. But at the risk of repetition and in order to be as clear

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as possible, the three basic types of political elites that we distinguish are as follows: Disunited: Structural integration and value consensus are minimal in the sense that communication and influence networks do not cross partisan lines and elite sector boundaries in any comprehensive way. Partisan factions and elites in different sectors manifestly distrust each other and engage in unrestrained, often violent struggles for dominance that have a zero-sum or ‘‘politics as war’’ character.
Consensually united: Structural integration is extensive in the sense that overlapping and interlocked communication and influence networks encompass and tie together all influential factions and sector elites, with no single faction or sector elite dominating the networks. Value consensus is extensive in the sense that, while factions and sector elites regularly and publicly oppose each other on ideological and policy matters, their actions over time suggest an underlying consensus about most norms of political behavior and the worth of existing political institutions. Elite persons and factions accord each other significant trust, they cooperate tacitly to contain explosive issues and conflicts, and their competitions for political power have a positive-sum or ‘‘politics as bargaining’’ character.
Ideologically united: Structural integration is extensive in the sense that a single communication and influence network encompasses all elite members, and it is sharply centralized in a few top leaders through the party, movement, or sect they head. Value consensus is extensive in the sense that elite members express in public no significant ideological and policy disagreements and instead conform their public statements to a single ideology, religious doctrine, or ethnic creed, the substance and policy implications of which are construed officially by the uppermost leaders. Outwardly at least, the elite displays a monolithic character, and its members ostensibly perceive policies and other political outcomes as resulting from ideological truths, rather than from bargaining or war.
These distinctions are ideal or pure types that ‘‘represent the standards, parameters, or models against which . . . concrete instances can be compared in terms of greater or lesser proximity.’’43 In reality, some elites correspond quite closely to one or another ideal type, while others are borderline cases.
As we will discuss in chapter 2, disunited elites range from a chaotic extreme
(Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in recent years; Iraq at present) to those consisting of two or three well-articulated but deeply opposed camps (most European and virtually all Latin American countries from the time national states formed until well after World War II).
Consensually united elites, as we will discuss in chapters 3–5, range from

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markedly exclusionary (Mexico after 1929, Columbia and Venezuela for several decades following the late 1950s, Malaysia throughout its fifty years of independence) to broadly inclusive (England/Britain from the eighteenth century, British settler countries from the time of their independence, the
Netherlands and Sweden from early in the nineteenth century). Ideologically united elites range from the apparently seamless (North Korea under the father and son Kims and Mao’s China during the Red Book period of the 1950s and early 1960s, Cambodia under the brief rule of the Khmer
Rouge, most of Afghanistan under the Taliban) to ruthlessly centralized
(Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union) to limited degrees of observable factionalism (China from the Cultural Revolution, the Soviet Union from
Khrushchev to Gorbachev, Tito’s Yugoslavia).

ASSOCIATED TYPES OF POLITICAL REGIMES
A political regime is the pattern in which government decision-making power is organized, exercised, and transferred.44 The classical elite theorists thought of regimes as structures of elite rule. In their analyses, the basic forms and functioning of regimes accord closely with the characteristics of the elites that create and operate them. Regimes manifest the prevailing mode of elite interaction, the disposition of elites to rule preponderantly through force or persuasion, and the political formula that elites employ to justify their rule. As we have noted, the possibility of democratic regimes was regarded by classical elite theorists with much skepticism. Mosca depicted popular sovereignty as a self-serving political formula used by elites, and he was careful to punctuate ‘‘democratic’’ when using the term. Pareto was dismissive of democratic pretensions, as in his acerbic comment that ‘‘we need not linger on the fiction of ‘popular representation’—poppycock grinds no flour.’’45 Michels, disillusioned with the egalitarian goals of democracy and socialism on factual, not normative, grounds, thought of himself as an exdemocrat and an ex-socialist.
As Mosca’s life and work progressed, however, he showed increasing sympathy for a representative, or ‘‘mixed,’’ regime, in which the important
‘‘social forces’’ would participate in governance and have their participation regulated by a system of ‘‘juridical defense,’’ a concept roughly equivalent to that of civil liberties. Pareto came to admire Switzerland’s pursuit of democracy, although he thought that what he called a pluto-democratic regime was the most that could be achieved there or anywhere else. In a pluto-democratic regime there is a wide but tacit alliance between business and trade union elites for purposes of dominating the state and exploiting the fixed-income groups in society. Pareto regarded elected parliaments as

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forums for cementing this elite alliance, for transacting the trade-offs it requires, and for gulling mass consent to it.46
Like the classical elite theorists, we are skeptical about the utility of distinguishing between democratic and nondemocratic regimes. Like them, we regard democracy as a political formula used by elites to defend or attack political orders that vary according to whether power sharing through representative political practices is the modus operandi of elites. Where representative practices are well established, which is to say when the regime in question is stable, one could follow Robert Dahl and speak of a stable polyarchy—a regime in which power over officials is widely shared and is substantially popular and liberal in the sense of being inclusive and open to public contestation.47 However, most scholars and nearly all policy makers today employ the more normative concept of liberal democracy. Because this concept has such wide currency, we also use it, although in chapter 6 we observe that in doing so, one risks overlooking some worrisome political trends and possibilities in countries such as the United States at present. But our actual preference is to distinguish the types of regimes created by political elites according to whether they are stable or unstable and whether they display representative or unrepresentative political practices and then to use conventional labels such as liberal democracy, illiberal democracy, authoritarian, and totalitarian to distinguish subtypes of regimes that are stable or unstable and representative or unrepresentative. Let us briefly consider this way of subsuming the many detailed characteristics of regimes that comparative political analysts identify.
A regime is stable or unstable according to whether government executive power is subject to irregular seizures, attempted seizures, or widely expected seizures by force. Concrete indicators of an unstable regime are coups or uprisings aimed at changing the persons occupying government executive offices and not orchestrated by extranational forces. Such events usually involve the actions or anticipated actions of intact military units, including the military’s refusal to suppress an uprising. A regime should be regarded as unstable when such seizures have occurred, been attempted, or are thought by informed observers to be distinct possibilities. If any of these indicators obtain, a regime is likely to be temporary in duration and regarded as such by its supporters and opponents. If none of the indicators obtains—seizures or attempted seizures of government executive power by force are unknown and not regarded as likely by informed observers—a regime is stable, and most of its supporters and critics assume that it will persist indefinitely.
A regime is representative or unrepresentative according to whether government executive power is centered in some representative body or office and is transferred from one political faction to another through periodic and open competitions to dominate that body or office. Among regimes that are repre-

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sentative, however, the extent of representation can vary considerably across countries and within them over time. In some countries or times, competing elite factions merely take turns wielding government executive power via their alternating dominance of a parliament or other deliberative body that is elected periodically on the basis of a sharply restricted suffrage. There is, in effect, a governing oligarchy whose factions nevertheless adhere to representative practices and the electoral competitions, however limited, they entail. Examples are Britain during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, and Sweden throughout the nineteenth century.
Elsewhere, a dominant ethnic, racial, or other culturally or regionally distinct population segment may engage in representative practices, while one or several subordinated segments are allowed little or no representation.
Examples are the American South until the mid-1960s, South Africa until the mid-1990s, and all Western regimes before women obtained voting rights.
In most countries where it exists today, however, a representative regime is indicated by transfers of government executive power among competing political factions on the basis of elections involving universal suffrage and broad guarantees of political and civil liberties. But even in these contemporary regimes, representation may be skewed substantially by federal arrangements, first-past-the-post electoral rules, gerrymandered voting districts, grossly unequal campaign finances, media ownership and bias during campaigns, obstacles to voter registration, unscrupulous populist demagogues, and numerous other shortcomings.
Unrepresentative regimes may contain formally representative institutions, such as a parliament or a people’s congress, but representative politics are not actively practiced. Although elections may be held, they are not seriously contested or are subject to so much fraud that they do not determine the holders of government executive office or influence government policies.
Executive power is transferred among successive persons and factions via secret deliberations and maneuvers among the highest regime officials. Not infrequently, it is transferred simply by inheritance. Executive power may be concentrated in a monarch and his/her court, in a dictatorial leader and his/ her lieutenants, or in the top leadership echelon of a party or movement that monopolizes government positions and whose agents penetrate all significant extragovernmental organizations and social strata. There are myriad examples: the absolutist monarchies of early modern Europe and the monarchies in today’s Middle East, garden-variety military dictatorships the world over, the totalitarian regimes headed by Hitler and Stalin, and the substantially theocratic regime in Iran at present.
These regime distinctions comprise empirical, or ‘‘extracted,’’ types.48
That is, the stable or unstable and representative or unrepresentative features of regimes are extracted from and intended to cover one class of observable phenomena: how government executive power is transferred in all national

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states with populations of one million or more in the modern world. If we combine these basic features of regimes, familiar subtypes, which have been described extensively in the literature of comparative politics, emerge:
Table 1.1. Basic Regime Types and Subtypes
Representative

Unrepresentative

Stable

Liberal oligarchies
Liberal democracies

Totalitarian regimes
Theocracies and ethnocracies

Unstable

Illiberal democracies
(electoral or semi-democracies)

Monarchies
Sultanistic regimes
Authoritarian regimes
Post-totalitarian/theocratic/ethnocratic
regimes

Our claim is that the workings of each regime type and subtype manifest the dynamics of the kind of political elite that creates and sustains it. Stable and representative liberal oligarchies and liberal democracies embody the integrated networks and norms of restrained political competition that define consensually united elites. Power sharing is the hallmark of such elites, and the periodic, peaceful alternations in executive power that mark liberal oligarchies and liberal democracies are the principal way this sharing is achieved and sustained. In Adam Przeworski’s well-known formulation, a liberal oligarchy or liberal democracy is an institutionalized set of arrangements among elites that allows them to lose one electoral round in the knowledge that they can win the next round.49 We would even say that a consensually united elite necessarily entails the creation and operation of a liberal oligarchy or liberal democracy. There is much evidence, moreover, that peaceful electoral competitions for executive office between factions making up consensually united elites inexorably widen the extent of popular representation, in time transforming a liberal oligarchy, if one first exists, into a more fully participatory liberal democracy.
Likewise, stable but unrepresentative totalitarian, theocratic, or ethnocratic regimes manifest the dynamics of the ideologically united elite that creates and operates them. In such elites, as we have said, power is sharply centralized in the top echelon of an utterly hegemonic party or movement, together with this echelon’s insistence, backed by much force, that all who hold or aspire to power profess its distinctive beliefs. The monolithic structures of totalitarian or rigidly theocratic or ethnocratic regimes mirror this elite configuration, and their penetrative and mobilizing capacities make them quite stable over long periods, barring defeats in international warfare.
But because ideologically united elites are vulnerable to eventual ossification, the regimes they create also tend to degenerate eventually into a post-

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totalitarian, post-theocratic, or post-ethnocratic configuration that is of more doubtful stability.50
Unstable regimes that may be representative or unrepresentative in their workings manifest the dynamics of disunited elites. In unstable representative regimes—in illiberal or electoral or semidemocracies—electoral competitions for executive power by elites unfold, but they are subject to many irregularities and upsets, the civil liberties essential for free and fair elections are truncated and uncertain, and election outcomes may be nullified by military intervention or an executive coup. Unstable unrepresentative regimes lack such competitive vicissitudes: a monarch holds sway; military commanders are in control openly or behind the scenes; a despotic family is in the driver’s seat; a formerly hegemonic party with an ossified structure and bankrupt doctrine clings precariously to power. Rulers await a betrayal or an uprising that the military or police refuse to put down. The fundamental problem in these kinds of unstable regimes is unchecked power struggles among the deeply opposed factions that constitute disunited elites.
If we diagram the relations between elites and regimes, they are as follows:
Table 1.2. Postulated Elite-Regime Relations
Elite Configuration

Regime Type (and Subtypes)

Consensually united
Ideologically united
Disunited
Disunited

Stable representative (liberal oligarchy/democracy)
Stable unrepresentative (totalitarian/theocracy/ethnocracy)
Unstable representative (illiberal democracy)
Unstable unrepresentative (monarchical, authoritarian, sultanistic, post-totalitarian/theocratic/ethnocratic) As the independent or causal variable, an elite approximating one of the three basic types always predates or forms concomitant with the type of associated regime. A central question, therefore, is how the three types of elites originate.

ORIGINS OF ELITE TYPES
Disunited, consensually united, and ideologically united elites appear to originate in only a few sets of circumstances, events, and processes. Modern history indicates that once an elite of one or another type forms, it has a strong tendency to persist, even though the society over which the elite presides may change dramatically in its cultural, economic, demographic, and international circumstances. In other words, transformations from one type of political elite to another are quite rare. It follows that the basic type of regime associated with each elite type is also strongly persistent. Although a

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regime may change in subtype—in particular, unstable regimes oscillate with some frequency between illiberal democratic and authoritarian subtypes—a change in basic type (stable or unstable and representative or unrepresentative) occurs only after, or in conjunction with, an elite transformation.
Excluded from these generalizations are elite and regime changes that result directly from international wars and conquests by foreigners. The three types of elites and associated basic types of regimes have originated in seven ways during the modern historical period, that is, since about 1500.
The first and numerically most common origin has been the formation of independent national states. Elites of each type have originated in state formation, although disunited elites have been by far the most frequent outcome of state formation. This is because forming a national state out of previously disparate and somewhat autonomous political-territorial entities, or in a territory that has seceded from an existing state, typically involves some elite factions forcibly suppressing and subjugating other factions.51 The unremitting conflicts, fears, and hatreds among the elite that result from these suppressions and subjugations produce a disunited elite in the newly formed state. This was the case in all European states when they first emerged between 1500 and 1800, in all the states that formed after the Spaniards and Portuguese were driven from Latin America early in the nineteenth century, and in the bulk of postcolonial states that became independent in
Africa, the Middle East, and Asia during the decades after World War II. The formation of disunited elites coterminous with the emergence of independent national states, the untamed politics these elites subsequently practice, and the unstable and usually unrepresentative regimes they create have been so widespread as to constitute the modal pattern of politics in the modern world. Because of its ubiquity, the pattern is discussed at length in chapter 2.
Consensually united elites have also originated in national state formation, but much less frequently. Where indigenous or settler elite groups in a colonial or otherwise dependent territory have had prolonged, if always limited, opportunities to practice conciliatory and cooperative politics in home-rule governments and in organizing and leading politically complex independence movements and struggles, consensually united elites have sometimes formed coterminous with national independence. Good examples are elites of the several Dutch provinces in their long and ultimately successful struggle against distant Spanish rule during the sixteenth century; elites in Britain’s American colonies before and during their War of Independence; and elites in Britain’s New Zealand, Canadian, and Australian colonies during the nineteenth century, as well as Indian, Israeli, and Malaysian elites before and after World War II.52 In these and a few other cases (e.g., Jamaica, Senegal, white South Africa, Ceylon/Sri Lanka), elites achieved substantial integration and consensus while operating home-rule governments and waging politically complex, sometimes quite risky, independence struggles. There

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are also rare cases in which the origin of consensually united elites might be traced to the evolutions of small agrarian and geographically isolated citizen communities dating from the medieval period. Citizen community practices in a few medieval and alpine Swiss cantons probably contributed to the origin of Switzerland’s consensually united elite at the time of national state formation in 1848, and citizen communities in two of England’s seventeenthcentury New England colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island (as distinct from the more directly and complexly ruled Massachusetts Bay Colony), probably had some influence on the consensually united elite that formed out of long home rule and the American War of Independence. Where a consensually united elite has originated in the experience of home rule and a struggle for independence or is in part traceable to a citizen community experience, a tamed politics and a stable representative regime have been the result, and in a few countries this political pattern has persisted for roughly two centuries. The main instances are discussed in chapter 4.
Ideologically united elites have also originated in the formation of independent national states, although very rarely. When indigenous elite factions in colonial or secessionist territories have fought each other during a wider struggle for national independence, and when a doctrinaire and tightly organized faction has eliminated other factions during that struggle, an ideologically united elite has formed coterminous with an independent national state.
One example is the Vietminh movement and the creation of such an elite and an independent state in North Vietnam upon the defeat of French colonial forces in 1954. After another twenty years of warfare, the elite headquartered in Hanoi eliminated all competing elites in South Vietnam so that the whole of Vietnam came under the control of an ideologically united elite and a stable unrepresentative regime in 1975. The earlier triumph of the communist guerrilla force led by Kim Il-Sung in an internecine struggle to fashion a state in northern Korea after Japan was driven from the peninsula in World War
II also approximated this origin of an ideologically united elite and a stable unrepresentative regime. Although the longevity of the elite-regime configuration in Vietnam is still comparatively brief and may now be loosening, the
North Korean configuration’s marked persistence for more than fifty years testifies to the durability of ideologically united elites and the stability of the unrepresentative regimes they create. Between 1994 and 2000, the Taliban’s suppression of the several Mujaheddin groups that liberated Afghanistan from Russian military forces in 1989 was a fleeting instance of this pattern.
Controlling about two-thirds of Afghanistan from 1996, Taliban leaders certainly constituted an ideologically united elite until they and their forces were decimated by U.S. air attacks and driven from power by U.S. and U.S.backed Northern Alliance militaries in late 2001.
These patterns highlight the lasting importance of political elite cooperation or deadly elite conflict during the state formation and national indepen-

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dence processes. Nevertheless, subsequent transformations from one basic type of elite to another have sometimes occurred in fully formed and independent states, and these transformations were the key features of many of modern history’s major political changes.
Transformations from disunited to consensually united elites have sometimes taken the form of elite settlements, in which warring political elites have deliberately and suddenly negotiated compromises of their core disputes.53 In fashioning such settlements, elites unclog and link networks that previously separated them, and they forge rules that restrain their future competitions. The result is a tamed politics embodied by a stable representative regime of the liberal oligarchic or liberal democratic subtype. Seminal cases were the fundamental settlements reached by English elites immediately following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and by Swedish elites in the constitutional revolution of 1809. These and other elite settlements have occurred only where (1) there was a prior experience of protracted but inconclusive elite conflict; (2) a sudden crisis threatened to make that conflict more costly but still probably inconclusive; (3) opposing elite factions were aligned and organized in ways that facilitated effective and binding negotiations between key leaders; and (4) the principal factions had enough freedom from mass pressures to make and impose the heretical concessions and compromises that settlements entailed. Chapter 3 analyzes elite settlements and their political legacies in detail.
Transformations from disunited to consensually united political elites have also sometimes taken the form of elite convergences. These have occurred only in countries at a relatively high level of economic prosperity and where there is already an unstable representative regime—an illiberal democracy— operated by a disunited elite. In the course of volatile electoral competitions and other conflicts, which the factions making up the disunited elite perceive in zero-sum terms, two or more factions discover that by cooperating in a broad electoral coalition they can mobilize a majority or plurality of voters and win elections repeatedly if they pose as staunch defenders of the existing socioeconomic and sociopolitical order. This ‘‘winning’’ elite coalition then proceeds to dominate government executive power and thereby protect its factional components and their supporters from the challenges of hostile factions and the parties and movements they lead. Successive electoral defeats may persuade the latter factions that to avoid permanent exclusion from executive power they must moderate their stances to attract voters outside their customary followings. If this happens, the bitter conflict and distrust that mark a disunited elite attenuate. Gradually, all main factions converge toward power competitions that are more restrained and increasingly underlain by a tacit consensus about norms of behavior in a political order that all, however grudgingly, have come to accept.
Changes approximating convergences got underway between disunited

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French, Italian, and Japanese political elites during the 1960s. New elite coalitions—the Gaullist coalition in France, the Christian Democrats and their newly discovered center-left allies in Italy, and the Liberal Democrat coalition in Japan, helped by the Komeito Party when needed—found themselves commanding reliable electoral majorities or pluralities in competitions with deeply hostile socialist and communist opponents. Over the course of two or more decades, socialist and communist elites concluded that no revolutionary overthrow of the winning coalition and the regime it operated was feasible. Their choice was to remain in permanent opposition or change their programs and postures in order to compete for an electoral majority or plurality large enough to govern. They chose the latter course, so that by the early 1980s all major party elites in the three countries were engaged in markedly more restrained electoral competitions, and they have remained so ever since (although in the early 1990s far-flung corruption revelations greatly altered the Italian party system’s composition). The previously unstable but representative French, Italian, and Japanese regimes stabilized and, once the winning coalitions were peacefully defeated and replaced in executive power by their old antagonists, it was apparent that liberal democracies reliably existed. These and a number of other cases in which this complex elite convergence process appears to have unfolded, or is today unfolding, are discussed in chapter 5.
Transformations from disunited to ideologically united elites have occurred in two ways. One has been the imposition of an ideologically united elite by a conquering country that already has such an elite. This happened in most of Eastern Europe under Soviet occupation and influence following World War II. The second and more generic transformation from a disunited to an ideologically united elite has involved revolution. A doctrinaire, secretive, and well-organized faction has capitalized on state breakdown, seized power, and liquidated other factions in a revolutionary struggle. The victorious faction has then confined all political activity to its party or movement and established its doctrine as the only framework for public political expression. The French Revolution of 1789–1794 was an early attempt at such an elite transformation; however, the extremist Jacobins ultimately failed to consolidate their power. The Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia during the winter of 1917–1918, and their eventual consolidation of it as the stable unrepresentative Soviet regime, is, thus, the classic example.
The quasi-revolutionary Fascist and Nazi accessions to power in Italy and
Germany, respectively, during the interwar years; the 1943–1945 revolution effected by Tito’s Partisan forces in Yugoslavia; the Chinese Communist revolution in the late 1940s; the Cuban revolution in 1959–1960; and the Shi’a revolution in Iran during the winter of 1978–1979 are other examples. A cardinal tenet of classical elite theory was that revolutions merely replace one set of elites with another.54 However, events during the twentieth century

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showed that revolutions are often more than simple elite circulations. They can involve fundamental transformations from one basic type of elite, the disunited type, to another, the ideologically united type. When this happens, a radically different stable unrepresentative regime is created, and it strongly tends to persist for several generations (barring defeats in warfare, as happened to the German Nazis and Italian Fascists). Writing before the consequences of such revolutionary transformations from disunited to ideologically united elites were evident, Pareto and the other early elite theorists underestimated their lasting and profound effects.
Events during the late 1980s and early 1990s indicated one further set of elite transformations. We refer to the transformations that occurred when the Soviet Union effectively withdrew from Central and Eastern Europe during 1988–1989, and when the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disintegrated into a congeries of newly independent national states between 1989 and
1991. In three countries—Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia—elites consummated long collaborations in resisting or at least minimizing Soviet or Yugoslav control by negotiating basic settlements that transformed them into consensually united elites operating stable representative regimes that soon became liberal democracies. In all other countries that emerged from Soviet domination or directly from the Soviet and Yugoslav disintegrations, struggles to form and dominate newly independent national states resulted in disunited elites and unstable regimes. In two countries—the Czech Republic and Slovakia after they became separate states at the start of 1993—gradual elite convergences from the disunited to the consensually united configuration occurred. But this happened nowhere else, so that at present all of the other regimes that followed state socialism’s collapse are unstable, and only a few have significant representative features. It can be argued that these elite transformations occurred during the process of forming independent national states (Albania, which was already independent and had an ideologically united elite that became disunited, is a puzzling case), so that they do not constitute patterns different from those we have already discussed. On the other hand, the disintegration of the ideologically united Soviet and
Yugoslav (and Albanian) elites can be viewed as a pattern of such unprecedented and global importance that it deserves to be treated as a distinctive origin of many disunited and a few consensually united elites.
To summarize, each type of elite has had a ‘‘foundational’’ origin in the sense that it formed in the process of founding an independent national state, whether in the coerced fusion of previously autonomous political entities, in emerging from long colonial rule, or in revolutionary wars of national liberation or secession. The great bulk of political elites in the modern world have had one or another of these foundational origins. But each type of elite has also had a ‘‘transformational’’ origin in the sense that its formation involved a settlement, convergence, or revolution in an already independent national

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state. Approximately forty-five political elites had one of these transformational origins during the past 350 years. There is, furthermore, the theoretically ambiguous Soviet and Yugoslav pattern, in which ideologically united elites fell apart in step with the disintegration of the national states they had created and controlled. Because of this last pattern’s novel character and political importance, we are inclined to treat it as a fourth transformational origin of consensually united and disunited elites, although we will not, both for reasons of space and the extensive recent literature analyzing the Soviet and Yugoslav collapses, pay as much attention to it as to the settlement, colonial, and convergence origins.55 Indeed, Slovenia has been the only instance of a consensually united elite originating in the Soviet and Yugoslav collapses, and we will discuss it briefly in chapter 3.
It should be noted that we do not list the disintegration or unraveling of consensually united elites as an origin of either disunited or ideologically united elites. Until very recently, there was no clear instance of a consensually united elite becoming disunited or ideologically united. But in chapter 3 we discuss how the conspicuously oligarchic consensually united elite that formed in Venezuela at the end of the 1950s became disunited nearly forty years later. And in chapter 4 we ponder whether the trajectory of elites in the Philippines before and after the rule of Ferdinand Marcos is another instance of a consensually united elite becoming disunited. Additionally, in chapter 6 we discuss the fraying of consensual elite relations and restrained political competitions in the United States at present. But with these exceptions and possibilities noted, the political record strongly indicates that once consensually united elites form, they and the liberal democracies to which they lead have everywhere persisted to date.

ELITE AND NON-ELITE INTERDEPENDENCE
The classical elite theorists have often been criticized for contending that elites alone determine political outcomes. However, they actually wrote at great length about the relationship between elites and non-elite populations, stressing two key processes, elite circulation and elite mobilization of nonelite support. They regarded elite circulation—alterations in the social composition of elites through gradual or sudden movements of persons from non-elite to elite statuses, and vice versa—as crucial for a society’s political stability and overall vitality. We have noted Mosca’s conclusion that the social composition of a ruling elite should embody a balance of the important ‘‘social forces.’’ Elites with this balance would be able to operate effective ‘‘mixed’’ governments and be highly durable; those lacking it would be challenged and perhaps overthrown by emerging counterelites organizing social forces unrepresented among the ruling elite. More cynically, Pareto

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argued that effective elite rule and self-perpetuation require the continual coopting of the ablest non-elite persons. An elite whose ranks are open to such individuals not only deprives non-elites of potential leaders; it also regularly replenishes itself with more daring and innovative members. For his part,
Michels thought that the effectiveness of the oligarchy spawned by any large organization is enhanced if the organization facilitates ‘‘careers open to talent,’’ through which individuals climb gradually into the oligarchy and distance themselves from the parochial rank-and-file interests that Michels reviled. Several generations of scholars have adopted the early elite theorists’ emphasis on elite circulation to investigate the open or closed—the socially heterogeneous or homogeneous—makeups of elites as measured by family and class backgrounds; educational and occupational profiles; and ethnic, religious, regional, and other affiliations.56 These investigations have revealed much about stratification systems and long-term political continuities and changes. They trace the gradually decreasing social distance between elites and non-elites as societies have modernized,57 a change that presumably makes elites more responsive to non-elite discontents but may also prevent them from acting effectively when non-elites oppose distasteful but essential policies.58 However, there appear to be no hard and fast connections between the extent of elite circulation and the extent of elite integration and value consensus. Transformations of elites from the disunited to the consensually united kind have usually involved relatively little circulation; the extent of circulation has varied greatly among countries with the same type of elite; and countries with different types of elites have displayed similar amounts of circulation. A working hypothesis may nevertheless be that only a consensually united elite reliably facilitates the gradual but steady and peaceful movement into and out of elite positions that the classical theorists viewed as essential to the stability and effectiveness of regimes.
Regarding the second interdependency between elites and non-elites— elite mobilization of non-elite support—what we inherit from the classical theorists is a valuable strategic conception, but no workable scheme for applying it. Mosca stressed that a ruling elite cannot ignore the ‘‘passions’’ of non-elites; it needs a legitimizing myth or political formula that resonates with those passions and that justifies the elite’s rule.59 But he used the fundamentally ambiguous concept of ‘‘social type’’ to distinguish between segments of non-elites and their varying receptiveness to political formulas.
Meanwhile, Pareto elaborately classified what he perceived to be the rational human interests and nonlogical sentiments, or ‘‘residues,’’ that elites must reflect and engage if they are to survive as elites. To mobilize or at least keep the lid on these interests and sentiments, elites traffic in ideologies that derive from and resonate with them. Pareto devoted the largest part of his millionword Treatise to cataloging these ideologies (he termed them ‘‘derivations’’)

Elites and Regimes

27

in an attempt to show that, although they are all intrinsically false in a scientific sense, what matters is how deeply they are held and how they steer both elite and non-elite political behavior, sometimes in harmony and other times in opposition. But like Mosca’s concept of social type, Pareto’s scheme of residues and their ideological ‘‘derivations’’ is inhospitable to practical application.60
The strategic conception of elite and non-elite interdependence in classical elite theory was, nonetheless, sound. To carry out major initiatives and perpetuate their holds on power, elites need non-elite support. To win this support, elites must frame their appeals to accord with the interests and political orientations of non-elites. These interests and orientations are not created by elites; they derive from some combination of human nature, life circumstances, and beliefs, although elites can often activate or muffle non-elite interests and orientations through well-couched appeals. But fundamentally, the necessity for elites to conform their appeals and actions to non-elite interests and orientations limits what elites can do or get away with. Failure to win non-elite support frequently shortens elite tenures or, at least, undermines elite effectiveness. Put differently, non-elite interests and orientations constitute parameters within which elites can safely and effectively act; elites who violate the parameters risk coming to grief.
Non-elite parameters are, nevertheless, quite wide; they leave elites with a range of choices, and these choices are normally decisive for political outcomes. In chapter 5, for example, we observe that elite convergences apparently occur only where non-elite populations enjoy sufficient economic prosperity to dispose a majority, or at least a plurality, of voters toward maintaining the status quo against radical alternatives proposed by nonallegiant elite factions. To this extent, elite convergences occur only within a distinctive set of non-elite parameters. But the existence of these parameters does not inevitably trigger a convergence. Elites must still choose to converge, and it is quite possible that the depth of their animosities or the absence of a political leader capable of forming the winning coalition that initiates a convergence may militate against that choice.
It is neither possible nor necessary in this book to present a conception of non-elite interests and orientations that goes beyond what Mosca and Pareto said about them. With a colleague, G. Lowell Field, we have elsewhere sketched such a conception. It focuses on basic experiences of power in the workplace, the political orientations that derive from such experiences, and how the mix of non-elite political orientations consequently changes as different kinds of work and the experiences of power they entail wax and wane during the evolution of workforces over long periods.61 While an extended treatment of non-elite interests and orientations is indispensable for a general theory of elites and society, such as Pareto attempted, it is not essential for our more limited analysis of liberal democracy’s elite foundations.

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CONCLUSIONS
The basic contentions of classical elite theory, the types of elites and associated types and subtypes of regimes that we have elaborated, and the relatively few ways in which disunited and ideologically united elites have become consensually united and created stable representative regimes all imply more limited possibilities for major political changes than most other approaches to politics contemplate. Except where it was preceded by a long experience of relatively benign and distant colonial rule (in roughly fifteen cases, and probably nonexistent henceforth), the attainment of national independence has usually resulted in disunited elites and unstable unrepresentative regimes. Consensually united elites have originated through settlements and convergences in about thirty countries during the past 350 years. Revolutionary transformations from disunited to ideologically united elites have been rarer still—only about ten cases—and have to date been confined to the twentieth century. Transformations of ideologically united elites into consensually united or disunited elites have all been very recent and may be limited to the way state socialism collapsed in the Soviet Union and Eastern and
Southeastern Europe. In virtually all other independent national states—in most of Europe until very recently, in much of Latin America and in nearly all of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia down to the present—disunited elites have been the rule. Today’s euphoric talk about the whole world becoming democratic—not to say liberal democratic—in some near future is, therefore, without basis in modern experience.

NOTES
1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 36–38.
2. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 218–19.
3. Ruth Berins Collier, Paths toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 8.
4. Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939), 53.
5. Vilfredo Pareto, The Mind and Society: A Treatise on General Sociology (1915; repr., New York: Dover, 1935).
6. Robert Michels, Political Parties (1915; repr., New York: Free Press, 1962).
7. Carl Friedrich Jr., The New Belief in the Common Man (Boston: Little, Brown,
1942); Carl Friedrich Jr., Man and His Government (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963);
James R. Meisel, The Myth of the Ruling Class (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1958); Tom Bottomore, Elites and Society (New York: Basic Books, 1965); J.
Allen Whitt, ‘‘Toward a Dialectical Model of Power: An Empirical Assessment of

Elites and Regimes

29

Three Competing Models of Political Power,’’ American Sociological Review 44
(1979): 81–100.
8. Raymond Aron, ‘‘Social Structure and the Ruling Class,’’ British Journal of
Sociology 1 (March–June 1950): 1–16, 126–43; Harold Lasswell and Daniel Lerner,
World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1965); George Lenczowski, ‘‘Some Reflections on the Study of
Elites,’’ in Political Elites in the Middle East, ed. George Lenczowski (Washington,
DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1975), 1–16; Alfred D. Wilhelm, Jr., ‘‘Chinese
Elites and Comparative Elite Studies: A Progress Report,’’ Studies in Comparative
Communism 13 (1980): 63–81; William I. Zartman, ‘‘Political Elites in Arab North
Africa: Origins, Behavior and Prospects,’’ in Political Elites in Arab North Africa, ed.
William I. Zartman and William M. Habeeb (New York: Longman, 1982), 1–34.
9. Alan Zuckerman, ‘‘The Concept of ‘Political Elite’: Lessons from Mosca and
Pareto,’’ Journal of Politics 39 (September 1977): 324–44.
10. Samuel E. Finer, ed., introduction, Vilfredo Pareto: Sociological Writings (Tottowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1966), 64–71.
11. Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited, vol. 1, The Contemporary Debate (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1987), 168.
12. Richard L. Merritt, Systematic Approaches to Comparative Politics (Chicago:
Rand McNally, 1970), 105.
13. Thomas R. Dye, Who’s Running America? The Bush Restoration, 7th ed.
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 139. Dye identifies 7,314 top institutional positions in ten sectors of American society, which were occupied by 5,778 individuals. 14. Mattei Dogan, ‘‘Is There a Ruling Class in France?’’ in Elite Configurations at the Apex of Power, ed. Mattei Dogan (Boston: Brill, 2003), 17–90.
15. John Higley, Desley Deacon, and Donald Smart, Elites in Australia (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979).
16. Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, Eliten, Macht und Konflikt in der Bundesrepublik
(Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1992).
17. Mogens N. Pedersen, Political Development and Elite Transformation in Denmark (Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 1976).
18. Trygve Gulbrandsen et al., Norske Makteliter (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2002).
19. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National
Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 268, 326.
20. Mosca, The Ruling Class, 51.
21. Pareto, Mind and Society, para. 2,254.
22. Pareto, Mind and Society, para. 2,227; see also Vilfredo Pareto, The Rise and
Fall of the Elites, introduced by Hans Zetterberg (1901; repr., Tottowa, NJ: Bedminster, 1968).
23. Finer, introduction, 84.
24. Aron, ‘‘Social Structure.’’
25. Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1967), 265–79.
26. Robert D. Putnam, The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), 115–21.

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Chapter 1

27. For example: Suzanne Keller, Beyond the Ruling Class: Strategic Elites in Modern Society (New York: Random House, 1963); Anthony Giddens, preface, Elites and
Power in British Society, ed. Philip Stanworth and Anthony Giddens (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974); William A. Welsh, Leaders and Elites (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979); Eva Etzioni-Halevy, The Elite Connection: Problems and Potential in Western Democracy (London: Polity Press, 1993).
28. Charles Kadushin, ‘‘Power, Influence, and Social Circles: A New Methodology for Studying Opinion Makers,’’ American Sociological Review 33 (October
1968): 685–99; Charles Kadushin, ‘‘Power Circles and Legitimacy in Developed Societies,’’ in Legitimation of Regimes, ed. Bogdan Denitch (London: Sage, 1979),
127–40; David Knoke, Political Networks: The Structural Perspective (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990); John Higley et al., ‘‘Elite Integration in Stable
Democracies: A Reconsideration,’’ European Sociological Review 7 (May 1991):
35–53.
29. Kenneth Prewitt and Alan Stone, The Ruling Elites: Elite Theory, Power, and
American Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1973); Giuseppe Di Palma, ‘‘The
Study of Conflict in Western Societies: A Critique of the End of Ideology’’ (Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press, 1973).
30. Gwen Moore, ‘‘The Structure of a National Elite Network,’’ American Sociological Review 44 (October 1979): 673–92; Higley, Deacon, and Smart, Elites in Australia; Hoffmann-Lange, Eliten, Macht und Konflikt; David Knoke et al., Comparing
Policy Networks: Labor Politics in the U.S., Germany, and Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Wilhelm Burklin and Hilke Rebenstorf, Eliten in
¨
Deutschland (Opladen: Leske & Budrich), 1997; Gulbrandsen et al., Norske
Makteliter.
31. Allen H. Barton, Bogdan Denitch, and Charles Kadushin, Opinion-Making
Elites in Yugoslavia (New York: Praeger, 1973); Michael Voslensky, Nomenklatura:
Anatomy of the Soviet Ruling Class (London: Bodley Head, 1984); Evan Mawdsley and Stephen White, The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Gerald M. Easter, Reconstructing the State: Personal Networks and Elite Identity in Soviet Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
32. Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution through Reform
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 192.
33. Peter McDonough, Power and Ideology in Brazil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1981).
34. Bernard E. Brown, ‘‘Elite Attitudes and Political Legitimacy in France,’’ Journal of Politics 31 (May 1969): 441.
35. William R. Schonfeld, ‘‘The ‘Closed’ Worlds of Socialist and Gaullist Elites,’’ in Elites in France: Origins, Reproduction and Power, ed. Jolyon Howorth and Philip
G. Cerny (London: Frances Pinter, 1981), 196–215.
36. Giovanni Sartori, ‘‘How Far Can Free Government Travel?’’ Journal of
Democracy 6 (July 1995): 101–11.
37. Di Palma, ‘‘Study of Conflict.’’
38. Prewitt and Stone, Ruling Elites.
39. Sartori, Theory of Democracy, 224, 229.
40. Putnam, Comparative Study, 116.

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31

41. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1971), 36–38.
42. Barry Weingast, ‘‘The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of
Law,’’ American Political Science Review 91 (June 1997): 260.
43. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1976), 145.
44. Roy C. Macridis, Modern Political Regimes: Patterns and Institutions (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1986).
45. Pareto, Mind and Society, para. 2,244.
46. Vilfredo Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy (1921; repr., New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1984), 44–57, 73–76; Finer, introduction, 70–71.
47. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory: How Does Popular Sovereignty Function in America? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 73; Dahl,
Polyarchy, 8.
48. Sartori, Theory of Democracy, 145–46.
49. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic
Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 10–11.
50. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 42–51.
51. James S. Coleman, ‘‘The Development Syndrome: Differentiation-EqualityCapacity,’’ in Crises and Sequences in Political Develoment, ed. Leonard Binder
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 83–93; Charles Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1975); Marc Cattini, ‘‘The Perils of Rushing for Democracy: Inter-elite Consensus as a Fundamental Precondition for Stable Development and Democratization’’ (PhD diss., University of Queensland, 2000).
52. Myron F. Weiner, Competitive Elections in Developing Countries (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 18–23.
53. Michael G. Burton and John Higley, ‘‘Elite Settlements,’’ American Sociological Review 52 (June 1987): 295–307; John Higley and Michael Burton, ‘‘Elite Settlements and the Taming of Politics,’’ Government and Opposition 33 (Winter 1998):
98–115; Timothy Wickham-Crowley, ‘‘Elites, Elite Settlements, and Revolutionary
Movements in Latin America,’’ Social Science History 18 (Winter 1994): 543–74.
54. Pareto, Mind and Society, paras. 792–812.
55. Cf. John Higley and Jan Pakulski, ‘‘Elite Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe,’’ Australian Journal of Political Science 30 (November 1995): 415–35;
John Higley and Jan Pakulski, eds., Postcommunist Elites and Democracy in Eastern
Europe (London: Macmillan, 1998); John Higley and Gyorgy Lengyel, ‘‘Introduc¨ tion: Elite Configurations after State Socialism,’’ in Elites after State Socialism: Theories and Analysis, ed. John Higley and Gyorgy Lengyel (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
¨
Littlefield, 2000), 1–21; Michael Burton and John Higley, ‘‘The Study of Political
Elite Transformations,’’ International Review of Sociology 11, 2 (July 2001): 181–99.
56. For a small part of the ocean of research on elite circulation, see Geraint Parry,
Political Elites (New York: Praeger, 1969); Putnam, Comparative Study; Welsh, Lead-

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ers and Elites; Moshe M. Czudnowski, ed., Does Who Governs Matter? Elite Circulation in Contemporary Societies (De Kalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press,
1981); Heinrich Best and Maurizio Cotta, eds., Parliamentary Representatives in
Europe 1848–2000: Legislative Recruitment and Careers in Eleven European Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
57. Best and Cotta, Parliamentary Representatives.
58. G. Lowell Field and John Higley, ‘‘Elites and Non-elites: The Possibilities and
Their Side Effects,’’ module 13 (Andover, MA: Warner Modular Publications, 1973).
59. Mosca, The Ruling Class, 70–73ff.
60. Finer, introduction, 72–77.
61. G. Lowell Field, John Higley, and Michael G. Burton, ‘‘A New Elite Framework for Political Sociology,’’ Revue europeenne des sciences sociales 88 (1990):
´
149–82; see also G. Lowell Field and John Higley, Elitism (London: Routledge &
Kegan-Paul, 1980), 21–35.

2
Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes
For most of the period between 1500 and the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815), only eight European populations were organized into what approximated independent territorially and administratively integrated national states:
Denmark, England, France, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Spain, and Sweden.
During the first half of this period, probably only England fully met the national state standard as regards territorial integration. Denmark was embroiled in an effort to retain control of Sweden; France was periodically broken up in civil wars over religious and social questions until late in the seventeenth century; Portugal was subjugated by Spain between 1580 and
1640; Russia did not achieve territorial integration until the seventeenth century under the Romanovs; Scotland was not fully independent from England after 1650, and it disappeared as an independent entity after merging with
England in 1707; Spain was initially several distinct countries joined by a dynastic union, which eventually led to territorial and administrative integration. A ninth political entity—the seven autonomous Dutch provinces of the Netherlands—became independent from Spanish rule in the 1580s. But the Dutch provinces, most of which appeared to have internally cooperative elites after their independence, did not form an integrated national state until
1813, when French occupation during the Napoleonic Wars ended.
Throughout the eighteenth century, Brandenburg-Prussia steadily became a more important European power, but it consisted of various semiautonomous and noncontiguous territories, so that one could only with difficulty speak of an integrated state. Finally, the United States of America did not emerge until the very end of the period.
STATE FORMATION: THE GENESIS OF
DISUNITED ELITES AND UNSTABLE REGIMES
By about 1600 all the foregoing European populations and territories had reached a preindustrial phase in their economic development. No longer
33

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Chapter 2

simple agrarian or peasant societies, they had achieved sufficiently complex urbanization and commercialization so that some elite positions required their occupants’ more or less full-time attention. Although small leisured classes of influential aristocrats and gentry continued to exist, in political showdowns the decisive power wielders tended to be the persons and groups commanding the most important bureaucratic organizations: monarchs and high state officials, senior military officers, high-ranking ecclesiastics, merchants and entrepreneurs heading important commercial enterprises such as shipping and trading companies, and leaders of still somewhat autonomous local and regional political forces.
As national aggregations, these elites were clearly disunited in the sense that wide and deep struggles for political ascendancy typified their relations.
Elites associated with monarchs and contenders for the throne usually backed royal absolutism, while elites benefiting from local and regional autonomy usually resisted absolutism. The use of military force for purposes of aggrandizement and pacification bulked large,1 and religious divisions made struggles between state-building and state-resisting elites still more bitter and complex.2 In general, the stances that elites took on political issues fell into a rationalist-institutionalist ‘‘left’’ or a traditionalist-personalist
‘‘right,’’ and there was usually a clear-cut division between these elite camps.
Prominent lawyers, doctors, and merchants, as well as most teachers and secular intellectuals, adhered to a broadly left ideological viewpoint, which was highly critical of those located in traditional statuses and institutions—royal and aristocratic families, and military and church leaders recruited from those families. Clustered in and around the hereditary more or less leisured and armed aristocracies, the latter elites usually adhered to a staunchly conservative position. This normally took the guise of religious doctrines and appeals aimed at sanctifying and upholding a divinely prescribed order of things, the centerpieces of which were the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the church.
Political regimes in these early national states consisted of traditional monarchies in which government executive power was transferred among successive rulers according to principles of inheritance. However, there was seldom much agreement about how to apply those principles in concrete situations. Executive power transfers were, therefore, subject to many intrigues, challenges, and usurpations. In our terminology, the regimes were all of the unstable and unrepresentative type. In Denmark, for example, struggle over the royal succession exploded in civil war during the 1530s, and in England succession to the throne was precarious during most of the second half of the sixteenth century. Even where power transfers among successive monarchs occurred somewhat more peacefully—as in sixteenth-century Spain during its Golden Age—mutual elite fears and distrusts generated recurrent rivalries and plots aimed at dominating the monarch.

Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes

35

Monarchs’ attempts to centralize state power in their own persons and entourages prevented elite power sharing and contributed greatly to elite conflicts and divisions. As Reinhard Bendix summarized the situation, centralizing monarchs had at once to concentrate and delegate royal authority, their actions were characterized by large and irreducible amounts of arbitrariness, and their successions to the throne were eminently disputable. In general, the monarchies of early modern Europe—like monarchies in all times and places—created pervasive uncertainties about the extent and limits of royal authority.3 Consequently, having the monarch’s ear and controlling who would succeed him or her became focal points for elite power struggles.
Down to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, these circumstances and power struggles were significantly mitigated only in England, Sweden, and the autonomous Dutch provinces that eventually became the integrated
Dutch state after 1813. In England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, and in substantively similar events surrounding Sweden’s creation of a constitutional monarchy in 1808–1809, fundamental settlements between warring elite camps—the Tories and Whigs in England, the Hats and Caps in Sweden—deliberately and quite suddenly transformed elite relations and political behaviors from disunited to consensually united configurations. The main consequence of these watershed English and Swedish settlements, which we examine more fully in chapter 3, was a newly tamed politics, in which stable representative regimes that were constitutional monarchies in form and liberal oligarchies in substance took root. Politics came to center less on manipulating monarchs and more on winning restrained and restricted electoral contests for the control of deliberative and representative bodies—England’s Parliament and Sweden’s Riksdag—that were effectively sovereign. Consensually united elites existed in two other Western countries by the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Their origins, however, were not sudden and deliberate settlements but instead colonial experiences in which local elites gained considerable self-governing experience during long periods of homerule autonomy and then led unifying struggles for national independence.
During the sixteenth century, elites in the seven autonomous Dutch provinces engaged in restrained political practices under Spanish rule and then collaborated successfully against it between 1566 and 1581. Tamed politics, broadly restrained and cooperative elites, and stable representative regimes that were liberal oligarchies prevailed within and between most of the loosely linked United Provinces of the Netherlands during the next two centuries.
These features were even more apparent after the provinces merged peacefully to form an integrated national state in 1813 (ratified by the Congress of Vienna in 1815).
Two centuries after the elite-led Dutch struggle against Spanish colonial rule, elites in Britain’s American colonies rid themselves of the colonial yoke

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in ways and with consequences that were abstractly similar to the Dutch case. A century of cautious representative political practices centered in the
American colonial legislatures culminated in the dangerous but highly unifying War of Independence, 1776–1781. During the 1780s the newly independent American elites and colonies struggled with a loosely integrated national state, which took firmer form after they wrote a constitution in
1787 and then ratified it. The new American regime featured restrained and restricted electoral contests for control of national and state legislative bodies and, eventually, for separate executive presidential and gubernatorial offices.
Initially, the regime’s national and state components approximated liberal oligarchies, but with the introduction of (nonslave) male suffrage at the end of the 1820s, the regime began to acquire more fully representative features.
Although the American elites divided regionally along distinct cultural and economic lines during the Civil War of 1861–1865, both Union and Confederate elites retained their consensual character even during that war, as did the whole national elite once it was reconstituted after the Union’s victory.
The Dutch and American cases are examined more fully in chapter 4.
Except in England, Sweden, and the Dutch provinces, elites in all other
European national states remained disunited throughout the early modern period, and the political regimes they operated were of the unstable and unrepresentative type. In Denmark, struggles among aristocratic and bourgeois elite camps culminated in royal absolutism after 1665. A century of rule by a few hundred landowners who were in league with the monarchy followed, but this arrangement was upset during the 1770s and 1780s by palace intrigues and power grabs, resulting in successive coups. In France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, elites in the royal court, the church, the military, and the major towns became polarized over traditionalist versus rationalist views of rank and privilege, and over opposing conceptions of a good society more generally. This chasm between elite camps deepened, and in 1788–1789 revolution broke out. In Portugal, independence from Spain in 1640 was soon followed by court intrigues, the overthrow of Alfonso VI in 1668, and the assertion of royal absolutism, which, as elsewhere, involved much infighting among elite factions bent on dominating the monarchical power.
Disunited elites were also evident in Russia and Spain. In Russia during the seventeenth century, absolutist rule by a succession of czars was punctuated by sporadic uprisings that were ruthlessly suppressed. After thirty-five years of ‘‘enlightened despotism’’ under Peter the Great (1689–1725), court intrigues and military interventions became rampant. Only two of the eight monarchs who followed Peter during the eighteenth century attained the throne without military intervention, and both were murdered. Spanish politics during the seventeenth century were dominated first by revolts against
Castilian hegemony and then by the attempts of aristocratic elites to domi-

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37

nate the incompetent Charles II (1665–1700). Early in the eighteenth century, Spain broke up in civil war and regional revolts. It was patched together again in 1716, but Spain’s politics then paralleled France’s: a protracted struggle pitting deeply conservative aristocratic and church elites against modernizing elite factions spearheaded by state officials and leaders of a small bourgeoisie. At century’s end, under another incompetent king,
Charles IV, court intrigues swept Spain into its disastrous alliance with
France, which triggered an uprising against the king, forced his abdication in
1808, and enabled Napoleon to impose his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. In sum, the nearly uniform political configuration in early modern Europe was disunited elites and unstable monarchical regimes. Its genesis was the process of forcibly subjugating previously distinct or autonomous populations and ruling groups to form relatively integrated national states. The resulting enmities were long lasting. Except in the Dutch provinces once they gained independence from Spain, and in England and Sweden, where extraordinary circumstances facilitated sudden and deliberate settlements between warring elite camps, disunited elites and unstable regimes persisted for several hundred years. They did so despite the ebb and flow of national fortunes and the fairly steady passage of most European countries through the preindustrial phase of economic development. The persistence of this political configuration cannot be attributed entirely to the difficulties of forming national states, the existence of traditional monarchies, or the discontents and turbulence among impoverished preindustrial populations. For even after the earliest European national states became more fully integrated; after their monarchies were mostly replaced by republican governments, real or de facto; and after their economies and populations became substantially industrialized, elites in most European countries remained disunited, and regimes continued to be highly unstable.

DISUNITED ELITES AND UNSTABLE REGIMES
IN WESTERN COUNTRIES AFTER 1800
Conquests by French revolutionary and Napoleonic armies merged many small and precariously independent German and Italian principalities into larger territorial units. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna ratified these changes, thereby reorganizing the European political map. Prussia emerged as a major national state, while the loosely integrated Habsburg Empire (after 1867 the
Austro-Hungarian Empire) tried to control territories in Italy, East Central
Europe, and the Balkans. Through warfare during the 1860s, Prussia excluded the Habsburg Empire from German-speaking territories outside
Austria proper, and in 1871 Prussia established the integrated German Reich.

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With French and Prussian help, the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont expanded during the 1860s, also reducing the Habsburg Empire, and it emerged in 1870 as the Italian national state. Along with France, Spain, and
Russia, these countries dominated continental Europe, although smaller national states also emerged—the Netherlands in 1813; Belgium when it seceded from the Netherlands in 1830; Greece in 1830 when it won independence from the Ottoman Empire with French, British, and Russian assistance; Switzerland with the formation of a more centralized federation following a brief civil war in 1848; and Norway as a self-governing state free of Swedish interference in domestic affairs in 1883–1884.
Like the original European countries, almost all these new national states formed with disunited elites and unstable regimes. In Belgium and Greece after 1830, Italy after 1870, and Prussia and then the integrated German
Reich after 1871, elites disagreed fundamentally about the constitutions and institutions on which their new states rested. They strove to defend, greatly reform, or destroy governments according to their conflicting political stances and bases of support.
At various points during the nineteenth century, most of these countries, along with Britain, Sweden, and Denmark, entered the industrial phase of economic development, which created large and growing categories of manual industrial workers and similarly large and growing categories of bureaucratic and service personnel. From these categories sprang new elites commanding labor unions, mass political parties, new and large commercial enterprises, professional associations, mass media organizations, educational institutions, and a range of public sector agencies and organizations necessitated by state expansion at home and in colonial territories abroad. Industrialization thus involved substantial elite differentiation. This was not accompanied, however, by any basic change in elite politics or the unstable character of political regimes. Elites in the original European national states, other than England and Sweden, remained disunited and, as noted above, elites in most of the newly created national states were disunited from the outset. But elite oppositions now had a more complex pattern as a result of the French Revolution’s aftershocks, the entrance into the political arena of elites created by expanding commercial and governmental sectors, and conflicts between and within the increasingly heterogeneous occupational categories that industrialization was fostering. Elites were increasingly arrayed across three fairly distinct and mutually exclusive political positions: the old traditionalist-personalist right; an emerging radical-egalitarian left that grew out of and appealed to the swelling numbers of alienated and impoverished industrial workers; and a less well-defined center consisting of what remained of the earlier rationalist-institutionalist left in preindustrial times, now quite sharply distinguished from the radical-egalitarian left that industrialization generated.

Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes

39

In the national states that had formed during the early modern, preNapoleonic period, disunited elites persisted and produced frequent and usually violent regime upsets. In France, for example, a traditional monarchy was restored by an uprising in 1814–1815, a so-called bourgeois monarchy was installed by another uprising in 1830, a republican regime was instituted by revolt in 1848, an autocratic regime was established by coup d’etat in
´
1851, and another republican regime (the Third Republic) was instituted after the Paris Commune uprising was brutally crushed in 1870. Disunited elites and unstable regimes were equally conspicuous in Spain: the monarchy was restored in 1814; a military coup forced its liberalization between 1820 and
1823; the military backed the succession of three-year-old Queen Isabel III in 1833, while the presumptive heir to the throne withdrew to lead a Carlist revolt in the north; further military interventions shifted power between liberal and conservative factions in 1835, 1843, 1854, and 1856; and Isabel’s dethronement in 1868 triggered an interregnum of military rule and civil war that ended when her son accepted a constitutional monarchy with nominally representative institutions in 1875. Portugal experienced an altogether similar pattern: displacement of the monarchy in 1820, a failed insurrection in
1824, civil war between 1832 and 1834, coups in 1836 and 1851, and an attempted uprising in 1890. In Russia and Prussia-Germany throughout the century, conservative elite factions used repression to sustain monarchies that were reviled by elites leading bourgeois and working-class organizations and movements. In all these countries, as well as in Denmark, Belgium,
Greece, and Italy, elite camps were separated by deep ideological divisions, and regime instability was indicated by intrigues surrounding monarchs and by numerous riots, strikes, and other confrontations engineered by elites leading discontented segments of the growing middle and working classes.
The material wealth produced by industrialization enabled dominant conservative elites to placate dissident elites and their followings, at least temporarily, as the nineteenth century progressed. The most concrete manifestation of this placating was the spread of national deliberative bodies that were constituted through relatively free electoral contests. Where they did not already exist (as in Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United
States), such bodies were created in all European countries except Russia.
However, the effective sovereignty of these bodies, and thus the extent to which their deliberations and actions were binding on governments, was usually quite limited. In addition, the suffrage was still largely restricted to middle-class citizens, most of whom had a clear stake in the existing socioeconomic order. For these reasons, competitions to elect the deliberative bodies did not immediately become just another way for opposing elite camps to destroy each other.
During the century’s final quarter in most Western countries there was, nevertheless, at least the appearance of an increasingly stable and representa-

40

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tive regime with nascent liberal democratic properties, even though no basic transformation from a disunited to a consensually united elite had clearly occurred other than in Britain and Sweden. (Changes in the Swiss elite after the brief civil war in 1847 are one other possible case of such a transformation and are discussed in chapter 3.) No consensually united elite had emerged through colonial experiences and anticolonial struggles other than in the Netherlands and the United States (although the Norwegian elite had fairly strong consensually united features upon wresting control of domestic affairs from Sweden in 1883–1884, as discussed in chapter 4). Because this spread of seemingly stable representative regimes and nascent liberal democracies appears to contradict our thesis that such regimes depend fundamentally on consensually united elites, the pattern requires closer examination.
The long-lasting French Third Republic (1875–1940) might be seen as the best evidence against our thesis. For sixty-five years, France suffered no forcible seizure of government executive power, and the Third Republic was increasingly regarded as one of the world’s major democratic regimes. However, its creation in 1875 was not preceded, accompanied, or followed by a transformation of the disunited elite that was so evident in all of France’s earlier history. Many members of the monarchist factions that held a majority of National Assembly seats in the early 1870s favored a British-style constitutional monarchy. Republicans in the Assembly were predominantly centrist and moderate, as exemplified by their leader, Adolphe Thiers. The monarchists and republicans were thus potentially capable of reaching a basic accommodation. The disarray among revolutionary radical leftist factions after the Paris Commune debacle—in which some twenty thousand
Communards were killed by army troops under Thiers’s command—made accommodation between monarchist and republican factions all the more conceivable. A step in that direction was the fusionist effort by leaders of the two monarchist factions: the legitimist pretender, the childless Comte de
Chambord, then in his fifties, would ascend to a restored French throne on the understanding that he would be succeeded by the much younger Orleanist pretender, the Comte de Paris.4 This plan foundered, however, on
Chambord’s refusal to accept the limited monarchy that he was offered. Had
Chambord accepted the fusionist plan, it might have become a key element in a wider elite accommodation.
But this did not happen, and the Third Republic was born in an elite stalemate. Established by a one-vote margin in the National Assembly in 1875, it was never viewed by monarchist, Bonapartist, or radical leftist elites as more than a temporary expedient. Each of these elite camps mobilized an important segment of the business class, the church hierarchy, the military, the state administration, or the working class. Their continuing animosities, fears, and distrusts made expectations of forcible power seizures the leitmotif of Third Republic politics. In 1889, there was considerable support for a

Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes

41

coup d’etat that would be led by the former army general Georges Boulanger
´
and the revanchist Ligue des patriotes, but Boulanger balked at the last minute. In 1898 and 1899, during the deeply divisive Dreyfus Affair, two serious coup plots were uncovered. In 1933, Action francaise and other proto-fascist
¸
groups conspired to overthrow the Daladier government. The last years of the republic—before, during, and after the Popular Front government of
1936–1938—involved corrosive elite hostilities, as evidenced by the alacrity with which a sizable part of the national elite seized the opportunity created by German invasion in 1940 to dismantle the Third Republic and replace it with the corporatist and semi-fascist Vichy regime.5 Although the practice of representative politics was certainly a key feature of the Third Republic,
French elites remained disunited and the republic was always an unstable representative regime, or, if one prefers, an unconsolidated democracy. Nor did this basic situation change during the Fourth Republic after World War
II, as discussed in chapter 5.
Politics in Italy from national integration in 1870 until the victory of Mussolini’s Fascist Movement in 1922 broadly paralleled French politics during the Third Republic. Initially, the prospects for a consensually united elite and a stable representative regime, as products of the successful Risorgimento independence struggle of the 1860s, were promising, despite serious divisions between generalized rightist and leftist elite camps. These divisions centered on how the new national state was formed, the worth of the constitutional monarchy that was established, and the Vatican’s refusal to acknowledge the new state’s legitimacy. Nevertheless, the only full-fledged and peaceful alternation of government in Italy’s history (until the 1990s) occurred in 1876 when a right-wing government gave way peacefully to a left-wing one, which then secured an electoral majority among the 8.5 percent of adult males who enjoyed suffrage.6 Following this peaceful alternation, the opposing elite camps in effect fused (the famous trasformismo) and they jointly dominated politics during the next twenty years in what looked like a stable liberal oligarchy.
During the 1890s, however, this elite fusion proved too narrow to accommodate spreading popular mobilizations of peasants and workers suffering the harshness of industrialization and spurred by emerging Catholic and socialist elites who had no place in the fused elite and thus no stake in the regime it operated. Despite repeated attempts to forge greater elite integration, one or more important factions remained on the outside looking in.7
Excluded elites fomented a series of crippling strikes and local uprisings, which the dominant elites forcibly repressed. Exacerbated by foreign misadventures such as the Libyan War in 1912, the struggles between elite camps became steadily more explosive during the years before and after World War
I. Between 1918 and 1921, strife in Italy’s northern cities approximated open civil war, while in many smaller towns and villages, especially in central

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Italy, Fascist Blackshirt squadristi became more and more formidable. Mussolini and his Fascist forces gained power in October 1922 when King Victor
Emmanuel III acquiesced to their March on Rome, and Mussolini set about constructing an authoritarian regime that acquired self-proclaimed, if rather ambiguous, totalitarian features after the Fascist assassination of Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in June 1924 and the withdrawal of Socialist deputies from Parliament.8
In Spain, a pact in 1876 between Canovas del Castillo, the Conservative party leader, and Praxedes Mateo Sagasta, the Liberal party leader, provided for regular alternation in government between the two parties and elite camps. But after universal male suffrage was introduced in 1889, the electoral outcomes that had been carefully orchestrated in this turno pacifico elite pact could be achieved only through the intercession of local notables, the caciques. The caciques forced or persuaded rural voters to support Conservatives or Liberals and to oppose socialist and other emerging elites. Caciquil domination in rural areas, together with corrupt electoral tactics and political intimidations in cities, maintained Conservative and Liberal elite majorities in the Cortes (parliament) until World War I. As in Italy after 1876, ascendant elites colluded to bar emerging elites from acquiring accepted roles in national politics. This ensured rejection of the regime by the excluded elites and the mass publics they mobilized. In 1923, the Spanish regime was easily toppled by a military coup, and elite struggles then lurched toward the political chaos and bloody civil war of the 1930s, which culminated in victory by nationalist forces in 1939 and the establishment of an authoritarian regime headed by their leader, Francisco Franco.
Similar observations about disunited elites and their destabilizing effects on fledgling democratic regimes can be made for most other European countries during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the forty years before World War II. In Germany during the so-called Weimar Republic
(1919–1933), deep divisions and stalemates between radical leftist, moderate centrist, and intransigent rightist elites opened the way for the ultranationalist Nazi elite to gain power and impose its doctrine and rule.9 This occurred through a series of crisis-ridden and violent electoral contests, especially during 1932, accompanied by behind-the-scenes but ultimately failed maneuvers to contain Hitler and the surging Nazi movement. In Austria, where elites were deeply divided into Black and Red Lager, ultranationalist
¨
forces prevailed in a brief but bloody civil war during 1934. This was followed by union with Hitler’s Third Reich four years later. In both countries, transformations to elites approximating the ideologically united kind and to regimes with marked stable unrepresentative and totalitarian features took place. A similar transformation had, of course, already occurred in Russia via the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary seizure and consolidation of power, which began late in 1917 and produced the modern world’s first ideologically

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43

united elite and stable unrepresentative regime—the totalitarian Soviet regime dating from 1922.
Did disunited elites and unstable regimes persist in Europe’s wreckage after World War II? Yes and no. Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, West Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain emerged from the war with disunited elites and unstable regimes that were either precariously representative or overtly authoritarian. However, elites in all these countries underwent transformations to the consensually united configuration at various times and in various ways during the next forty years, as discussed in chapters 3 and 5. Accordingly, all these regimes changed to the stable representative type, and by the late 1980s all could be regarded as liberal democracies, albeit of varying quality. In Austria the proporz system and other power-sharing arrangements secretly negotiated among elites immediately following World War II constituted a fundamental settlement that made the first stable representative regime in Austria’s history possible. Much later, intensive negotiations among Spanish elites following Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 produced a settlement that terminated more than four centuries of regime instability.
Elsewhere—in West Germany and Belgium during the 1950s and early
1960s, in France and Italy during the 1960s and 1970s, and in Greece and
Portugal during the late 1970s and 1980s—elites increasingly converged through the formation of winning center-right electoral coalitions and the subsequent decisions of hostile left-wing elites to abandon their orthodoxies and join their former antagonists in operating stable representative regimes in capitalist economic contexts.

DISUNITED ELITES AND WESTERN
POLITICAL CHANGE APPRAISED
We have, obviously, glossed an incredibly complex and variegated—but also well-known and much-analyzed—historical period. The main purpose has been to highlight two aspects of Western political trajectories during the modern historical period: the formation of integrated national states and the accompanying formation of disunited elites and unstable political regimes that then persisted over long periods in most countries. We have been much less directly concerned with the inception, evolution, and spread of representative governmental institutions, electoral practices, civil liberties, and other trappings of liberal democracies. This is because we view these phenomena as uncertain and tentative in most Western countries until quite recently.
Only where there was first a transformation from a disunited to a consensually united elite did representative or democratic political practices have much firmness, but most such transformations are of recent vintage. Until after World War II it was impossible to perceive any general movement in

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this direction; indeed, during the decades prior to that war, the movement in
Europe was predominantly away from consensually united elites and stable representative-cum-liberal democratic regimes.10
Given the complexity of the elite and regime continuities and changes we have glossed, it is useful to chart them here, even though detailed discussion of many cases awaits subsequent chapters:
Table 2.1. Origins of European and U.S Elite Configurations
National State Formation
England (late medieval)
Denmark (late medieval)
Scotland (late medieval)
Portugal (late medieval)
Spain (from 16th cent.)
Sweden (from 16th cent.)
Russia (from 17th cent.)

France (from late 17th cent.)
United States (from 1789)
Netherlands (from 1813)

Elite Configuration
Disunited to 1689
Consensually united 1689–present
Disunited to 1901
Consensually united 1935–present
Disunited to 1707
Disunited to 1976
Consensually united 1987–present
Disunited to 1976
Consensually united 1978–present
Disunited to 1809
Consensually united 1809–present
Disunited to 1917
Ideologically united 1922–1980s
Disunited 1980s–present
Disunited to 1960
Consensually united 1981–present
Consensually united 1789–present
(except South’s secession, 1860s)
Consensually united 1813–present

Prussia (from 1815 or earlier) Disunited to 1871
Belgium (from 1830)
Disunited to 1960
Consensually united 1977–present
Switzerland (from 1848)
Consensually united 1848–present
Italy (from 1870)
Germany (from 1871)

Norway (1883–84)

Disunited 1870–1963
Consensually united 1978–present
Disunited 1871–1933
Ideologically united 1933–45
Consensually united 1966–present
Consensually united 1884–present

Austria (from 1919 or earlier) Disunited to 1938
Ideologically united 1938–45
Consensually united 1946–present

Consensually United Elite Origin
Settlement 1688–89
Convergence 1901–35
Merger w/England 1707
Convergence 1976–87
Settlement 1976–78
Settlement 1808–9
None; revolution 1917–21
(in USSR)
None; Soviet elite implosion
Convergence 1960–81
Colonial home rule and independence struggle
Colonial independence struggle
1565–81 and later fusion of provincial elites
None; created Germany 1871
Convergence 1961–77
Settlement 1848 and fusion of cantonal elites
Convergence 1963–78
None; Nazi revolution 1933
Convergence in FRG 1949–66
Colonial home rule and independence struggle
None; annexed to Germany 1938
Settlement 1945–46

What stands out in table 2.1 is the uneven and historically contingent character of Western political change. Thus, the early start of the Netherlands and England in economic development—apart from a few Italian city-states,

Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes

45

they were the first to enter the preindustrial phase—did not by itself create integrated national states and consensually united elites operating stable, more or less politically representative regimes. England approximated a national state before it entered the preindustrial phase, whereas the Dutch provinces remained largely autonomous for three centuries after the most important of them became preindustrial. The creation of consensually united elites and stable representative regimes in England and the Dutch provinces, and in Sweden and the United States as well, depended upon essentially accidental political circumstances that were propitious for elite accommodation and cooperation: abrupt and profound crises that English and Swedish elites faced in 1688 and 1808, respectively (chapter 3), and distinctive colonial selfgoverning experiences and unifying struggles for independence among
Dutch and American elites (chapter 4). The disjunction between phases of economic development and elite-regime configurations can be further observed if we contrast Britain with France or Germany during the late nineteenth century when all three were industrialized countries, or Germany and
Italy under their ideologically united elites and stable unrepresentative, quasi-totalitarian regimes with nearly all other comparably industrialized
Western countries during the 1930s.
Our principal observation is that in highly fortuitous ways consensually united elites, whose factions and members were free from unchecked internal conflicts, came into existence in less than a handful of Western countries at early points in the modern historical period. Although one cannot compute it exactly, the fact that this happened in what proved to be the West’s three leading countries in succession—the United Provinces of the Netherlands,
Great Britain, and the United States—gave the West as a whole a great advantage over the rest of the world, where no similar political configurations materialized. There was a greater potential for a steady focus on the national interest in framing policies, along with comparatively greater policy continuities regardless of shifting factional alignments, in these three countries than in the many others with disunited elites. Thus, the Dutch provinces briefly led in economic development during the seventeenth century, although they gave way to the more populous and resource-rich Britain in the following century. During its rise to world dominance in the eighteenth century and its world hegemony in the nineteenth, Britain had the great advantage of a consensually united elite. Finally, the United States’ succession to a somewhat precarious dominance of the West and much of the world during the twentieth century was also hardly unrelated to a long experience of consensually united elite politics.11 Whether Western socioeconomic development would have been as pronounced and relatively unbroken without this political progression and sequence is a question that cannot be answered.12 The broad patterns that we have traced suggest that it would not have.
In this respect, the developmental difficulties of so many countries outside

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the West, nearly all of which have, or until very recently have had, disunited elites, are underscored. Enumerating and describing all the non-Western countries with disunited elites and unstable regimes would not, however, serve this chapter’s broad purpose. We can only try to sketch the general patterns and mention some prominent examples. This will facilitate discussions in subsequent chapters of specific countries where transformations to consensually united elites and the founding of liberal oligarchies or liberal democracies have occurred.

DISUNITED ELITES AND UNSTABLE
REGIMES OUTSIDE THE WEST
Well over a hundred national states that are not part of what might be considered the historic West—Europe and the English-speaking countries of
North America and the Antipodes—are former colonies of the Western countries. The most important exceptions are China, Japan, Thailand, and
Ethiopia, none of which was colonized during the modern historical period.
These four countries provide further evidence that the formation of integrated national states almost always resulted in disunited elites and unstable regimes, and that this was not solely a Western phenomenon.
In China, a succession of imperial dynasties and regimes kept the country forcibly integrated over a long historical period, though always in the face of much discontent and opposition. When the last of these dynasties, the Qing, lost control and broke apart at the start of the twentieth century, China slid into endemic civil warfare, fueled in part by foreign interventions, which attenuated only with the Communist triumph in 1949. Even under Mao Zedong and his cronies, internal divisions continued to be relatively virulent and violent. In Japan, the Tokogawa shogunate gradually ended a long period of civil warfare by forcibly constructing a loosely integrated state starting in
1603. However, like the monarchies of medieval Europe, the Tokogawa regime presided over a congeries of substantially autonomous and conflicting provinces (han), each with its own set of rulers.13 A truly integrated national state did not form until after the Meiji Restoration (in reality, a revolution) in 1867–1868, and it, too, was imposed and maintained by force.
Although the post-Meiji regime was furnished with trappings of a constitutional monarchy borrowed from Europe—principally from the German imperial regime—ascendant bureaucratic, military, and business (zaibatsu) elites clustered around the emperor and ruled with an iron fist. A politics of assassination was the practice during the 1920s and 1930s until a military coup in 1938 produced an overtly authoritarian regime that led Japan to disaster in World War II.
In Thailand—known as Siam until World War II—a substantially inte-

Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes

47

grated state was built under the absolutist Chakkri dynasty, established by coup in 1781–1782. Through concessions to Western imperial powers, the
Chakkri kings prevented the country’s colonization. In 1932, however, discontent with the incumbent monarch and with the monarchy in general triggered the first of a score of coups and countercoups that occurred over the next sixty years. The monarchy became constitutional in form, but irregular power seizures made the Thai regime pervasively unstable and never more than nominally representative. Finally, Ethiopia was the only African country to escape Western colonization, although it experienced occupation by
Mussolini’s Italy during 1936–1941. With an ancient imperial past of aggrandizing wars and shifting territorial boundaries, Ethiopia’s current, and historically most extensive, borders were formed by conquests under Emperor
Menelik II during 1896–1906. Monarchical rule ended in the 1970s when a
Marxist military faction seized power, deposed Emperor Haile Salassie, decimated the old ruling class, and established a Soviet-style command state.
Besieged from the outset by internal factional fighting and ethnoregional liberation movements, this regime was finally overthrown in 1991 by a coalition of rebel groups. That coalition’s party, the Ethiopian People’s Democratic
Liberation Front, has dominated the government ever since through tightly controlled elections, although it is torn by personal and enduring ethnoregional conflicts. Elites are clearly disunited, the regime is unstable and only nominally representative, and, as throughout Ethiopia’s history, national integration remains tenuous.
Although they are important illustrations of the historical genesis and subsequent persistence of disunited elites and unstable regimes, China,
Japan, Thailand, and Ethiopia deviated from the typical—namely, colonial— experience of countries outside the West for most of the modern period.
Only a figurative handful of these countries emerged from their colonial experience with consensually united elites operating stable representative regimes. Even fewer emerged with ideologically united elites and stable unrepresentative regimes of the totalitarian subtype—North Korea and Vietnam are the only clear, or at least relatively long-lasting, cases. All other postcolonial national states became independent with disunited elites and unstable regimes that were usually also quite unrepresentative in their functioning.
Elites in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America were disunited when they achieved independence between 1808 and 1826, and this elite configuration persisted throughout Latin America for at least another century. Inherited, as it were, from the disunited elites and unstable authoritarian regimes of its Spanish and Portuguese colonizers, and augmented by bitter struggles to integrate newly independent states, Latin America’s long record of untamed politics—dominated during the nineteenth century by the legendary ‘‘man on horseback’’ and during the twentieth by professional

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militaries—is well known. It testifies powerfully to what happens when colonial elites have little or no experience in practicing representative politics under home-rule conditions, and when their independence struggles then unleash further struggles to integrate national states. There is, of course, much to be said about individual Latin American cases, and we return to the most important of them in subsequent chapters. Here we simply highlight how a fairly uniform pattern of rapacious colonial rule that extended over several centuries did little or nothing to foster cooperative elites and tamed politics once that rule was forcibly terminated in the early nineteenth century. It took Latin American elites another 100 to 150 years to overcome the political pattern that Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule helped establish, and it is questionable if elites in perhaps half of the Latin American countries have yet done so.
Another sizable clutch of countries emerged from colonial status when the
Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian empires collapsed at the end of World War I. Most of the countries that are today independent national states in Eastern and Southeastern Europe formed or re-formed at that time, although Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Serbian component of what became the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—Yugoslavia— had existed as independent states from various points in the nineteenth century, and another country, Poland, achieved a precarious independence between World Wars I and II. Under Soviet domination following World War
II, all but Greece, Yugoslavia, and Albania lost their effective independence for some forty years. With perhaps one exception, these states displayed disunited elites and unstable regimes from the times when they gained independence, and this pattern persisted until they were overrun by German Nazi and then Soviet Russian forces in World War II. Before that war, elites in
Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Albania were badly split into intransigent conservative-nationalist and revolutionary-leftist camps. Their distrusts and conflicts resulted in an array of unstable authoritarian (often monarchist) regimes backed by military elites. The exception was Czechoslovakia between 1919 and 1938, where elites were more cooperative and disposed toward a relatively stable representative regime, despite serious subnational ethnic divisions, until Hitler effectively extinguished the country’s independence in 1938.
Outside Eastern and Southeastern Europe, however, the collapse of several empires in World War I brought no widespread decolonization; instead, Britain and France grabbed the lion’s share of the collapsed empires’ remnants in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Consequently, decolonization in these regions occurred mainly after World War II with the defeat or dismantling of the British, French, Dutch, Belgian, American, and, eventually, Portuguese empires. With few exceptions the scores of countries that gained independence

Disunited Elites and Unstable Regimes

49

between 1945 and 1965 displayed disunited elites and unstable regimes that, after flirting with representative politics, soon took authoritarian or sultanistic forms. One of colonialism’s legacies in many, indeed most, of these countries was their internal division along regionally based ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines. Their ‘‘stateness’’ was often weak or nonexistent. Postcolonial ethnic and other regionally based divisions were at once a recipe for deep elite conflicts and a means by which elites rooted in one population segment and region prevailed over opponents rooted in others, initially through skewed electoral mobilizations but then mainly by the use of militaries led by culturally kindred officers. Although this aspect of colonialism’s legacy is an important reason why so many postcolonial countries have had disunited elites and unstable regimes, it needs to be remembered that during the modern historical period most other national states, with or without ethnic or other geographically based cultural divisions, displayed the same elite and regime configuration. There is reason to doubt, in other words, that the disappointing political performance (from a liberal democratic perspective) of most postcolonial states has stemmed wholly or mainly from the arbitrary boundaries they inherited from the colonial period.
The fact that some important postcolonial countries escaped this configuration casts additional doubt on the ‘‘blame colonialism’’ thesis. Although they also suffered from significant regionally based ethnic or other divisions, a number of former colonies emerged with consensually united elites operating stable representative regimes. Elites in these former colonies had prolonged experience practicing representative politics under home-rule conditions and in assembling and directing large and complex independence movements that were ultimately victorious. Most of them were former British colonies: India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaysia, Jamaica, Barbados, and white South Africa. However, in Senegal, a former French colony, elites had a colonial experience similar to those of elites in the British ex-colonies just mentioned, and Senegal gained independence with what appeared to be a consensually united elite and a stable representative regime. A curious and important case that combined a relatively brief experience of British rule, although never colonization as such, with a much wider and longer unifying struggle for national independence, was Israel, which appeared on the world stage in 1948 as an integrated state with a consensually united elite and a stable representative regime.
In the comparatively tamed politics that these several countries displayed during the decades following their independence, they resembled several earlier British colonies, including the American, New Zealand, Canadian, and
Australian colonies—and, more problematically, Ireland. But as Senegal indicated, and as the original Dutch case and Norway’s experience under and after Swedish colonial rule also tended to show, former colonies or subjugated territories that emerged with consensual elites and stable representative

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regimes were not limited to those ruled by Britain. The pattern was somewhat wider. Moreover, although British rule often favored the formation— one could say cloning—of consensually united elites practicing a tamed politics, the long list of former British colonies in which no such elites and politics took root indicates that the British legacy depended heavily on local elite choices amid contingent circumstances.

DISUNITED ELITES AND WAVES
OF DEMOCRATIZATION
Failure to comprehend the wide prevalence and strong persistence of disunited elites and unstable regimes led many analysts of comparative politics to excessive optimism about democratic possibilities in the postcolonial countries that multiplied between 1945 and 1965. Samuel P. Huntington calculated that, overall, the roster of countries with democratic regimes increased by more than two dozen during those twenty years.14 Adding these countries to the more gradual and exclusively Western democratizations that unfolded between 1828 and 1926, Huntington observed that the post–World
War II democratizations brought the total of democratic regimes to fifty-one in about 1962, which was, he thought, when the second democratization wave ended. However, many of these second-wave regimes were operated by elites whose antipathies and insecurities meant that irregular power seizures, followed by authoritarian rule, were likely events. In fact, between 1958 and
1975 authoritarian regimes materialized in a score of countries that had recently been democratic: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Chile, Ecuador,
Fiji, Ghana, Greece, Guyana, Indonesia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru,
Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Uruguay. In a few of these countries
(Nigeria, Fiji, Lebanon) the breakdown of democratic regimes resulted from uncontainable ethnoregional conflicts; but in most the breakdown was a fairly direct consequence of unrestrained power struggles among disunited elites. The substantial democratization that occurred during the twenty years following World War II was in this respect less promising than the sheer number of democratic regimes that existed in the early 1960s induced many analysts to believe. Much of it was more apparent than real. The same observation applies to the third wave of democratization that began in the mid1970s. Huntington calculated that by 1990 the third wave had restored or added thirty-three countries to the democratic roster, bringing its total to sixty-five. However, six of the newly democratized countries were former
Central and Eastern European satellites of the USSR, and when Huntington made his tabulation it was unclear how their democratizations would fare.
In short order, the newly independent and democratic East Germany was

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merged with West Germany, and Czechoslovakia broke apart into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while in Bulgaria and Romania, and then Slovakia, formerly communist parties of power quickly gained the upper hand and for several years operated regimes that were only nominally democratic. Another of the thirty-three third-wave cases listed by Huntington in 1990 was India. But it had reverted to a stable representative regime operated by a well-established consensually united elite after Indira Gandhi’s brief period of emergency rule during 1975–1977, which she voluntarily terminated. Still another of the thirty-three was the complex Philippines case, in which a consensually united elite that appeared to have formed under and against brief
American colonial tutelage prior to 1946 was partly displaced by Ferdinand
Marcos’s authoritarian rule between 1972 and 1986. In the latter year, however, key elite factions banded together to overthrow Marcos and restore a representative, albeit dubiously stable, regime. We will return to the Philippines case in chapter 4.
In eight other countries, as will be discussed in chapters 3 and 5, thirdwave democratization down to 1990 involved the transformation from disunited to consensually united elites through settlements or convergences in
Finland, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, and Uruguay. But in at least twenty of the thirty-three third-wave countries, in 1990 there was little or no evidence of such transformations, so that democratization or redemocratization was accompanied by the persistence of disunited elites in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Gambia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mongolia, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Panama, Peru, Sudan, Suriname, and Turkey. Putatively democratic regimes in these countries were consequently unstable, and at least six—Gambia, Haiti, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, and Suriname— oscillated to authoritarian forms during the 1990s. As is expectable where elites remain disunited, others of the twenty third-wave countries in 1990 subsequently experienced crises in which military influences and interventions bulked large—Papua New Guinea, Peru, and Turkey—and still others
(Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala) were embroiled in violent conflicts between culturally opposed population segments mobilized by opposing camps within the disunited elites.
An elite-centered reexamination of the democratization record between
World War II and the first years of the present century is, thus, quite sobering as regards overall trends. One way to show this is to recalculate the magnitudes of Huntington’s democratization waves (down to 1990) according to the incidence of consensually united elites and stable representative regimes that preceded, accompanied, or soon followed democratic transitions (table
2.2).
If consensually united elites are the foundations of stable representative

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Table 2.2. Incidence of Consensually United Elites during Huntington’s Democratization
Waves to 1990a
1st Wave (1828–1926)

2nd Wave (1943–62)

3rd Wave (1974–90)

Australia, 1901
Canada, 1867
Denmark, 1901–35
England, 1688–89
Iceland, 1922c
Ireland, 1922
Netherlands, 1813
New Zealand, 1907
Norway, 1883/1905d
Sweden, 1808–9
Switzerland, 1848
United States, 1789

Austria, 1945–46
Belgium, 1961–77
Colombia, 1957–58
Costa Rica, 1948b
France, 1960–81
India, 1947
Israel, 1948
Jamaica, 1962
Malaysia, 1957
Malta, 1964
Senegal, 1960
Sri Lanka, 1957–58
Venezuela, 1957–58
W. Germany, 1949–65

Finland, 1969–84
Greece, 1974–81
Hungary, 1989
Italy, 1963–77
Japan, 1984–86
Poland, 1989
Portugal, 1976–87
Spain, 1976–78
South Korea, 1987
Uruguay, 1984

Dates indicate approximate formation of such elites.
Omitted from Huntington’s figure 1.1 but elsewhere classified by him as democratic c Excluded from our subsequent analysis due to small population size d Dates of de facto and then complete independence from Swedish rule a b

regimes that are likely to become liberal democracies, the trends revealed by table 2.2 were not all that promising. First, over the course of the past three centuries, starting with England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688–1689, such elites have formed in perhaps thirty-six of the sixty-five independent and relatively integrated national states that Huntington classified as democratized in 1990. Second, when Huntington’s three waves are recalculated in this way, their magnitudes did not differ greatly: twelve during the first wave, fourteen that formed during or before the end of the second wave in 1962, and ten during the third wave to 1990. In other words, there is no strong basis for saying that each democratizing wave was, in an elite-centered respect, greater than the one preceding it. Third, in fifteen of these thirty-six countries consensually united elites emerged through colonial tutelage and fairly extended opportunities to practice representative politics under home rule, often augmented by unifying national independence struggles. With the effective end of colonialism, however, such opportunities will presumably not recur. This means, fourth, that the incidence of actual transformations to consensually united elites—as distinct from those produced through colonial experiences—has been modest: barely a score of cases during the three hundred years down to 1990.
It appears, nonetheless, that the frequency of transformations from disunited and ideologically united to consensually united elites has increased during the sixty years since World War II ended. This can be seen if countries

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53

Table 2.3. Transformations to Consensually United Elites before or during Huntington’s
Democratizing Waves
1st Wave (1828–1926)

2nd Wave (1943–1962)

3rd Wave (1974–1990)

England 1688–1689
Sweden 1808–1809
Switzerland 1848
Denmark 1901–1935

Austria 1945–1946
Costa Rica 1948
W. Germany 1949–1965a
France 1960–1981
Colombia 1957–1958
Venezuela 1957–1958b
Belgium 1961–1977

Italy 1963–1978
Japan 1964–1986
Finland 1969–1984
Greece 1974–1981
Spain 1976–1978
Portugal 1976–1987
Uruguay 1984
South Korea 1987
Hungary 1989
Poland 1989

a b Reunified with East Germany 1991 with no change in elite configuration
Reverted to a disunited elite about 1990 (chapters 3 and 5)

with consensually united elites that emerged through the now presumably closed colonial route, and countries whose elites remained disunited in 1990, are excluded in a final recalculation of Huntington’s waves, as in table 2.3.
Seventeen of the twenty-one transformations to consensually united elites in countries treated by Huntington have occurred since World War II. Ten of these seventeen elite transformations took place during the third wave down to 1990, and two more, the French and Belgian elite transformations, started at the end of the second wave and unfolded primarily during the third wave.
In chapters 3 and 5, we will discuss several possible additions to the list since
1990: Argentina, Brazil, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, multiracial
South Africa, Taiwan, and perhaps one or more of the Baltic states. Early in the twenty-first century, in other words, the list of consensually united elites that have formed in ways other than under long colonial rule numbers about thirty. If we add these to the fifteen such elites that formed under and at the end of colonial rule, the present century began with perhaps forty-five countries in which politics were substantially tamed and in which stable representative regimes existed, most of them approximating liberal democracies.
But this is less than a third of the world’s national states with significant population sizes. Numerically, disunited elites and unstable, mostly unrepresentative regimes remain far and away the most common political configuration, as has been true during all of the modern historical period. Seen in this light, recent and current talk of the whole world soon becoming democratic—even liberal democratic—is almost certainly overblown.
NOTES
1. Samuel E. Finer, ‘‘State- and Nation-Building in Europe: The Role of the Military,’’ in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly

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(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 83–163; Charles Tilly, Coercion,
Capital, and European States, A.D. 990–1990 (London: Basil Blackwell, 1990);
Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
2. Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978); Tilly, Formation of National
States.
3. Bendix, Kings or People, 218–43.
4. David Thomson, Democracy in France since 1870, 5th ed. (London: Oxford
University Press, 1969), 80–83.
5. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
6. Maurizio Cotta, ‘‘Elite Unification and Democratic Consolidation in Italy: A
Historical Overview,’’ in Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and
Southern Europe, ed. John Higley and Richard Gunther (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 149, citing Pier Luigi Ballini, Le Elezioni nella storia d’Italia dall’unita al fascismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988) 79.
7. Cotta, ‘‘Elite Unification,’’ 160.
8. Paxton, Anatomy.
9. Richard Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982); Paxton, Anatomy.
10. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes:
Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Mark Mazower, Dark
Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); Gerard
Alexander, The Sources of Democratic Consolidation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2002).
11. Oliver Zunz, Why the American Century? (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998).
12. See David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So
Rich and Some So Poor (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).
13. Landes, Wealth and Poverty, 360.
14. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Twentieth
Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 14–15.

3
Settlements among Disunited Elites

In the spring and early summer of 1688, England’s noble and gentry elites confronted the chilling prospect that strife like that caused by the civil wars in the 1640s would again break out. The civil wars had climaxed in a revolutionary interregnum when Parliament was seized by mutinous army officers:
King Charles I was tried and executed, the monarchy was abolished, and, in so far as anyone controlled events, radical leveling forces held sway. The wars had grown out of deep elite divisions over the respective powers of Crown and Parliament, and over questions of ‘‘right’’ religious practices. Charles I had ascended to the throne in 1625 committed to principles of rule by divine right and the Anglican Church’s dominance in religious matters. He enjoyed substantial support among entrenched and fused aristocratic and military elites. However, most gentry elites insisted on Parliament’s independent authority; they sympathized with the growing Puritan movement, which rejected the Anglican Church as too Catholic; and they dominated Parliament. Accordingly, Charles chose to rule without Parliament between 1629 and 1640, during which time his Anglican bishops, led by Archbishop William Laud, persecuted and imprisoned Puritans in an attempt to enforce
Anglicanism as the national religion.
Charles’s actions finally provoked a rebellion in Scotland that he could quash only by first summoning Parliament to secure the requisite funds. But
Puritans gained control of the Long Parliament that he summoned in October 1640 and quickly formed the powerful New Model Army to resist
Charles. The parliament announced a number of restrictions on Charles’s authority and ordered the arrest of Archbishop Laud and others. After rejecting most of the restrictions and withdrawing his Cavalier supporters from Parliament (rendering those who remained a rump parliament),
Charles raised his own army. The first civil war began in 1642 and ended in
1645 with Charles defeated and captured by the rump parliament’s forces,
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led by Oliver Cromwell. Although Charles escaped from captivity and launched a second civil war in 1647, he was again defeated and captured, tried for treason by the rump parliament, and beheaded in January 1649. At that point, radical leveling forces were in the saddle; Parliament abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords and proclaimed a republican commonwealth with Cromwell as Lord Protector.
Torn between spreading sentiment for radical leveling, on the one hand, and a rising royalist rebellion, on the other, the commonwealth degenerated into an unstable regime, and Cromwell became increasingly dictatorial.
When Cromwell died in 1658 his son was unable to hold the regime together. By that time, the regime and the Puritans were widely detested, so that most elites and ordinary people welcomed the decisiveness with which
General George Monck, commander of the regime’s army in Scotland, marched on London, reconvened the Long Parliament, and helped initiate its restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under Charles I’s son, who became
King Charles II.
The civil wars’ bloody strife constituted a searing lesson for England’s noble and gentry elites. Their ranks were devastated, and men of relatively humble origins replaced many established elites in high offices. Extremist religious and leveling movements took root and briefly dominated government. Although the Restoration in 1660 returned previously established elites to the centers of power, it did not resolve the dispute over monarchical versus parliamentary powers, nor did it ameliorate the religious conflicts that so intensified bloodletting during the civil wars. Consequently, plots, rumors of plots, arrests, exiles, executions, and suspensions of Parliament punctuated Charles II’s reign (1660–1685). Like all revolutionary convulsions that end inconclusively, the strife of the 1640s and 1650s ensured the continuation of a disunited political elite.
The focal point for much conflict and intrigue during Charles II’s reign was his younger brother James, an ardent Catholic and a proponent of absolute monarchical rule by divine right. Increasingly aligned in two broad camps, Tories and Whigs, elites divided most concretely over whether James should be allowed to succeed Charles. The Tory camp professed unqualified loyalty to the Crown and strongly supported the Anglican Church’s claim to a privileged place in the realm. Persuaded by James’s assurances that he would not usurp Anglicanism as the national religion, and reassured that, having no male heirs, he would presumably be succeeded by one of his two
Protestant daughters, the Tories insisted on James’s legal right to the throne.
The Whig camp asserted Parliament’s independence from the monarchy, abhorred the possibility of a Catholic king, and argued against James’s ascension. However, fears that excluding James would provoke another civil war deterred many from supporting the Whigs.
James was, therefore, allowed to assume the throne when Charles died in

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February 1685. But he soon alienated Tories and Whigs alike. He moved aggressively to Catholicize the army and prorogued Parliament when it condemned his appointments of Catholic military officers. He cashiered the military officers in Parliament who voted for that condemnation and replaced them with Catholic officers while also replacing Protestant privy councilors and other high officials with Catholics. He pressed Parliament to rescind the
Test Act, which required officers of the Crown to profess loyalty to the
Anglican Church. He attempted to pack the House of Commons with Catholics and ultraroyalist Anglicans. He issued a Declaration of Indulgence that suspended all laws restricting religious profession and practice, which amounted to a direct attack on the Anglican Church and was a transparent cover for promoting Catholics. He amassed and stationed on London’s outskirts a large military force that was commanded disproportionately by
Catholics. And he signed the Treaty of American Neutrality with his widely hated coreligionist, France’s King Louis XIV.
James’s deeply divisive actions were capped by the birth of his son on June
10, 1688. This wholly unexpected event—James’s wife had long been thought barren—meant that the predominantly Protestant elites and country would be subject to a Catholic king for long into the future. Twenty days later, on June 30, 1688, seven key Tory and Whig leaders met secretly to draft and send a letter to Prince William of Orange, the Dutch stadholder, inviting him to invade England in order to restore its laws and save the country from
Catholicism. William was the obvious choice for this rescue mission. He was staunchly Protestant and was somewhat distantly in line for the English throne. More importantly, he was married to James’s daughter Mary, a devout Protestant who was second in line to the throne behind James’s newborn son. William was also a key leader of continental forces aligned against the aggrandizing Louis XIV. He was a brave soldier and a shrewd politician, and he had long-standing ties with James’s favorite general, Lord John
Churchill.
Churchill, a steadfast Anglican and royalist, had played a key role in assuring military backing for James’s succession to the throne.1 He then helped lead James’s army in crushing the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, in which the bastard son of Charles II attempted to dislodge James. But
Churchill’s loyalty evaporated as he witnessed James’s assault on the Anglican Church and Parliament. By mid-1687, Churchill had joined the circle discussing James’s dethronement. When William invaded England in
November 1688, Churchill engineered a mutiny that brought vital elements of James’s army over to William’s side. James panicked, dumped the Great
Seal of England into the Thames, fled the country, then returned to a warm welcome in London but was quickly escorted out of the country by Prince
William’s Dutch guards—much to the chagrin of many Tories who remained loath to depose a king and who resented the Dutch army’s presence.

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During December 1688 Prince William hosted a series of dinners and meetings with some two hundred English leaders. The political implications and consequences of his invasion were open questions at that point. Proposed options ranged from restoring James to the throne if he ceased attacking the Anglican Church and respected parliamentary rights, to setting up a regency under William, to having Mary ascend the throne alone, to immediately installing William as king but with many restrictions on his powers. It was agreed that a specially elected Convention Parliament should decide what to do. The election produced a parliament in which Tory and Whig factions were more or less equally represented and veterans of previous parliaments were numerous and influential. Relatively small House of Commons and House of Lords committees did the bulk of the Convention
Parliament’s work. Within each committee a dozen or so members dominated deliberations, and they were among England’s most prominent and experienced political leaders.2 During late January and early February 1689, these leaders engaged in a flurry of secret meetings among themselves and with William and his key advisors, while also negotiating with the full Commons and Lords memberships. The result was a compromise whereby William and Mary were jointly offered the throne, but with the understanding that they would accept and abide by a relatively conservative statement of parliamentary and individual rights—the Declaration of Rights. On February 13, 1689, a ceremony was held to present the Declaration of Rights to
William and Mary. William assented to it orally, although he took no oath and signed no document. Several months later, the coronation of William and Mary took place.
These actions, in which key Tory and Whig leaders participated more or less equally, amounted to each elite camp publicly repudiating a major principle with which it had previously been identified: the Tories dropped their insistence that monarchs could not be resisted, much less deposed; and the
Whigs accepted the privileged status of the Anglican Church over other
Protestant sects. The twin repudiations effectively insured each camp against an attempt by the other to take a principled position and seek exclusive dominance. Although it was not patently clear at the time, neither camp needed to fear any longer that the other would seek to destroy the opposing camp’s power and privilege. English politics, long bitter and violent, were being tamed. An emerging norm of restrained partisanship solidified during the crucial decades that followed the elite settlement of 1689. English legal experts at the time generally agreed that the Declaration of Rights was not legally binding.3 As king, and with a large Dutch army on English soil to back him, William could have ignored the restrictions imposed on his authority. Yet he honored them and agreed to Parliament’s enactment of the Bill of Rights in late 1689. Importantly, William also distributed offices to achieve a power

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balance between his Tory and Whig supporters. Continuing to act in the spirit of what was being called the Revolution Settlement, William accepted additional restrictions during his reign: annual parliamentary sessions became the norm even though not required by law, and the House of Commons gradually assumed a significant role in foreign policy, even though this was the Crown’s prerogative. As a final contribution to solidifying the elite settlement, William helped ensure that James II’s other Protestant daughter,
Anne, peacefully succeeded him in 1702.
The mutual understandings reached by English elites in 1689 were born of a severe political crisis. Always more tacit than overt, these understandings provided each elite camp relatively assured access to decision-making centers despite the outcomes of political competitions. The strength of the understandings was soon tested by a series of events: a Jacobite invasion from Ireland in 1690 aimed at restoring James to the throne, an exhausting but largely successful war with the French during the 1690s, a severe financial crisis brought on by that war, the presence of William’s large Dutch army in
England, the need to formulate clear succession rules that would permanently exclude the Stuart (Catholic) line from the throne, and still another
Jacobite uprising in 1715. The tacit understandings and accommodations among the Tory and Whig elite camps fashioned in the Glorious Revolution withstood all these tests.
As became widely recognized in Europe, the elite actions and agreements of 1688–1689 made England into what would be called a crowned republic.
Writing 250 years later, George Macaulay Trevelyan observed that the reforms achieved through the Glorious Revolution were seen to have strengthened England’s finances and policies vis-a-vis the continental pow` ers, so that ‘‘the European philosophers of the eighteenth century turned against political despotism and religious intolerance as causes of national weakness, and proclaimed to the world the peculiar merits of England’s
‘happy constitution in Church and State.’ ’’4 Initially, the regime possessed a strong monarchical executive, although ultimate power was vested in the two
Houses of Parliament, which represented the country’s privileged strata.
Political activists in those strata colluded to operate a loosely representative and highly stable regime. Over the next two centuries a prudent and restrained elite politics fostered Britain’s rise to world dominance. Elections, which eventually became democratic in suffrage, took place at short intervals, and their outcomes were binding on government formations and actions. By the middle of the eighteenth century, executive power had effectively shifted from the monarch to a cabinet that was responsible to Parliament. Parliament was itself the product of a few hundred thousand well-off citizens who had the vote. In our terminology, the regime was for a long time a liberal oligarchy, although once industrialization took hold, the elite competitions and mass pressures to enfranchise ever-larger numbers of citi-

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zens predominated. Even serious crises and challenges—the loss of the
American colonies, the Chartist Movement in the 1830s, the rise of an initially hostile and powerful labor movement, successful struggles by this and other movements for suffrage, two world wars and the Great Depression, and the far-flung empire’s eventual dismantling—did not prevent continuity of leadership and peaceful government alternations between parties representing rival interests. The genesis and subsequent basis of this remarkable political record was the transformation of a disunited to a consensually united elite in the course of the Glorious Revolution, modern history’s first elite settlement.
Whereas English/British elite conflicts over religion and monarchical powers were managed through peaceful negotiations after 1689 (except for the defeat of externally mounted Jacobite rebellions), these and other divisive issues fueled violent confrontations among Spanish elites well into the twentieth century. As we recounted briefly in chapter 2, the whole of Spain’s nineteenth century was marked by struggles between monarchical, aristocratic, and church elites, on one side, and republican anticlerical elites on the other. The military elite was often split between the two camps, but military leaders ultimately determined who controlled government. These elite divisions were further complicated by separatist movements, especially in the
Basque region and Catalonia, and, toward the end of the nineteenth century, by emerging revolutionary anarchist and socialist movements based in a small but growing industrial working class. As we also noted in chapter 2, the tourno pacifico pact of 1876 between Conservatives and Liberals—both camps monarchist in orientation—enabled them to alternate control of the government until World War I, although after the 1880s this alternation depended heavily on caciquil domination of rural voters and corrupt urban practices that excluded republican and radical leftist forces. After World War
I (in which Spain was officially neutral), this cozy elite arrangement unraveled in the face of military intrigues, a separatist movement in Catalonia, strikes and violent actions by working-class movements, and a long and costly struggle with France for control of Morocco. A decisive military defeat in Morocco, combined with upheavals in the Madrid government that produced twelve different cabinets between 1918 and 1923, paved the way for a coup that established the military dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera in 1923. Over the next seven years, Primo’s dictatorship evolved into a civilian authoritarian regime that continued to exclude republicans and leftists while maintaining the dominance of the Catholic Church, the semifeudal aristocracy, the monarchy, and the military itself.
Amid spreading agitations by excluded groups, Primo resigned in 1930 and his successors were forced to allow municipal elections in 1931. Republicans and Socialists won these decisively in the larger cities; the king, who left the country, was quickly convicted of treason and his property confiscated;

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a new republican constitution was enacted that provided for universal suffrage and regular elections of the Cortes; the Jesuit Order was abolished; the
Catholic Church’s huge property holdings were confiscated; schools were secularized; redistribution of aristocratic lands began; and Catalonia was granted autonomy. However, the republican forces that launched these sweeping reforms were badly fragmented between liberals, socialists, communists, and anarchists, and the reforms had to be moderated in 1933 when conservative forces won substantial support in new municipal and parliamentary elections. The overall struggle between right-wing and left-wing elite camps was stalemated during the next three years, but in 1936 a coalition of republicans won the parliamentary election and set about reinstating the radical reforms embodied in the 1931 constitution. These actions provoked a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco, and Spain was soon engulfed in a bloody civil war that eventually cost a million lives. Franco’s forces achieved a complete military victory in 1939 and established an authoritarian regime with Franco as its supreme leader. The regime brutally repressed its republican enemies, returned confiscated properties to the church and landed aristocracy, and reestablished church control of education. Although the Franquist regime became less repressive during the 1960s and early 1970s, its authoritarian institutions and the elites commanding them were deeply entrenched when Franco died in November 1975.
Franco’s death, though long expected, created a severe crisis in which elites that had benefited from his regime and wanted to preserve its essential features were pitted against those that had suffered under it and wanted to institute a full-fledged democracy. Elite enmities and fears were so great that many feared a new civil war. What happened, instead, was a remarkably peaceful elite settlement and democratic transition. Scholars have analyzed the actions that constituted this settlement and democratic transition extensively. The most authoritative of them, Juan J. Linz, writing in collaboration with Alfred Stepan, observes that ‘‘there is growing consensus that the Spanish transition is in many ways the paradigmatic case of pacted democratic transition and rapid democratic consolidation.’’5 What Linz and Stepan call reforma pactada-ruptura pactada—pacted reform followed by a pacted rupture with the old regime—closely resembles what we call an elite settlement.
Richard Gunther, another leading student of the Spanish transition, has described its process as ‘‘the very model of the modern elite settlement.’’6
Drawing on the analyses by Linz and Stepan, and by Gunther, the key features of Spain’s elite settlement may be summarized briefly.
In 1967, eight years before his death, Franco restored the monarchy and decreed that the heir to the throne, Juan Carlos, would become head of state upon his demise. After Franco died, his prime minister, Arias Navarro, showed little interest in democratic reforms; so in July 1976 King Juan Carlos replaced him with Adolpho Suarez, who had served in the Franco govern-

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ment and was at the time minister of the Movimiento (the Franquist party) in the Navarro cabinet. Employing remarkable skills of persuasion and negotiation, Suarez soon convinced the Franco-created Cortes to dissolve itself so that fully democratic elections could be held to form a constituent assembly, an action that was overwhelmingly approved in a December 1976 popular referendum. After discussions with a nine-member committee representing key opposition parties; labor unions; and the Basque, Gallego, and Catalan regions, Suarez released hundreds of political prisoners, abolished the Movimiento, and legalized political parties and trade unions. Especially noteworthy, Suarez legalized the Communist Party—a crucial step because it was potentially a large, powerful, and ostensibly ‘‘revolutionary’’ opposition party—after getting its leaders to agree to stop opposing the monarchy and to back his reform efforts. Suarez also facilitated what Gunther regards as two important confidence-building exercises during 1977. One involved reconciliation with the exiled president of the Catalan regional government (all regional autonomy had been eliminated under Franco), ensuring the Catalan leadership’s commitment to a democratic transition. The other was the pacts of Moncloa, which were a response to an economic crisis that stemmed in part from increasing strike activity by trade unions demanding large and inflationary wage increases. In the Moncloa Pacts, the Suarez government promised to continue reforming Franquist institutions, to control prices, and to democratize (i.e., secularize) the education system, while Socialist and
Communist party leaders agreed to use their considerable influence with the trade unions to limit strike activity.
Elections for the constituent assembly were held in June 1977, and in July it began writing a new constitution. The center-right Union of the Democratic Center (UCD) party, led by Suarez, had won 165 of the 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies and a majority of Senate seats. The Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) was the second largest in the Congress, with 118 seats, and the Communist Party (PCE) and the right-wing Popular Alliance (AP) won
20 and 16 seats, respectively. The Congress appointed a seven-member committee with representatives from each of the parties, plus a Catalan representative, who met in secret to draft the constitution. An initial draft provoked considerable opposition when it was made public. Another round of secret meetings of the drafting committee produced a second draft that the deputies accepted; but it left a number of controversial issues unresolved: whether to legalize divorce and abortion, the church’s role in education, the administration of labor relations, the existence of the death penalty, and the nature of regional autonomy. However, after a period of rancorous and largely unproductive public debates in the Congress, most of these issues were resolved through compromises in a remarkable all-night meeting of four UCD and four PSOE deputies in Madrid’s Jose Luis restaurant on May 22–23, 1978—
´
referred to subsequently as the night of Jose Luis.7 The Congress draft was
´

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63

then steered by UCD leaders toward approval in the UCD-dominated Senate. Except for Basque nationalists, all major elite groups endorsed the new constitution. It was passed by the Cortes in October 1978 and approved overwhelmingly by referendum in December that year. The constitution amounted to the formal expression of a more basic elite settlement.
Two serious crises soon threatened this settlement, however. The first was the spread of independence sentiment among Basque and Catalan elites and activists, which Linz and Stepan deem a ‘‘stateness’’ crisis. They point out that between 1977 and 1979, the percentage of Basques who favored independence doubled, bringing the total to almost a third of the Basque population; and the percentage of Catalonians wanting independence tripled, from about 5 percent to about 15 percent. During the year following the new constitution’s approval members of the government and other Cortes members conducted extensive negotiations with Basque and Catalan leaders to write the Statutes of Autonomy, which entailed ‘‘an unprecedented devolution of power to the peripheral nationalist constituencies.’’8 These statutes were overwhelmingly approved by Basque and Catalan voters in October 1979, after which independence sentiment subsided in both regions, although a violent Basque independence movement has been a thorn in the side of the
Madrid regime ever since.
The second post-settlement crisis took the form of an attempted military coup in February 1981, the most shocking aspect of which was the armed capture of the Cortes in session with all top government and party leaders present. At the same time, military units mobilized in various parts of the country. However, the coup fizzled when it drew no civilian support—the lack of which was most dramatically demonstrated when the right-wing Alianza party leader and former Franquist minister, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, stood in the captured Cortes and dared the soldiers to shoot him first9 —and
King Juan Carlos ordered all troops to remain in barracks. The coup leaders were arrested and sentenced to prison, and neither military nor civilian leaders spoke up on their behalf.10 Linz and Stepan plausibly view the coup’s failure and its universal condemnation by elites as marking the consolidation of Spanish democracy. The outcome was, in any event, an important step in consolidating the elite settlement. It was soon followed by a second consolidating step when the Socialists won a decisive victory in the October 1982
Cortes elections and peacefully assumed government control. Thus, an elite faction that had been illegal only a few years earlier came to power in accordance with agreed representative political practices. Once in government office, the Socialists eschewed the kinds of radical reforms their forebears had pursued in the 1930s, and they governed with restraint and moderation during the next fourteen years. Starting in 1996, the conservative Popular
Party (formerly the Popular Alliance) won two successive national elections before losing to the PSOE in the 2004 elections. By the mid-1990s, if not

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well before, it was clear to all observers that a stable liberal democracy existed in Spain and that its foundation was the remarkable accommodation reached among disunited elites during 1976–1978.

SPECIFYING ELITE SETTLEMENTS
We have reviewed the English and Spanish events at considerable length because they constitute paradigmatic elite settlements. Occurring in vastly different circumstances, each had unique features, and not all elite settlements are as clear cut as the English and Spanish ones. When dealing with elite settlements, or any similarly complex and historically contingent process, analysts of comparative politics run into borderline cases—water glasses that appear half empty or half full depending on the concepts used to examine them. It is important, therefore, to specify irreducible elements of elite settlements, even though abstracting these elements from historical contexts greatly simplifies what actually happens.
The English and Spanish cases suggest two background conditions in which elite settlements may occur: (1) the prior experience of costly and intense conflict between deeply disunited elites (e.g., the English and Spanish civil wars); (2) elite alignment into two or three distinct and antagonistic camps, each of relatively long duration with well-articulated organization and leadership, and thus the capacity to cause much disruption and inflict serious harm on each other (e.g., James’s entourage, the Tories, and the
Whigs in England; pro-Franquist and anti-Franquist camps in Spain, each of which was split into distinct factions encompassing competing parties, trade union and business associations, church conservatives and reformers, and military leadership cliques). These background conditions have, of course, been relatively commonplace in modern history, yet elite settlements have been rare—indeed, the conditions were long present in England and Spain without generating a settlement. Where these background conditions exist, therefore, a settlement also requires some triggering crisis. In the English case, the trigger was the birth of James’s son, which greatly increased the prospect of renewed civil war; in Spain, Franco’s death threatened to unleash a clash between the numerous defenders and opponents of his authoritarian regime. Confronted with a triggering crisis and its ominous implications, elites may attempt a settlement. Much more frequently, of course, they just plunge ahead into fratricidal strife until one camp manages to gain the upper hand.
Whether elites attempt a settlement or leap into the abyss of further strife depends, first and foremost, on the presence of adept and flexible leaders, such as John Churchill and Adolpho Suarez. Politics are full of contingen-

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cies, and never more so than during abrupt and profound crises when elite choices are often decisive for outcomes.11
If a settlement is attempted in a crisis situation, the ensuing process has at least five features. The first is speed: a settlement seldom takes more than a few weeks or months because the more time that passes, the more likely it is that some elite or subelite group will mobilize to block it. The main components of the English settlement were worked out in roughly three weeks during January–February 1689; the Spanish settlement took much longer, from
July 1976 to May 1978, although the core agreements were reached quite rapidly during mid-1977. Second, settlements are highly personal in nature, entailing many face-to-face and secret meetings and communications among the paramount leaders of opposing camps and among leaders within those camps. These are so frequent and intensive that they often spawn a conspiratorial camaraderie among sworn enemies. This was conspicuous in the conspiracy of top Tory and Whig leaders to invite Prince William’s invasion, and
Juan Linz has mentioned that for years after the Spanish settlement the main actors gathered annually to recall and celebrate their accomplishment.12 A formal document, such as a signed pact or declaration or a new constitution, is a third feature. In it, the key leaders of opposing camps publicly commit themselves and, presumably, their allies, though perhaps vaguely, to the more informal, often tacit understandings they have reached. In England, the
Declaration of Rights was such a public commitment, and Prince William publicly agreed to it on February 13, 1689. In Spain, a new constitution was approved by the Cortes in October 1978 and ratified by referendum two months later. Fourth, settlement processes are controlled and dominated by established, experienced, and skilled leaders who have painful personal memories of past conflicts and deep knowledge of political levers that can be pulled within and between their camps, and who possess enough authority to bring recalcitrant colleagues and followers along. In both England and
Spain, the key leaders who negotiated the settlements—in England, the seven who signed the letter inviting William’s invasion, as well as John Churchill, and in Spain Prime Minister Aldopho Suarez and King Juan Carlos— epitomized these characteristics. The fifth main feature of settlement processes is considerable elite autonomy from cadre and mass pressures. In settlements, elites in effect agree to the principle that their competitions will no longer be governed by dogmatically held principles.13 This is so shocking to followers that it can be accomplished only if the key leaders and cliques are relatively free to strike heretical bargains. One British student of the Glorious Revolution has observed, for example, that probably less than 5 percent of the English governing class would have agreed to the revolution’s outcome if they had realized what it would entail.14 Discussing the Spanish case, Richard Gunther stresses that the compromises reached were extremely contro-

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versial to activists of all stripes, so that the ability of leaders to rally activists behind the compromises was crucial to success.15
The background conditions and triggering crises for settlements and the multifaceted processes they involve call attention to the historically contingent character of these elite transformations. In hindsight, however, settlements may acquire an air of inevitability. For example, some scholars today view the Glorious Revolution as an unremarkable addendum to the English upper classes’ victory over the monarchy in the revolutionary upheavals of the 1640s. Wanting to assign social revolutions, rather than elite settlements, the primary role in basic political change, Theda Skocpol dispenses with the
Glorious Revolution in a sentence, merely observing that when James II
‘‘started to forget’’ about the outcome of the Civil Wars, he was promptly removed ‘‘with very little fuss.’’16 Although Linz and Stepan flatly reject such a view of the Spanish events, they note that ‘‘it is becoming fashionable to see the Spanish consolidation [of democracy] as being almost inevitable.’’17
By contrast, historians strongly tend to see the events and actions that comprise settlements as thoroughly accidental and unique. For example, historians have frequently argued that James II had several options, any one of which might have averted his removal and substantially altered the course of
British political history: he could have converted to Protestantism or downplayed his Catholicism or simply stood his ground and fought. That he differed so greatly in temperament and religiosity from his older brother
Charles II was, from the standpoint of historians, clearly an accidental but decisive factor. Likewise, historians emphasize that the birth of a son to
James’s long-barren wife was wholly unexpected, so much so that many people at the time doubted the child’s legitimacy. Or again, historians point out that Prince William’s invasion of England required approval by the Dutch
States-General, which probably would not have given it had not Louis XIV recently made threatening gestures toward the Dutch provinces. Moreover, the very success of William’s invasion hinged on a so-called Protestant wind that sped his fleet to its landing site at Torbay while confining James’s defending Channel Fleet to the Thames estuary. Many analysts of the Spanish case agree that Juan Carlos’s boldness and wisdom in replacing the ineffectual Arias Navarro with Adolpho Suarez and in intervening so skillfully to foil the 1981 military coup were in no way predetermined. Nor could anyone have anticipated the high degree of skill shown by Suarez in convincing the Franco-created Cortes to dissolve itself, the courage he demonstrated in legalizing the Communist Party, and his adeptness in steering the drafting of the new constitution. Stressing the importance of leaders’ skills and choices, Linz and Stepan conclude, ‘‘No one can ignore the structurally favorable conditions in Spain, but there can be no doubt that this particularly successful transition owes much to agency.’’18 The centrality of elite choices

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and skills, and of purely accidental events, in the English and Spanish settlements exemplify the obstacles that rigid social science theories encounter by explaining political continuities and changes among modern national states in terms of inexorable structural forces.
The final major component of an elite settlement is its consolidation. This primarily entails a mutual elite habituation to power sharing and crisis management.19 While the whole point of a settlement is elite power sharing, it nevertheless takes time to jell. Settlements always exclude some individuals and groups, notably autocrats and their entourages, who are usually the immediate target. These individuals and groups seldom go quietly. Supporters of James II, and later of his son, attempted several rebellions aimed at returning the throne to the Stuarts; Franquist diehards attempted a coup in
1981, and a significant Basque elite group remains violently opposed to the
Spanish outcome even today. As the Basque rebels illustrate, there are likely to be elite groups whose ideological, religious, ethnic, or regional commitments keep them from participating in a settlement or from acquiescing to it subsequently. Old hatreds and distrusts linger, while new patterns of cooperation, trust, and restraint solidify slowly, and their payoffs—tamed politics and enhanced elite security—unfold only gradually. For these reasons, the consolidation of settlements usually takes years, perhaps a generation or more, during which elite conciliation and forbearance are essential. The
English settlement was probably not fully consolidated until the Hanoverian succession of 1714 that followed Queen Anne’s death and the resounding defeat of another Jacobite rebellion in 1715. Consolidation of the Spanish settlement was accomplished more quickly when the Socialists won the 1982 elections decisively, took power peacefully, and showed every intention of governing in an accommodative, restrained fashion.
Structural factors undoubtedly play a role in the consolidation of settlements, though this is more apparent in the Spanish than the English case.
Three centuries ago in England there was no clear precedent for the constitutional monarchy produced by the Glorious Revolution, and monarchical absolutism was the norm everywhere, save in the Netherlands. English elites were thus navigating in structurally uncharted waters. By the time of the
Spanish settlement in the mid-1970s, however, there was no clearly desirable or viable alternative to a democratic regime in a complex and prospering
European country like Spain. Among many other conditions, the instauration of a democratic regime was a prerequisite for Spain’s widely desired entry into the European Community (as it was then called). Once EC membership was gained in 1986, moreover, both external and internal structural pressures against undermining the democratic regime and the accommodative elite practices underpinning it were strong.
We now want to explore, albeit in much briefer compass, the dozen or so other elite settlements that have occurred during the modern historical

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period. We begin with additional settlements in Europe: Sweden in 1809,
Switzerland in 1848, and Austria in 1945.
OTHER ELITE SETTLEMENTS IN EUROPE
Sweden, 1809
The background conditions for an elite settlement in Sweden were a century-long struggle between the so-called Hat and Cap elite camps, both of them aristocratic in composition and mercantilist in orientation, although with opposing political programs and strategies. Their struggle opened the way to a peasant uprising and march on Stockholm in 1743, and to a coup d’etat in 1772 by Gustav III, who sought to restore royal absolutism after
´
fifty years of eroding monarchical authority. At a famous masked ball in
Stockholm in 1792, however, an assassin mortally wounded Gustav, and his less politically astute son ascended to the throne as Gustav IV. A severe crisis capable of triggering an attempted settlement occurred in 1808: drastic economic decline, a series of military defeats by Russian forces, and Denmark’s subsequent declaration of war against Sweden—all attributed to Gustav’s incompetence. Through a conspiracy among leading Hats and Caps, Gustav was deposed and exiled in March 1809. Fifteen key Hat and Cap leaders then secretly negotiated a new constitution that was drawn up and accepted by the Riksdag (parliament) over a period of five weeks, start to finish, in May and June 1809. It embodied a basic agreement between the two elite camps to institute a constitutional monarchy (or crowned republic) along English/
British lines. The two camps then cooperated to foil a royalist countercoup in the following year, and they duly recruited a new crown prince from
France, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, an illustrious field marshal in Napoleon’s armies who had fought the Swedes honorably before falling out with Napoleon. In a manner similar to William’s after he gained the English throne,
Bernadotte steered evenly between the Hat and Cap elites, and he prevented
Sweden from being overrun by Russian forces. Moving with much circumspection, he waited until 1818 to ascend to the throne as Carl XIV Johan.
The collaboration between opposing elite camps that marked a new era in
Swedish politics solidified under Carl Johan’s restrained rule, which continued until his death in 1844. From at least the time Carl Johan ascended to the throne in 1818, the Swedish regime was a stable liberal oligarchy. After major democratizing reforms in 1907, it became the stable and more or less fully representative regime—a liberal democracy—that has persisted to this day. Switzerland, 1848
After highly divisive French occupation and dominance during the Napoleonic Wars, and after the reorganization of Swiss boundaries at the Con-

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gress of Vienna in 1815, twenty-two largely autonomous cantons—twelve predominantly Protestant, ten predominantly Catholic—formed the loose
Swiss Confederation. Between 1815 and the 1840s there was steadily growing agitation for liberal reforms, especially greater religious freedom and popular sovereignty. This agitation dovetailed with considerable conflict among the cantons, and between them and the weak national Parliament, in which each canton had but one vote regardless of its size and relative importance. Violent clashes between and within cantons over religious issues and over the forms and rights of governments erupted regularly during the 1830s and 1840s.20 The return of Jesuits to Luzerne in 1844 triggered efforts to drive them out by force. In 1845, the Catholic cantons formed a defensive league, the Sonderbund, which the weak national Parliament, dominated by the Protestant cantons, declared illegal in 1847. This provoked a month-long civil war in late 1847 that was won by the Protestant cantons. After the fighting ceased, two hundred delegates of the various cantons sought to prevent a repetition by negotiating and agreeing on a constitution modeled after that of the United States. This provided for a federal government with a bicameral parliament and with responsibilities for foreign policy and a number of other common affairs, but it also preserved substantial autonomy for the individual cantons. Tensions between cantonal autonomy versus federal power continued to roil politics until the constitution of 1848 was revised in
1874 to give the federal government more clearly defined powers, while at the same time institutionalizing referenda and other cantonal protections against federal encroachments.
The absence of a centralized national Swiss state prior to 1848, the long and strong tradition of cantonal self-rule, and the cantons’ ethnic and religious diversities made the elite accommodation of 1848 and its consolidation over the following quarter century a borderline elite settlement. There is no question that, taken as a collectivity, Swiss elites were disunited prior to 1848 or that they reached a modus vivendi following the brief civil war. Nor is there any question that accommodative practices increasingly characterized elite politics in Switzerland after 1848. However, the settlement process in
1848 was, given the history of decentralized politics, more partial and tentative than that of most other settlements we examine. Perhaps nothing more concrete and dramatic was needed to create a consensually united elite. In the guise of citizen communities, several of the cantons had long practiced a representative politics that featured frequent deliberations, compromises, and relatively unhindered voting by adult males. Coupled with the events of
1847–1848, this medieval legacy was perhaps enough to bring about a more concrete elite consensus and integration at the federal level without requiring all the circumstances and processes that mark more distinct and dramatic settlements. But given that the medieval and more recent legacy also included deeply ingrained and often deadly conflicts between religious, ethnic, lin-

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guistic, regional, and occupational groups, the significance of the compromises of 1848 cannot be denied. As Charles Tilly has noted, ‘‘Far from easing into democracy as a consequence of age-old habits and customs, we see Switzerland fashioning democratic institutions as a contested and improvised compromise solution to a revolutionary crisis,’’21 a solution that Tilly, like ourselves, views as a watershed ‘‘settlement.’’
It should be noted, finally, that although Swiss elites operated a stable regime in which the main elite and cantonal interests were represented after
1848, women were denied the vote until 1971. In this last respect, Switzerland’s modern liberal democracy is of quite recent vintage.
Austria, 1945
The First Republic of Austria formed in 1918 following the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s collapse. It persisted in democratic form until 1934, when civil war broke out between the conservative Christian Socialist and leftist
Socialist parties that dominated post-World War I politics and resembled armed camps—the Black and Red Lager—as much as political parties. After
¨
the collapse of a brief coalition government in 1920, the Christian Socialists won every successive national election and effectively excluded the Socialists from government executive power. However, the Socialists consistently won control of Vienna and other cities where there were large numbers of manual industrial workers, and they built a popular cradle-to-grave social democracy in those localities. Controlling Parliament with only a narrow majority and fearing an imminent Socialist victory at the national level, Chancellor
Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved Parliament in 1933. In 1934, police raids on
Socialist offices in search of arms caches provoked a battle between the two camps that left scores dead. The victorious Christian Socialist forces then banned the Socialists and all other parties except the Fatherland Front, headed by Dollfuss. Nazi activists assassinated Dollfuss in July 1934, and his successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, maintained a shaky authoritarian regime until
Hitler’s forces moved in and incorporated Austria into the Third Reich in
1938. Elites were probably nowhere more disunited in interwar Europe than in Austria.
As World War II ended, the Soviets were the first to reach Vienna. They selected Karl Renner, an elderly Socialist who had been the first chancellor of the republic after 1918, to head a provisional government. Renner skillfully formed a coalition cabinet of four Socialists, four Christian Socialists, three Communists (largely insignificant in prewar politics but given new life by their record of resisting the Nazis and by the presence of Soviet forces), and two nonparty men. Nearly all these persons had been prominent prewar political leaders. The experiences of the short but bloody 1934 civil war,
Nazi wartime dominance, and mutual imprisonments and exiles had moder-

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ating effects on all contending elite groups. Extremists on both the right and the left were eliminated in the war, and the divisive question of union with
Germany, which had to some extent cut across party lines before the war, was now moot. In forming his cabinet, Renner devised a strategy for power sharing and enabling the parties to check one another: each cabinet post given to one party would have undersecretaries from each of the other two parties. In April and May 1945, the provisional government issued declarations that voided the 1938 Anschluss with Germany and established the Second Austrian Republic ‘‘in the spirit of the constitution of 1920,’’ as amended in 1929.22 All executive and legislative decrees before March 5,
1933, were validated, while those issued under the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg authoritarian regime were invalidated.
As decreed by the allied occupying forces, national elections for a new parliament were held in November 1945. The Austrian People’s Party (formerly the Christian Socialists) won 49.8 percent, the Socialists won 44.6 percent, and the Communists won 5.4 percent. These vote shares translated into eighty-five, seventy-six, and four parliamentary seats, respectively. This seat distribution laid the basis for a Grand Coalition (or Red-Black coalition) of the People’s Party and the Socialist Party, which dominated government during the next twenty years. Continuing the power-sharing practices of
Renner’s provisional government, an elaborate formula worked out by coalition committees in a series of postelection pacts distributed cabinet and civil service posts among elites of the two parties in proportion to the results of each general election. The coalition also instituted mechanisms for negotiating economic policies with its social partners in business, the professions, labor, and farming.
Although the Grand Coalition broke up in 1966, when the People’s Party won an absolute majority of votes and the Socialists went into opposition, the practice of power sharing and consensual decision-making persisted. The
People’s Party and the Socialists (renamed Social Democrats in 1991) once again governed as a Grand Coalition during 1986–2000. However, both parties lost votes during the 1990s to the far-right Freedom Party, whose mercurial populist leader, Jorg Haider, opposed Austria’s membership in the
¨
European Union and was widely thought to hold neo-Nazi views. When the
Freedom Party slightly outpolled the People’s Party in the 1999 parliamentary elections, the two parties formed a coalition government in 2000, prompting EU member nations to send Austria into seven months of ‘‘diplomatic isolation,’’ despite Haider’s resignation as Freedom Party head. Richard Rose persuasively interprets the Freedom Party’s electoral successes primarily as protest votes against the two main parties’ monopoly hold on
Austrian government, rather than as a surge of antidemocratic sentiment.23
He suggests that the main effect has been to make Austrian democracy more competitive. In any event, Haider did not return to his party’s leadership,

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and in the fall 2002 parliamentary elections, the Freedom Party won only 10 percent of the vote, a sharp decline from its 1999 peak of 27 percent.
In sum, a basic settlement in 1945 among previously warring elite camps produced a stable representative, albeit initially quite oligarchic, regime that evolved into a firm liberal democracy after twenty years of cautious politics in which the main elite camps cooperated to muffle all seriously contentious issues. One might argue that the Austrian settlement was almost too successful, in that the Red-Black elite accommodation came increasingly to be seen as impervious to dissenting views—a potential consequence of settlements that we discuss later. Nevertheless, the lesson to be taken from the Freedom
Party’s recent incursions is that Austria’s consensually united elite is able to permit challenges to the political status quo while remaining inhospitable to interlopers whose democratic credentials are suspect.
*

*

*

So far as we can find in the politics of Europe during the entire modern historical period, only disunited elites in England, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Austria became consensually united through basic settlements.
Whether the Swiss events we have recounted constituted a settlement or more closely approximated a fusion of elites who already had much experience with self-governing and representative political practices before they formed a national state during and after 1848 is debatable. One could argue that the coming together of Swiss elites in 1848 was more like the fusion of
Dutch elites in 1813 to form the integrated Netherlands after long experience with restrained and representative political practices in the United Dutch
Provinces. Beyond these five countries, at any rate, Europe’s fratricidal politics were tamed through either the unifying experience of colonial home rule and a struggle for independence, as in Norway during the nineteenth century, or, much more recently, through convergences of mutually distrustful elites via successive competitions for electoral support in prosperous societies—processes and cases treated in chapters 4 and 5, respectively. In the sweep of modern European history there were, to be sure, incomplete and ultimately failed attempts at elite settlements here and there. Two examples were the trasformismo among the principal Italian elite camps after 1875 and the turno pacifico agreement among Spanish elites in the following year. A third example was the protracted negotiations among all Italian elites, except the Fascists, that began in 1943 and led to a grand coalition government in
1945, which, however, was shattered by the onset of Cold War divisions two years later. But in general, the necessary background conditions, triggering crises, authoritative locations, and choices of key leaders, as well as the vital consolidating actions that are essential for elite settlements, almost never conjoined in Europe.

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ELITE SETTLEMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA
There have been three clear elite settlements in Latin America: Colombia and
Venezuela in 1957–1958, and Uruguay in 1984. Two less clear-cut settlements occurred in Mexico in 1928–1929, and Costa Rica in 1948. Like the European cases we have reviewed, the relevant events and processes in these five
Latin American countries are not customarily viewed as elite settlements, and their causes and consequences are in dispute.24 The facts are, nonetheless, that the events and processes to which we refer in each of these Latin American countries were followed by a much more tamed, if still conspicuously oligarchic, politics that, except in Mexico, featured unbroken strings of regular, more or less freely contested elections of important deliberative bodies and chief executives. We summarize the principal aspects of these elite settlements, starting with the two more problematic cases, Mexico and Costa Rica.
Mexico, 1928–1929
One of the immediate background conditions for an elite settlement in
Mexico was the chaotic and bloody civil war-cum-revolution of the 1910s.
Waged by an array of organized, mainly military forces, the struggle produced no clear winner, and Mexican elites remained deeply disunited.
Accordingly, unchecked attempts to gain the upper hand, punctuated by assassinations and revolts, occurred throughout the 1920s. The crisis that eventually triggered a settlement began with the assassination of Presidentelect Alvaro Obregon by a religious fanatic in July 1928, creating the very
´
real prospect of renewed civil warfare. In the wake of Obregon’s assassina´ tion, the incumbent president and key military leader Plutarco Calles skillfully guided the elites making up the so-called revolutionary family to agree on an interim president and the formation of an omnibus National Revolutionary Party (the PNR, renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the
PRI, in 1946). As in other settlements, Calles’s efforts entailed numerous intensive and secret negotiations with regional and local military and political bosses, as well as with labor and peasant leaders, during the autumn months of 1928, when fear of renewed civil strife was especially acute. His actions and the agreements he fostered initiated a shift from caudillismo to a governing coalition capable of institutionalizing the constitution that had been drawn up toward the end of the revolutionary period, in 1917.25
This shift and the negotiations and compromises that led to it looked very much like a settlement among elites making up the revolutionary family. It was, however, less inclusive than most other settlements and is perhaps best regarded as a partial settlement. In particular, business and church leaders were excluded, and for many years they were denied reliable access to the most important decision-making centers, which lay mainly inside the omni-

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bus PNR/PRI. Also initially excluded were ‘‘family members’’ heading up the radical labor confederation (CROM) and the obregonista military fac´ tion. Nevertheless, the coming together of most previously warring elite groups in the negotiations and arrangements hammered out in late 1928 and early 1929 was a watershed development. From that time, Mexican politics and the Mexican regime departed sharply from the violent elite conflicts and regime upsets that continued to plague all other Latin American countries.26
A crisis that tested the agreements orchestrated by Calles occurred almost immediately when the obregonistas rose up in early 1929. The rapidity with
´
which other elites banded together to crush this rebellion helped solidify the new power-sharing arrangement. In 1934 Lazaro Cardenas, a general who was acceptable to most factions in the revolutionary family, became president and quietly ousted Calles from his pivotal behind-the-scenes position.
Cardenas reorganized the PNR/PRI into four functionally defined divisions: agrarians, workers, the military, and a ‘‘popular’’ division consisting mainly of public sector white-collar workers. Major policy decisions and compromises, the selection of important candidates for public office, and most other matters of political consequence resulted from negotiations among the elites heading these functional sectors within the PNR/PRI.
Broadly speaking, the Mexican regime became a liberal oligarchy, albeit one that showed a decidedly harder and more illiberal edge toward its critics and opponents than did the liberal oligarchies that followed elite settlements in
Europe. Cardenas relinquished the presidency in 1940, and a hard-fought contest between competing candidates within the party determined his successor.
Over the next two decades, elite factions that had been excluded in 1928–
1929, especially business and the church, gained access to party decisionmaking processes. During the twentieth century’s final quarter, elections for the presidency and for congressional and state offices became more clearly defined contests between distinct parties, although the contests were always marred by PRI electoral fraud. Especially during the 1990s, significant democratization was apparent in the growing strength of opposition parties, which was greatly facilitated by major electoral reforms. In 1997, the PRI for the first time lost majority control of Congress, and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas,
´
the son of the 1930s president but a leftist rebel against the PRI, won election as mayor of Mexico City. Then, in July 2000, Vicente Fox of the center-right
National Action Party (PAN) handily defeated the PRI presidential candidate in elections that were seen as largely free and fair, and the ensuing transfer of executive power went smoothly. Writing a few months later, Andreas
Schedler observed, ‘‘Mexico put a clear end to its prolonged transition and, at the same time, made clear that democracy had become ‘the only game in town.’ This was the real democratic revelation of election night: Mexican democracy is already fully consolidated. It came to stay, and did so with a

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surprising air of normality.’’27Although the linkage is a long one, the partial elite settlement of 1928–1929 helps to account for the ‘‘normality’’ with which this historic power transfer occurred.
Costa Rica, 1948
A political crisis in Costa Rica began to build during the 1930s with the formation of the Communist Party and its engineering of a major strike by banana workers.28 The crisis deepened after a series of divisive actions taken by Rafael Calderon, a conservative-cum-populist politician who aligned
´
with the Communist Party to win the four-year presidency in 1940, and who remained the principal behind-the-scenes power figure after the 1944 election of his hand-picked successor. Calderon used his control of the Legisla´ tive Assembly to push through several important reforms, including a strong social security system and more liberal laws governing labor unions. These actions prompted two elite factions to mobilize against him: his erstwhile conservative allies in the Republican Party, who formed the Democratic
Party, and a moderate leftist faction, which formed the Social Democratic
Party under the leadership of Jose Figures. When Calderon again sought the
´
´ presidency in 1948, a conservative Democrat, Otilio Ulate, won the election.
The triggering event for a settlement arose when the calderonistas, who
´
controlled the Legislative Assembly, voided the election. In response, the
Social Democrats’ Figures marched an army that he had been gathering to
San Jose and demanded Ulate’s installation as president. In the brief civil war
´
that followed and cost two thousand lives, the calderonistas were defeated
´
and Calderon and his Communist allies were forced to leave the country. In
´
May 1948, Figures and Ulate negotiated a pact specifying that a Figures-led junta would rule for eighteen months, after which Ulate would assume the presidency. It was further agreed that during the junta’s eighteen months in office, it would hold an election for a constituent assembly to write a new constitution. As junta leader, Figures then used his provisional powers to decree a number of reforms, including abolition of the army, bank nationalization, and more extensive state control of the economy.
Figures’s Social Democrats were defeated in the constituent assembly elections by Ulate’s conservatives. The latter then rejected the Social Democrats’ radically reformist draft of a new constitution and voted to retain the existing constitution, but with amendments that incorporated most of the reforms that the Figures-led junta had decreed. The result was a compromise that fully satisfied no one but did embody and protect the main elite groups’ key interests. Even the interests of the calderonistas and the Communists
´
were not ignored, despite their exclusion from the settlement process and from participation in politics for some years thereafter. By launching invasions from Nicaragua, Calderon and his followers nevertheless twice tried to
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overthrow duly elected governments during the 1950s. But on both occasions the parties that fashioned the 1948 arrangements united to defeat them.
Ulate served his full term, and power then passed peacefully back to Figures when he won the 1953 election. In 1958, Calderon was allowed to reenter
´
the country and join the conservative coalition that had formed to oppose
Figures’s party. A constitutional ban against Communists participating in elections was eliminated in 1975. Since 1953, all of Costa Rica’s elections have been free and restrained contests, and government executive power has passed peacefully to opposition parties and candidates. The regime is widely recognized as stable and representative, taking the form of a liberal democracy. Its origin was the comparatively bare-bones elite agreements and collusions triggered by the 1948 crisis and short civil war.
Colombia, 1957–1958
During the nineteenth century and down to World War II, Colombia’s politics were dominated by upper-class Conservative and Liberal parties, whose competitions were sporadically peaceful and then violent. Although elections were held regularly, they were highly manipulated affairs. Both parties mobilized sizable population segments, periodically igniting bloody conflicts, especially in rural areas. In 1948, another round of Liberal-Conservative fighting for government control was exacerbated by the assassination of a popular Liberal politician, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. His murder touched off
´
´
La Violencia, a civil war that claimed several hundred thousand lives. In the midst of this carnage, most Liberal and Conservative leaders welcomed a coup d’etat by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. However, the Rojas dictator´ ship was unable to suppress the civil war or make good on most of its promises. By 1956 Conservative and Liberal politicians were ready to return to elections, while Rojas was trying to retain power by building a mass political base outside the traditional parties.
Fearing permanent displacement of their parties, former presidents and bitter enemies Laureano Gomez (Conservative) and Alberto Lleras Camargo
´
(Liberal) met secretly during 1956 in Spain, where Gomez lived in exile, to
´
plot Rojas’s ouster and replacement by a Conservative-Liberal coalition government. The two leaders enlisted the cooperation of key military officers, and Rojas was overthrown in May 1957. Soon thereafter Gomez and Lleras
´
met again in Spain and signed the Pact of Stiges, which set out most of the components of a National Front government. This was an elaborate scheme for sharing power: Liberals and Conservatives divided all congressional seats and appointed government offices evenly between them, while also alternating in their control of the presidency, from 1958 until 1974. In the genus of elite settlements, the Colombian arrangement was an advanced species in terms of its complexity and comprehensiveness.

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The settlement withstood attempted counter coups by Rojas and it facilitated a gradual dampening of civil warfare. As agreed in 1958, elections were unconstrained by National Front alternations after the mid-1970s. The Liberal and Conservative parties continued to dominate politics, but they failed to pacify several revolutionary movements, stem the violence of right-wing paramilitary groups, prevent the drug trade’s pervasive corruption of politics, and do much about flagrant inequalities in Colombian society. By the late 1990s, the Bogota government’s writ no longer ran in large guerrilla- and
´
paramilitary-controlled areas of the country, and one could only with great difficulty regard Colombian politics as any longer comparatively tame.
Clearly, the consensually united but always quite exclusionary elite that formed in the settlement of 1957–1958, as well as the strongly oligarchic but still meaningfully stable and representative regime, is in jeopardy. The possibility of both disintegrating early in the twenty-first century is real.
Venezuela, 1958
Despite being next door to Colombia, Venezuela had a very different political history. The colonial upper class was largely wiped out during a long and bloody independence struggle between 1810 and 1821. The country’s politics during the rest of the nineteenth century featured unchecked competitions among caudillos, whose success in winning government power hinged primarily on the size of their private armies. The first mass-based political party, Accion Democratica (AD), developed clandestinely during
´
the early 1930s under the lengthy dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez
´
(1908–1935). Mobilizing a growing working class, AD presented a serious challenge to Gomez’s two successors, and in 1945 the AD leadership collab´ orated with midlevel military officers to seize power and launch a radically reformist democracy. Three years later, however, the AD’s military collaborators seized power for themselves, with wide initial support by centrist and conservative elites. By 1950, one of the military leaders, Marcos Perez Jime´
´
nez, had constructed an authoritarian regime.
By 1957, Perez Jimenez’s dictatorial practices and his efforts to hold onto
´
´ power while presiding over a deepening economic crisis had alienated most important elite factions. Gathering secretly at a New York City hotel in
December 1957, several prominent businessmen and leaders of the three main political parties hatched a plan to overthrow Perez Jimenez and estab´
´
lish democracy. A month later, Perez Jimenez was ousted in a military coup.
´
´
Extensive negotiations among the main elites culminated in several pacts, which formed the core of a settlement that was soon codified in a new constitution. Power sharing in the first democratically elected government of longtime AD leader Romulo Betancourt took the form of appointments of
´
opposition party leaders to the cabinet. However, Communists and leftist

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AD leaders had been excluded from the settlement process, and their programs for radical reform had no place in it. In reaction, and emboldened by the newly installed Castro government in Cuba, the excluded factions launched a violent antiregime insurgency during the 1960s that seriously tested the 1958 settlement. They were eventually thwarted, and most insurgent factions reentered electoral politics toward the end of the 1960s.
Between 1958 and 1998, relatively free and fair elections were held at regular five-year intervals, and control of the powerful presidency alternated between the AD and Social Christian (COPEI) parties six times.
Overtly, and after a long history of violent conflicts and irregular power seizures, Venezuela’s politics appeared to have been tamed and its regime made stable and representative as a consequence of the 1958 settlement. To be sure, the settlement had been notably exclusionary, and during the following decades collusion between the two main parties, AD and COPEI, for their mutual benefit was conspicuous. This collusion, made possible in its extensiveness by the revenues generated by Venezuela’s large petroleum production, muffled accumulating problems. But these exploded during the late
1980s and early 1990s in ways that shattered the elite compact initialed back in 1958.29 Because this is the only clear instance that we can identify, worldwide, of a consensually united elite reverting to the disunited configuration after an earlier settlement, it is important to consider how and why the breakdown occurred.
We now know that a clandestine antiregime movement had been building among junior military officers since the late 1970s.30 These officers were among the first graduates of the Academia Militar, which was established to
´
produce a more professional and university-educated officer corps. As cadets, they became imbued with strongly nationalist and populist beliefs, and after graduating, some acquired an affinity with the Marxist guerrillas, whose last remnants they were directed to liquidate. The young officers viewed less-educated senior officers as unprofessional and corrupted by their involvements in military spending largess and a promotion system that emphasized loyalty to politicians over merit. They decried the corruption of the AD and COPEI parties, opposed opening Venezuela’s economy to global economic forces, chafed at the country’s glaring economic and social inequalities, and spoke of the need for a ‘‘true’’ democracy, a ‘‘Bolivarian democracy.’’ Hugo Chavez Frıas was one of the six sub-lieutenants who
´
´ founded this movement in 1977. In 1983, the two hundredth anniversary of
Simon Bolıvar’s birth, the movement was christened the Ejercito Bolivariano
´
´
´
200 and was renamed the Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 in
1989. Inductees took a loyalty oath, regular secret meetings were held, and as they rose to field-grade ranks, Chavez and his colleagues began plotting a
´
revolutionary coup to achieve their goals.31
Severe economic decline during the 1980s created widespread popular dis-

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content that erupted in a major riot in Caracas and other cities in February
1989. The outbursts were triggered by harsh austerity measures imposed by newly elected President Carlos Andres Perez (who had previously been
´
´ president during the mid-1970s). When the police and National Guard failed to quell the riots, regular military forces, some of them commanded by Cha´ vez and his MBR-200 companions, were pressed into service. Between three hundred and a thousand rioters were killed. The spectacle of impoverished soldiers killing impoverished rioters in defense of a regime detested by both groups galvanized the MBR-200 coup plotters. In February 1992 Chavez and
´
his co-conspirators mounted a coup. They were foiled when senior military leaders deployed overwhelming forces against them, but Chavez won hero
´
status with a nationally televised surrender speech in which he took full responsibility for the attempted coup and promised future action against the government. This was followed by a televised speech by former president and COPEI founder Rafael Caldera, who condemned the coup attempt but said it was understandable. These events solidified public opinion behind
MBR-200.32 Chavez and others were jailed, but more senior officers
´
mounted another unsuccessful coup in November 1992. The following year,
President Andres Perez was impeached on charges of misusing government
´ ´ funds for his own campaign purposes, and an interim president served out the eight remaining months of his term. The charges against Andres Perez
´ ´ were relatively minor, so it is plausible to think that he was made a scapegoat for economic and political problems that elites found themselves incapable of addressing.
The two attempted coups, as well as fears of a third attempt, made it impossible to regard the Venezuelan regime any longer as stable, even though it retained its representative form. Moreover, the conflict surrounding
Andres Perez’s impeachment indicated that cooperation between the domi´ ´ nant elite camps had eroded greatly. Although the next two national elections were held on schedule (in December 1993 and November–December
1998), ad hoc political movements that decimated and displaced the dominant parties won both. Promising a root and branch reconstruction of Venezuela’s political institutions, Hugo Chavez, now released from jail, won the
´
1998 presidential election. A dubiously legal constituent assembly that he convened in mid-1999 produced a dramatically revised constitution, which concentrated much power in the presidency. A national referendum in 2000 overwhelmingly approved the new constitution and a renewal of Chavez’s
´
six-year term. Chavez’s centralization of power in his own office, his
´
appointments of military cronies to many high government positions, and his failure to stem the country’s economic decline provoked a crippling, management-led petroleum industry strike in 2002. This culminated in major street demonstrations and an attempted coup in April 2002 that was widely backed by elites outside Chavez’s circle. By this time, however, Cha´
´

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vez’s circle included enough top military leaders to carry the day. In August
2004, Chavez, able to distribute massive oil revenues as a way of attracting
´
popular support, easily won a heated presidential recall referendum.
Clearly, Venezuelan elites are disunited, and the 1958 settlement no longer shapes the contours of Venezuelan politics. It is nevertheless probable that
Chavez and his allies will eschew any thorough repression of their oppo´ nents, so that the regime, although unstable, will stumble on as an illiberal democracy. Having failed to overthrow Chavez in April 2002 and to oust
´
him through the 2004 recall referendum, opponents of the regime appeared to be cowed. Following the recall referendum, Chavez made a number of
´
placatory gestures toward his political foes, and these and other actions suggest that he is not bent on creating an authoritarian regime. But political fissures at both elite and mass levels are deep. Some new crisis might, of course, trigger attempts to refashion a settlement. Alternatively, if world petroleum markets remain highly favorable for Venezuela over a long period and if Cha´ vez succeeds in distributing their proceeds so as to greatly boost the average citizen’s prosperity, the ground for an eventual elite convergence might be laid (see chapter 5). In foreseeable circumstances, however, politics in Venezuela will have the zero-sum character that was the norm before the 1958 settlement. Uruguay, 1984
The background conditions for a settlement among Uruguayan elites included long-lasting conflicts between and within the two major political camps, the Colorados and the Blancos. A civil war during 1839–1851 and a succession of military regimes during the last quarter of the nineteenth century culminated in a bloody revolt by the Blancos in 1904. After defeating that revolt, the Colorados refused to negotiate real power sharing with the
Blancos. Although two presidents extended their terms of office by circumventing the constitution during the 1930s and 1940s, executive power nevertheless passed peacefully enough among a succession of elected presidents and executive councils from 1905 until 1973. However, this seemingly stable representative regime was operated by elites that remained disunited. The city-based Colorados held power from 1905 until the Blancos won the 1958 elections, but in the early part of this period the Blancos, who were well established in rural areas, boycotted elections conducted by the Colorado governments. Thus for Uruguay as a whole, as distinct from Montevideo, the capital, it was difficult to believe that representative politics were practiced very seriously. Basically, the Colorados exploited favorable economic conditions to create an early version of a welfare state. This placated most urban interests, and it was at least tolerable to rural landholding interests represented by the Blancos, even though ranching and agriculture bore the

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costs of rising urban living standards. Before 1958, Blanco leaders participated in national politics mainly through deals that offered them limited spheres of political representation and power. Throughout this long period,
Uruguayan elites are best regarded as disunited, and the regime they operated was never reliably stable and representative.
A shameless patronage system that pervaded government enterprises and the urban economy undermined managerial competence and work discipline. Made worse by declining export prices for beef and other rural produce from the mid-1950s onward, the economy could no longer sustain the welfare state benefits and high living standards previously enjoyed by the large urban middle class and the ranching aristocracy. By the mid-1960s the
Blancos had risen to power; an urban guerrilla movement, the Tupamaros, had become extremely threatening; a trade union federation had formed; and the so-called Broad Front of parties well to the left of the Colorados was emerging. In 1972, the new Colorado president, Juan Marıa Bordaberry,
´
engineered a general mobilization of troops to crush the Tupamaros.
Although it allowed Bordaberry to remain in office, the army assumed responsibility for government in 1973, dissolved the General Assembly, proscribed the trade unions, outlawed the Broad Front, and arrested or exiled numerous political leaders. In 1976, the military deposed Bordaberry, established a ruling junta, and designated the next president.
The crisis that precipitated an elite settlement emerged during the early
1980s. It entailed wide elite and mass dissatisfaction with the military regime, increasing mass protests, still steeper economic decline, and efforts by the military to extract itself from government while maintaining enough power to block retaliations. The crux of the settlement was the Naval Club Accord of August 1984, which was worked out in secret meetings between military leaders, representatives of the leftist Broad Front, and Colorado leaders. Significantly, the Blancos were excluded from the talks because their leaders— most notably the popular Wilson Ferreira—insisted on nothing less than complete capitulation by the military and immediate reinstatement of the
1967 constitution. The Naval Club Accord in August provided for legalization of the left; elections that November, in which Wilson Ferreira would not be allowed to participate; preservation of a number of military prerogatives; and continued political imprisonments. The Colorados won the presidency and control of the General Assembly, and upon taking office early in 1985, the new government legalized all political parties, freed all political prisoners, and abolished most of the institutional acts that had given special powers to the military.
A crisis that tested the settlement began to build during 1985–1986 around the question of punishing military officers for human rights violations when they suppressed the Tupamaros and other leftists during the previous decade.
With the military threatening to boycott any trials that might be held, the

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government passed a highly controversial amnesty law in December 1986.
Opponents of amnestying military officers forced a referendum on the question in April 1989. After Colorados and other Naval Club Accord signatories campaigned intensively against the law’s repeal, 57 percent of the electorate voted to let it stand. The collaboration of elites to defend a repugnant, but in their judgment politically necessary, measure contributed significantly to consolidating the 1984 settlement, at the same time that it further distanced the military from the political sphere. During the 1990s, Uruguayan politics settled into an intricate game of multiparty government coalitions, the principal effect of which was a decade of elite power sharing. Referendumapproved electoral reforms in 1999 eliminated complexities that had tended to fragment parties and governments and to elect presidents with relatively small proportions of the vote and, thus, questionable legitimacy. The reforms induced the surging Broad Front, which now included a number of former Tupamaros leaders and operatives, to move toward the center, and the reforms also motivated greater cooperation between the Colorado and
Blanco parties. The Broad Front’s leader, Dr. Tabare Vazquez, won the presi´ ´ dential election held in late 2004 with a razor-thin majority, defeating the candidates of the Colorado and Blanco parties and bringing the left to executive power, peacefully, for the first time in Uruguay’s history. Most close observers agree that Uruguayan democracy is consolidated.33 In our terminology the regime is a stable representative liberal democracy founded in the
1984 elite settlement.
*

*

*

In the twenty-first century’s early years, politics in nearly all Latin American countries take a representative form (Cuba and Haiti are glaring exceptions), but there is little evidence that politics have been tamed through elite settlements or other transformations of disunited elites in more than a handful of countries. Most Latin American countries have ‘‘delegative’’ democratic regimes in which presidents hold large and strongly disputed powers.34
Presidents’ bids to extend their tenures and other peremptory actions provoke much elite division and recurrent constitutional confrontations. In at least half a dozen countries (e.g., Paraguay, Peru, the Central American republics apart from Costa Rica), democratically elected governments confront significant reserve domains of military power. In Argentina, Brazil, and Chile it is possible that elite convergences have unfolded, something that we will consider in chapter 5. But in the region as a whole, there are more countries where democratic freedoms and political stability appear to be decreasing rather than increasing. In Venezuela a consensually united elite has clearly unraveled, and in Colombia elite cooperation to maintain a stable representative regime is under enormous strain. In Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Peru, elites at the head of indigenous peoples’ movements threaten insur-

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gencies, although the movement in Bolivia won control of the presidency in a relatively free and fair election in early 2006. In a number of countries the possibility that politics are again becoming savage cannot be dismissed. Corrupt and criminal practices, fueled strongly by the drug trade, are widespread among police and other state agencies, while street crimes and kidnappings are brazen and close to endemic.
It is conceivable that these ominous trends will produce crises in which bold and skilled leaders fashion new settlements or rejuvenate those we have examined. It is also conceivable that electoral competitions between disunited elites will continue and foster convergences toward firm political game rules and institutions. The absence of plausible doctrines, other than outcries against globalization, with which to justify disloyal or semiloyal opposition to established but illiberal democratic regimes may aid such convergences. However, the historical rarity of settlements, the precarious persistence of those that have occurred, and the difficulty of disunited elites converging in generally harsh economic circumstances and widening social inequalities imply that most Latin American countries will muddle along in ragged, semiviolent, semirepresentative, and semioligarchic politics so long as powerful external entities like the United States and the IMF are prepared to impose serious economic penalties for open reversions to authoritarian rule. ELITE SETTLEMENTS IN CENTRAL
AND SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
Following the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, working through local Communist parties and Soviet military occupations, installed ideologically united elites and accompanying totalitarian regimes in the countries of East Central and Southeastern Europe. The exception was
Poland, where the opposition of church, intelligentsia, and, eventually, trade union elites to the Soviet-backed United Workers Party elite and regime remained sufficiently intense and widespread to keep the Polish elite disunited and the regime no more than authoritarian over the next four decades.
Also at the end of World War II, a revolutionary struggle between proroyalist Chetnik and Communist Partisan forces, the latter led by Josip Broz Tito, culminated in the Partisans’ victory and the creation of an ideologically united elite and a somewhat decentralized totalitarian regime in what then became the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. The collapse of state socialism throughout the region between 1989 and 1991 was accompanied by elite transformations to the consensually united or disunited configurations.
Transformations to consensually united elites occurred in three countries—
Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia—through basic elite settlements. In two oth-

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ers—the Czech Republic and Slovakia—the disunited elites that resulted from state socialism’s collapse eventually converged or are converging to the consensually united configuration. The Czech and Slovak elite convergences, as well as the failure of elites in Bulgaria and Romania to converge as yet, are discussed in chapter 5. Here, we examine the settlements that occurred among Hungarian, Polish, and Slovenian elites.
Hungary, 1989
One basis for an elite settlement in Hungary was the cautious and gradual articulation of tacitly competing hardline and reform factions within the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party after the late 1960s. Fears of igniting another bloody uprising like that of October 1956—which was brutally suppressed by the Soviet Union—disposed both party leaders and reformers to countenance steadily more pluralist elite factions within the confines of state socialist doctrine. By the 1980s, elite pluralism was quite extensive, and the Hungarian regime was a ‘‘mature’’ post-totalitarian one in which the shibboleths of state socialism remained but were quite devoid of policy content.35 When Mikhail Gorbachev’s so-called Sinatra Doctrine toward the
USSR’s client states—leaving them free to ‘‘do it their way’’—reduced fears of another Soviet intervention by force, factions-cum-parties quickly came into the open in Budapest. It is difficult to identify a set of events during
1989 that approximated a crisis of the kind that normally triggers an elite settlement. There were, instead, cascading developments that spurred negotiations between state socialist elites and their opponents: replacement of Janos
´
Kadar as general secretary of the Workers Party in May 1988; legalization of
´ ´ mass demonstrations in March 1989; dismantling of the barbed-wire border with Austria early that May, and Kadar’s forced retirement as honorary
´ ´
Workers Party president a week later; the honorific and highly emotional reburial of Imre Nagy (the executed leader of the 1956 uprising) in June; and, washing over all this, reverberations from a dramatic decision in Poland to hold free elections that June.
In this atmosphere of upheaval, if not in an abrupt and profound crisis per se, a settlement in the form of an elaborate national roundtable among
Hungarian elites took place. Following a preliminary roundtable involving only dissident groups during March and April 1989, the national roundtable brought some fifty top Workers Party and dissident leaders together in upwards of a thousand meetings and talks between June and September.36
Agreement was reached on holding free elections for a new parliament, on rules that would govern the elections, and on a policy agenda that the parliament would address. The underlying aim was power sharing between the
Workers Party establishment and its opponents, with neither elite camp showing any intention to obliterate the other. The fact that large numbers

Settlements among Disunited Elites

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of elite persons in the state socialist regime had already converted or were converting their power positions into influential and lucrative private sector posts made this live-and-let-live assumption all the more plausible. In effect, the opposing elite camps indemnified each other against serious threats to their security and what were, in many cases, improved elite locations and statuses. Elections agreed upon at the roundtable were held in late March and early
April 1990. The Democratic Forum, a coalition of the previously dissident elite factions, won a substantial plurality of votes. Restrained behavior and policy consensus characterized the election, the military stayed neutral, and nearly all competing groups had significant numbers of existing or former state-socialist elite persons in their ranks. Helped by the constitutional requirement that a sitting government could only be replaced through a constructive vote of no confidence in Parliament, a coalition government led by the Democratic Forum served out a full four-year term of office. It was embroiled, however, in serious disputes about how to regulate the media and contain ultranationalist irredentist movements, and it largely failed to undertake fundamental economic reforms. The Socialist Party, descended directly from the Workers Party, capitalized on these difficulties to win a parliamentary majority in the 1994 elections, though the Socialists still chose to share power with a competing group, the Free Democrats Alliance. The coalition government constructed by the Socialists pursued moderate reform policies and it, too, served out a full term. At the next elections, in May 1998, the
Federation of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Party (FiDeSz-MPP) won a plurality of votes and formed a center-right coalition government. Exemplified by the new prime minister, Victor Orban, the FiDeSz-MPP parlia´ mentarians were by and large professional politicians. In April 2002, the
Socialists outpolled FiDeSz-MPP in a strenuous contest and once again formed a center-left coalition government with the Free Democrats. In sharp contrast to the preceding Orban team, the Socialist-Free Democrat govern´ ment was heavily weighted with technocrats. The Socialist-Free Democrat victory constituted the fourth peaceful transfer of government power between competing elites in twelve years, a record that strongly indicated a tamed politics.
Elite politics in Hungary since 1989 have not been placid, however. The political and governmental terrain has been jumbled and distorted by patronage and other nest-feathering practices among the elites, not least in
Parliament.37 In the aftermath of the Socialists’ narrow victory in 2002,
FiDeSz-MPP politicians claimed that the election had somehow been rigged, and the defeated Victor Orban launched a divisive nationalist movement,
´
‘‘Forward, Hungary!’’ while the new Socialist prime minister, Peter Medgy´ essy, fell victim to internal party maneuvers and was replaced during 2004.
Although observers worry that Hungarian politics are becoming more

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polarized, the overall picture is of political, business, and other elites engaged in pugnacious but still tacitly restrained competitions in a stable representative regime that is clearly a liberal democracy. The concrete origin of this pattern was the elite settlement struck in 1989.
Poland, 1989
The outward appearance of an ideologically united elite between 1947–
1948, when the United Workers Party took command of Poland, and 1989, when it effectively lost control, was maintained by excluding and intimidating embittered church and intellectual elites. But in reality, the integration of Polish elites under state socialism fell short of the ideologically united configuration. There were repeated crises and confrontations, including riots in 1952 and again in 1956 when a change in party leadership was compelled; more riots in 1970, which forced a further leadership change; and then in
1980 the emergence of Solidarity—the large antiregime protest movement that originated among shipyard workers in Gdansk and was promoted assiduously by dissident intellectuals and priests. Solidarity’s challenge to the state socialist regime resulted in a declaration of martial law in December
1981 and what was, in effect, a military-party authoritarian regime. By 1988, however, this regime was greatly enfeebled and it faced the outbreak of new and large strike actions, led by Solidarity, at the same time that the threat of
Soviet intervention if the regime failed to crush Solidarity had become uncertain. Much more than Hungarian elites in 1988–1989, Polish elites found themselves in a major crisis that reflected bitter and long-standing divisions. In this situation, protracted and largely secret negotiations between the governing elite and its opponents were initiated in meetings between Interior
Minister Czesław Kiszczak and Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader in September 1988. Relatively elaborate Roundtable discussions followed between
February 6 and April 6, 1989, showing signs of an elite settlement in the making. Leaders of the two elite camps reached what they termed a historic compromise, which affirmed the desirability of democracy, pluralism, constitutional reform, and free elections. The first elections were promptly scheduled for June 1989, albeit with the Workers Party guaranteed a majority of Sejm (lower house of parliament) seats before the election took place and, thus, a decisive role in a new government. At the Roundtable, in other words, the opposing camps agreed to share power regardless of the forthcoming election’s outcome and in this way signaled their mutual desire to avoid a final, cataclysmic struggle.
In the election, Solidarity won all but one of the 161 Sejm seats it contested, and all but one in the Senate, while 33 of the 35 Workers Party candidates who had been guaranteed seats in the Sejm failed to gain election. A

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comprehensive deal was then secretly struck: Solidarity leaders agreed to let the government appoint persons to the seats reserved for its defeated candidates. In addition, they agreed to acquiesce in the Sejm’s election by one vote of former General Wojciech Jarulzelski, who had imposed martial law in
1981, as president in order to mollify the military elite (and also the Soviet
Union). In return, Jarulzelski and the ruling elite indicated that they would not move against Solidarity and that they would assent to a host of liberalizing laws later in the year.38
Specific components of this agreement did not last long. Allowing Jarulzelski to remain president and accepting Workers Party domination of the
Sejm, despite the actual 1989 election result, was soon seen by most Solidarity and other opposition elites as unworkable and, in light of rapidly weakening Soviet power, unnecessary. Jarulzelski himself proposed constitutional amendments allowing the direct election of a new president, and in December 1990 Lech Walesa was overwhelmingly elected. Parliamentary elections in September 1991 produced a sweeping turnover of Sejm members, but no party gained a clear plurality, let alone a majority, of seats. Under Walesa’s presidency and in the face of economic disarray and hardship, the Solidarity elite became increasingly divided. This enabled the Democratic Left Alliance
(SLD), led by Aleksander Kwasniewski, whose Social Democratic Party was a direct descendant of the Workers Party, to emerge victorious in new parliamentary elections two years later, in September 1993.
On the surface, relations among Polish elites looked tense. Rapid turnover in government office holding, infighting among Solidarity factions, and institutional ambiguities under the ‘‘little constitution’’ that was in force between
1992 and 1997 made for a weak collective elite identity.39 But neither these fragmenting tendencies nor the former Communists’ electoral comeback threatened the underlying elite accommodation achieved in 1989. Throughout the 1990s, no important elite group questioned the democratic order, and electoral competitions were notably restrained. Thus, Kwasniewski’s defeat of Walesa in the November 1995 presidential election occurred after a pacific contest, its outcome was accepted by all competing groups (though
Walesa acted shabbily in refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration), and
Kwasniewski and his lieutenants repeatedly stated that political accommodation was not at risk under the government they directed. A constitutional referendum in May 1997 and parliamentary elections that September proceeded smoothly, albeit with low levels of public interest and participation.
The referendum approved a new constitution, which was widely interpreted as a victory for the SLD government, while the parliamentary elections ended with the center-right Solidarity Electoral Alliance (AWS) winning the largest share of Sejm seats. Protracted but civilized negotiations eventually produced a coalition government of the AWS and the liberal Freedom
Union. In the September 2001 general election, the SLD took 41 percent of

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the vote and formed a government in alliance with the Peasant’s Party, while the Solidarity alliance failed to win any Sejm seats. At the next parliamentary elections, in September 2005, two center-right parties, Civic Platform and the Law and Justice Party, won enough Sejm seats to oust the SLD-led government. This alternation in power—Poland’s sixth since 1989—was as peaceful as the previous ones.
It has not been surprising, therefore, to find students of Polish elites concluding that a consensually united elite and a stable representative regime exist.40 Analyzing 1996 survey data for 215 MPs and 61 parliamentary candidates, Bogdan Mach and Włodzimierz Wesołowski found a ‘‘transformational correctness’’ in all parts of the political elite.41 Their data indicated that politicians from all parties agreed about the strategic goals of social transformation, the desirability of democratic procedures, and the necessity for politicians to lead by building social consensus for their programs and goals.
Most members of the political elite regarded politics as an activity that strengthens the state and represents the entire society, and they thought that
‘‘good authority’’ involves respect for laws and the protection of personal freedoms and liberties. Differences within the political elite pertained mainly to the details of party programs, assessments of the state socialist past, and philosophical worldviews. As in any consensually united elite, however, these differences did not preclude broadly cooperative attitudes and practices manifested by policy compromises and issue-specific coalitions across party lines. In sum, despite considerable political turbulence during the past fifteen years, a consensually united elite, which emerged from the cooperation of elites in 1989 to manage the transition from state socialism and to reestablish Poland’s independence and importance in the wider European arena, has consolidated, as has the stable and representative liberal democracy that this elite operates.
Slovenia, 1990–1991
Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I and retaining strong ties to Central Europe, Slovenes’ ambivalence about their place in the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, to which they were relegated after the empire’s demise in 1919, and then in the Federal People’s Republic of
Yugoslavia after 1945, was always evident. Comprising Yugoslavia’s most educated and economically advanced republic, Slovenes regarded themselves as culturally superior to the Slavs to their south. When the Yugoslav regime, headquartered in Belgrade, began to unravel during the 1980s, with power flowing from Belgrade to the regime’s six republics, political pluralism emerged rapidly in Slovenia. While Belgrade still held nominal control, multiparty elections were held in April 1990 and a six-party coalition calling itself the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia (DEMOS) won a majority of

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seats in the Slovenian Assembly. A month later, the former Slovene League of Communists party secretary, Milan Kucan, won election to the presidency in an open and closely fought contest.
Reacting to the resurgence of Serb influence in the Belgrade regime as Slobodan Miloevic consolidated his power, elites in Ljubljana, led by DEMOS and with the connivance of Kucan, moved toward secession, which they, together with neighboring Croat elites in Zagreb, declared formally in June
1991. In a brief set of skirmishes that involved little bloodshed but served to further unify the Slovene elites, federal military forces made only perfunctory efforts to prevent Slovenia’s independence. A conclave of one hundred prominent leaders of all significant political groups was then quickly convened to write a constitution that incarnated the multiparty principle, provided for a relatively weak and directly elected presidency, and endorsed basic human rights that aligned Slovenia with the European liberal democracies to its north and west.
The dispatch with which Slovene elites cooperated to engineer independence and formulate a constitution had the earmarks of a settlement. The constitution was formally enacted six months later, in December 1991, at which point DEMOS, having achieved its primary objectives of an independent and democratic Slovenia, dissolved. Post-independence elections were held a year later, and they ushered in the first of what has since been an unbroken string of coalition governments, while Kucan, having repudiated his communist affiliation, was reelected to a five-year term as president.
Although elite politics were roiled during the mid-1990s by allegations of corrupt arms smuggling and other debilitating connections to the carnage that attended Yugoslavia’s final breakup and Miloevic’s downfall, Slovene politics were shaped by internally accommodative and ultimately successful bids for membership in NATO and the European Union, to which Slovenia, recognized as a firm liberal democracy, was formally admitted in 2004.
*

*

*

Following the dramatic collapses of state socialism in Central and Eastern
Europe between 1989 and 1991, elite structures and behaviors in Hungary,
Poland, and Slovenia quickly manifested the basic transformation that settlements produce. But no similar transformation occurred in the region’s other post-communist countries. The nearest approximation was the Czech
Republic, although on balance, as we discuss in chapter 5, the emergence of a consensually united Czech elite involved a longer convergence process instead of a sharp and sudden settlement. Nearly everywhere else, holdover parties of power from state socialism dominated politics and rode roughshod over their opponents during much or all of the 1990s. In Albania, Belarus,
Croatia, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine, real or de facto palace coups and the exchange of communist for nationalist banners by these parties of power

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ruled out any settlement, and power competitions were not noticeably restrained. Popular protests, dubbed the Orange Revolution, unseated
Ukraine’s party of power during the winter of 2004–2005, but in the year that followed it became increasingly doubtful that the democratic forces that took power would hold together in a country deeply divided by regionally based ethnic, linguistic, and religious conflicts. In Bulgaria, and in Slovakia after it became independent at the start of 1993, ex-communist parties were ascendant, although elites opposing them proliferated, and the parties and coalitions they formed eventually won executive power in reasonably free and fair elections. But evidence of settlements was entirely absent, and in the first years of the twenty-first century it remains uncertain if the former opposition elites that now hold executive power will remain sufficiently dominant to induce the earlier parties of power to converge toward the consensually united configuration.
In Russia, a clear alternation in executive power has yet to occur. Since coming to office in late 1999 as Boris Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, and then winning the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, Vladimir Putin has enjoyed strong popular support while consolidating an increasingly autocratic regime. All indications are that Russian elites remain disunited so that, despite Putin’s dominance, the Russian regime is at most an unstable illiberal democracy. SETTLEMENTS IN ASIA AND SOUTH AFRICA
We are able to identify only three settlement-like elite transformations in the rest of the world: South Korea in 1987, the Republic of South Africa in 1993–
1994, and Taiwan in 1996–1997. However, strong external pressures played an important role in each of these cases; so it must be asked whether elite accommodation was more coerced than voluntary and stemmed from something less than a full-fledged settlement. Regarding the South Korean, South
African, and Taiwanese cases as settlements can be questioned on other grounds, too. The processes that indicate a settlement were not very visible in South Korea. South Africa’s legacy of more than three centuries of white rule is a large and impoverished black population, whose elites have had little or no experience with representative politics, so that consolidating the settlement that appears to have occurred in 1993–1994 may be a Herculean task.
Taiwan’s disputed independence vis-a-vis the People’s Republic of China
`
may ultimately lead to its reabsorption into China, so that the accommodation its elites reached in 1996–1997 will be of little interest or importance in the longer run. The elite transformations in South Korea, South Africa, and
Taiwan are, thus, somewhat problematic instances of settlements. Yet, in comparative perspective the actions of all three political elites in the years

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mentioned bore enough resemblance to the other cases in this chapter to warrant examination.
South Korea, 1987
Established in 1948 after four decades of Japanese rule and the Korean peninsula’s confused partition following World War II, the Republic of
Korea was the immediate product of three years of bloody conflict in which right-wing forces in the police and the military killed many leftists and moderates and drove the rest underground. Although Syngman Rhee became
South Korea’s first president under a quasi-democratic constitution in July
1948, he regularly violated modest constitutional checks against power abuses in order to suppress opponents during the next twelve years. Under
Rhee and his successors, General Park Chung Hee and General Chun Doo
Hwan—who seized power in 1961 and 1979, respectively—Korean elites were deeply divided between, on one side, military, political, bureaucratic, and business leaders, who participated in or greatly benefited from the authoritarian regime, and, on the other side, political, intellectual, media, religious, student, and trade union leaders, who sought to replace the regime with a full-fledged democracy. National Assembly and other elections were regularly held but were highly managed affairs, and democratic rights were sharply limited. Except for a brief democratic interlude in 1960–1961 that ended with the Park coup, the ruling party always won. In 1980, however, an increasingly powerful democratic opposition that featured large and often unruly student demonstrations, an insurrection in the southern city of
Kwangju, and U.S. pressure to move toward a more democratic political order impelled the Chun-led military junta to impose a revised constitution providing for a single-term, seven-year presidency and, on paper at least, a somewhat strengthened National Assembly. In 1985 these internal and external pressures led Chun to lift a five-year ban on opposition politicians, who then hastily organized for that year’s National Assembly elections and came close to outpolling Chun’s ruling party. The outcome emboldened both the opposition and ruling-party moderates, who favored negotiating with the opposition.
Chun began negotiations with the opposition in April 1986. The goal was to enact a new constitution prior to the 1988 elections. Chun’s side wanted a parliamentary system with a prime minister, while most of the opposition insisted on a presidential system with a directly elected president. Negotiations continued off and on into 1987, but early in that year Chun sparked wide protests by denouncing a million-signature petition for a directly elected president, and student protestors were further enraged by the revelation that one of their fellows had died from police torture. In April, despite mounting student demonstrations and growing middle-class sympathy for

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the protestors, Chun suspended constitutional negotiations until after the
1988 elections and placed the prominent opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, under house arrest. Then, on June 10, the ruling party designated General
Roh Tae Woo—Chun’s right-hand man in the 1979–1980 military mutiny and coup against the Park regime—as its candidate for the presidency. The designation sparked antiregime demonstrations of unprecedented size, and for the first time middle-class persons were conspicuous participants.
This crisis confronted Roh and others in the government with two distasteful alternatives: carry out a draconian repression that would involve much bloodshed, provoke American and world outrage, and probably lead to cancellation of the 1988 Seoul Olympics; or in effect capitulate to the opposition. Roh and the moderates around him chose the latter course. On
June 29, Roh announced a dramatic eight-point democratization plan that incorporated all main opposition demands. The previous year’s aborted negotiations had made clear what the central pieces of a settlement would have to be, and Roh incorporated them into his eight-point plan, known as the Special Declaration in the Interests of Grand National Harmony.42 Over the next several months, an eight-person committee consisting of rulingparty and opposition leaders hammered out the components of a new constitution. The result, made public on September 21, reflected compromises on more than 120 specific points.43 The document was approved overwhelmingly by the National Assembly and by a referendum in October. In December Roh won a largely free and fair direct presidential election, primarily because the opposition was split between the candidacies of its two most prominent leaders, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung.
Roh governed with considerable restraint during his four-year presidency.
He dismantled the honohae (the army organization that had played a key role in the Chun coup), and a merger of two key opposition parties with
Roh’s governing party in 1990 resulted in greater power sharing. The first local elections in three decades were held in March 1991; the newly merged
Democratic Liberal Party won more than half of all the contests; and it scored an even more resounding victory in provincial elections four months later. Those and the presidential elections of 1992 and 1997 were viewed as free and fair, with power passing peacefully to the two major opposition leaders, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, in 1992 and 1997, respectively.
During Kim Young Sam’s presidency a number of democratic reforms were achieved, and serious tensions stemming from the prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment of Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo for their parts in the 1979–1980 coup and notorious 1980 massacre of protestors in Kwangju were managed without a hint of military intervention. The Korean elites and government weathered the severe economic downturn that all Asian countries experienced between 1997 and 1999 more rapidly and harmoniously than did the elites and governments of most other countries in the region, so

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that by the end of the 1990s it appeared that the accommodation reached in
1987 was consolidated.
Still, the Korean case is somewhat enigmatic. Face-to-face negotiations among the leaders of opposing elite camps, which are the most dramatic feature of elite settlements, were fairly limited. The constitution drawn up in a few weeks during 1987 certainly provided for greater elite power sharing, but it is difficult to see that the opposing camps compromised many deeply held principles, which is another defining feature of settlements. These lacunae may argue for viewing the transformation of Korean elites as closer to a gradual convergence, which occurred over the course of the Roh and Kim
Young Sam presidencies, and which reached a successful conclusion when the principal opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, won the 1997 presidential election, took government power without provoking threats to his ascendancy, and proceeded to govern in a generally moderate and conciliatory manner. One can also view the 1987 changes as driven strongly by U.S. pressure to democratize, and augmented by the elites’ fear of having the prestigious 1988 Olympic Games, in which they had invested so much, cancelled if they spurned those pressures.
On the other hand, the changed behavior and relations of elites during
1987 and immediately afterward were as rapid and clear cut as elite changes in other countries that display all the specified features of settlements. Roh’s eight-point democratization plan in June that year accepted all main opposition demands, by October a new democratic constitution was in place, and by the end of the year the free and fair direct election of Roh as president was accepted by the leaders and parties he defeated, even though they jointly outpolled him. Although uncertainties about what role the military and security agencies might play remained widespread, and although student demonstrations continued to punctuate politics, no irregular seizure of power was attempted, electoral contests unfolded peacefully and regularly, and crises that could have arisen from the prosecution of Chun, Roh, and other military leaders for their previous actions, or from the near economic collapse that began in late 1997, were contained and managed well short of threats to the representative regime’s stability. During and after the political crisis of 1987, Korean politics, previously cutthroat, were clearly tamed.
Michael Burton and Jai P. Ryu have concluded that this was achieved through what amounted to an elite settlement in that year, and that Korean democracy had since been consolidated.44 Carl J. Saxer, who interviewed some of the participants and reviewed the relevant Korean-language literature, concurs with this interpretation.45
South Africa, 1993–1994
South Africa’s dramatic change from a white-ruled to a black-ruled country after its first multiracial election in April 1994 was the handiwork, first

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and foremost, of a difficult and intricate elite settlement during the preceding twelve months. The settlement had several odd aspects, however. One was that it occurred under a regime that had long been stable and representative for white citizens, who constituted less than 15 percent of the country’s population. Contested, fair, and participatory elections, confined to the white population, took place beginning early in the twentieth century. The settlement that occurred in 1993–1994 was, therefore, concerned not with creating a representative regime but with altering the existing regime to allow participation of the excluded black and colored peoples, who made up the great bulk of the population. Over this issue South African elites had been deeply divided into a handful of distinct and warring camps: white Afrikaner elites, who were themselves divided into moderate and intransigent groups and who had dominated government since 1948; more liberal, mainly Englishspeaking white elites who opposed the Afrikaner governments in Parliament and at the polls; and distinct elites clustered around the African National
Congress (ANC) in loose alliance with the South African Communist Party
(SACP), the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), and the more radical
Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). The three last-named elite groups opposed white domination of the government and society, most especially the brutal apartheid policies followed by Afrikaner governments after 1948, but they differed over the shape of an altered regime and how to achieve it.
By the latter half of the 1980s, the government’s military forces and mainly ANC-led guerrilla forces had fought each other to a standstill, with each side losing crucial foreign support. The United States and most Western countries shunned the government in Pretoria, while the disintegrating
Soviet Union became incapable of supporting the ANC’s guerrilla effort.
Most Afrikaner elites saw only bleak prospects, and in 1985 members of the government initiated four years of highly secret meetings with Nelson Mandela while he remained a prisoner of the state on Robin Island in Cape
Town’s bay.46 In 1989, these secret meetings culminated in Mandela’s written offer to President P. W. Botha to negotiate a settlement. A secret meeting between Mandela and Botha took place shortly before Botha suffered a stroke and was forced to resign from the presidency in favor of F. W. de
Klerk. However, de Klerk quickly grasped the nettle by releasing several high-ranking ANC leaders from prison, lifting the ban on the ANC, and setting Mandela free in February 1990. The initial effort to reach a settlement—the first round of formal talks at a multigroup Convention for a
Democratic South Africa (CODESA) between December 1991 and May
1992—collapsed because each elite group tried to outmaneuver the others.
But in September 1992, after several months of serious violence, de Klerk and Mandela signed a Record of Understanding, in which they pledged to negotiate a settlement.
During the year of largely secret negotiations that followed, the top government and ANC elites were in effect united against a tacit alliance of right-

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wing Afrikaner and IFP elites, each of which opposed, albeit for quite different reasons, the arrangements toward which the government and ANC leaders were moving. IFP leaders withdrew from the negotiations in the middle of 1993, by which time the government and ANC leadership had agreed on an election based on universal suffrage, to be held in April 1994. A final settlement, which produced a markedly liberal interim constitution with extensive provisions for power sharing that protected the standings and interests of the Afrikaner and ANC elites alike, was reached in November 1993.
When the April 1994 election proved to be an administrative fiasco, with many irregularities and shortcomings, the principal elites, rather than having the election overturned, agreed in secret simply to accept the results, which favored each of them anyway. As one close observer commented, this outcome strongly suggested ‘‘the [elite] cartel that had appeared to take shape during the negotiations had cemented.’’47
There is little doubt that an elite transformation displaying nearly all the features of a settlement occurred during 1993–1994. Warring elites and the forces they headed had fought each other to a costly standstill; their leaders were well established and steeped in past conflicts; the surging violence of
1992 and the economy’s calamitous decline under international boycotts and sanctions constituted a major crisis; there were intricate and substantially inclusive negotiations, both open and secret, among the key elites; there was a formal document—an interim constitution scheduled to last for five years—that embodied the agreements reached and publicly committed elites to them; and there was a clear final crisis—the April 1994 election debacle— that tested the accommodation between the principal elites, a test that they colluded to overcome.
There is also no doubt, however, that heavy external pressures greatly spurred the settlement, so much so that one may legitimately ask if the South
African elites, especially the white elites, had any choice but to enter into it.
There is a large question, furthermore, about the settlement’s lasting effects on South African politics. Although the ANC-led government over which
Mandela presided as president between 1994 and 1999 acted in a generally restrained and conciliatory manner, the formal government power-sharing arrangement between the main black and white political elites that was agreed in the settlement lasted only two years. South Africa’s multiplicity of ethnic groups, their large sizes, and their strong but disparate identities imply a stateness problem, although surveys do contain evidence of a strong national identity that cuts across class and racial lines.48 Gross economic and occupational inequalities between the white and nonwhite populations cannot be greatly reduced, let alone eliminated, without much stronger economic growth than anyone expects in the foreseeable future. Recriminations over the degradations that were visited by white rule upon the nonwhite population are likely to multiply. With all segments of the population well

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armed, violent crime and localized onslaughts by one group against another will be widespread. As the heroic leader of resistance to white rule, Mandela had unique authority as president, but his term ended in June 1999.
Thabo Mbeki, a top ANC leader who essentially ran the government during Mandela’s final year in office, was elected president by a large majority in 1999 and has by all accounts strengthened his control of the ANC and its politically dominant position. Despite Mbeki’s loss of stature for long denying scientific evidence of the cause of HIV/AIDS, he and the ANC won an even larger majority in the 2004 elections, gaining the two-thirds of parliamentary seats needed to amend the constitution and winning control of all nine provincial governments. With a highly centralized party structure, firm control of national and local governments, and no serious prospect of being challenged by a coherent opposition party for the foreseeable future, Mbeki and the ANC may be tempted to ride roughshod over the norms of consensual politics. The most optimistic scenario is for an ANC-dominated government to preside in a relatively restrained fashion over the fissiparous population, the white segment of which is likely to dwindle in size and influence, while the population’s nonwhite segments remain at substantial odds with each other. In sum, although an elite settlement was clearly the means by which South Africa achieved a much more inclusive representative regime during the mid-1990s, the regime’s long-term stability and liberal democratic workings remain in doubt. At the least, one analyst has argued, a ‘‘post-settlement settlement’’ is needed to repair the original settlement’s erosion.49 Taiwan, 1996–1997
Retreating from defeat by Chinese Communist forces in the civil war that followed the end of Japan’s occupation of China during World War II,
Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) government and army relocated to the island of Taiwan in 1949. Several thousand native Taiwanese notables had been liquidated by the KMT government before this relocation, and on setting up shop in Taipei the KMT established a rigid authoritarian regime.
Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, became president three years later. There was some liberalization of the KMT regime under Chiang Ching-kuo—most notably when an opposition Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) was permitted to form and participate in elections beginning in 1986—and liberalization continued after Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988 and was succeeded by his vice president, the Taiwan-born Lee
Teng-hui. A split within the KMT elite produced a challenge to Lee’s effort to have the National Assembly elect him as president in his own right in
March 1990, while an unprecedented demonstration in Taipei by students and intellectuals demanded further reforms.

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Lee was duly chosen for the presidency, and he moved adroitly and immediately to convene a National Affairs Conference (NAC) for late June that would seek consensus on issues dividing the elites. Preceded by several conciliatory actions by Lee and the government—most notably, a personal meeting between Lee and the leader of the DPP, the release of some political prisoners, and a judicial ruling that mainlander KMT members-for-life in the
National Assembly should retire during 1991—the NAC involved five days of intensive discussions among 150 top members of all key elite groups, even including some dissident leaders newly released from prison or returned from exile. It produced an agreement to hold elections for a new National
Assembly and for several subnational governing positions, to repeal the notorious Temporary Provisions under which dissent had long been suppressed, and to formulate a more flexible policy on relations with mainland
China. The NAC had the earmarks of an attempted elite settlement. But it failed to resolve several important and divisive issues, including Taiwan’s formal status vis-a-vis mainland China (of which the KMT claimed to be the
`
legitimate government), whether presidents should be directly elected instead of selected by the National Assembly, and whether the form of government should be presidential, parliamentary, or mixed. Together with the animosities and suspicions that persisted between KMT and opposition elites, these unresolved issues left the national elite disunited for another half-dozen years.
There was, nonetheless, a succession of peaceful electoral contests and political reforms during the first half of the 1990s. Most mainlander National
Assembly members-for-life retired in 1991, the last trappings of martial law were discarded in 1992, and in 1994 the National Assembly approved direct elections for the presidency. A third political party emerged in 1993 when a nonmainstream faction of the KMT broke away to form the New Party
(NP). This created a three-cornered political game in which the NP and DPP formed temporary coalitions in the National Assembly and the smaller lawmaking Legislative Yuan to block KMT government actions. In 1995 a fourth political party formed when fervent Taiwanese nationalists split from the DPP to form the Taiwan Independence Party. Their breakaway enabled the DPP to begin moderating its previously intransigent demand that Taiwan declare itself wholly independent of China, which Beijing said it would never allow. Overall, however, the first half of the 1990s was marked by legislative deadlocks arising from the issue-specific coalitions formed by the DPP and the NP, and conflicts over a variety of constitutional matters, as well as the unresolved question of Taiwan’s national identity and international status.
The impetus for breaking these impasses came in the form of a serious crisis that began in November 1995 and continued until March 1996, when
Lee Teng-hui, who had been elected president in 1990 by the National
Assembly, won the country’s first direct presidential election. The crux of

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the crisis was belligerent missile tests and naval exercises by the mainland regime aimed at undermining Lee’s election campaign and stanching what
Beijing perceived to be growing support for Taiwan’s declaration of independence. Although China’s actions were checked when the United States deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups near the Taiwan Straits, the crisis highlighted the need for a basic accommodation among Taiwan elites on policies toward China and on other divisive issues. At his presidential inauguration in May 1996 President Lee called for a new round of elite talks in the form of a National Development Conference (NDC) to be held at year’s end. Leaders of the three main parties (the KMT, DPP, and NP) promptly agreed to the conference, and in talks during the months leading up to it they reached a consensus on the fundamental point that the Republic of China
(Taiwan) was a sovereign state, not part of the People’s Republic of China, but that its admission to the United Nations, and, thus, international recognition of Taiwan’s sovereignty, was to be pursued only gradually.
This elite consensus was articulated in formal resolutions adopted by the broadly representative 170-member NDC in December 1996. Although the anti-independence NP representatives refused to vote for the resolutions and then quit the conference on its third day, NP leaders subsequently stated they would abide by the basic agreement reached between the KMT and
DPP on cross-Strait issues. The KMT and DPP elites agreed to reduce or abolish Taiwan’s provincial government, which paralleled the national government and manifested Taiwan’s continuing status as a province of China, and to expand presidential powers. They also agreed to ban party-run businesses, a practice dominated by the KMT and a major basis of its ability to outspend the DPP in election campaigns; they agreed not to endorse or reject controversial welfare proposals that the DPP had advanced; and they agreed on a broad strategy for economic development. The NDC resolutions were then debated in the National Assembly between May and July
1997. On July 18, the Assembly passed constitutional amendments that created a mixed presidential-parliamentary system in which the president would appoint the premier without the Legislative Yuan’s approval and could dissolve the Legislative Yuan in some circumstances, and the Legislative Yuan was in return empowered to cast binding votes of no confidence in the premier and government. Other constitutional amendments adopted by the Assembly suspended symbolically important provincial gubernatorial and legislative elections and created a cabinet-appointed council to oversee the provincial governments.
As elite settlements go, Taiwan’s was remarkably comprehensive and transparent. The ground for it had been laid by the breakthrough National
Affairs Conference in 1990, when 150 leaders from all elite groups agreed on measures for substantial democratization. Over the next five years of increasingly complicated party competitions and maneuvers, the absence of

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a bedrock agreement on the crucial issue of national independence and on the constitutional form that representative institutions and processes should take became apparent in legislative deadlocks and the splintering of the KMT and DPP. The ominous military actions by Beijing during the 1995–1996 presidential election campaign constituted a crisis that crystallized the need for a final set of elite negotiations, and these took place successfully in the comprehensive National Development Conference of elites at the end of
1996 and in the National Assembly debates over adopting the NDC’s resolutions a half year later. Most contentious constitutional issues were resolved, and the life or death question of Taiwan’s status vis-a-vis China was finessed
`
with an ambiguous language that all the main parties could live with. It is clear that a basic settlement transformed a disunited elite into a consensually united elite operating a stable representative liberal democracy. The settlement’s consolidation was subsequently indicated by the KMT’s peaceful transfer of government executive power to Chen Shui-bian, leader of the opposition DPP, following his victory in the March 2000 presidential election. The end to fifty years of KMT rule in Taiwan was then sealed by the following year’s parliamentary elections, in which the KMT lost almost half its seats in the Legislative Yuan and the DPP became the largest party, though it failed to win a majority of seats.
The persistence of elite accommodation was severely tested in a bruising contest for the presidency in 2004, however. In that contest, two consolidated elite camps, one labeled Pan-Blue, consisting of the KMT and a recently formed KMT breakaway party, the People’s First Party (PFP), and the other labeled Pan-Green, consisting of Chen Shui-bian’s DPP and former president Lee Teng-hui’s Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), faced each other in what each camp portrayed as a winner-take-all struggle. Nineteen hours before voting began on March 20, 2004, President Chen and Vice President Lu Hsiu-lien narrowly survived assassination while riding in an open car at a rally in the city of Tainan. The opposing Pan-Blue camp immediately accused Chen and his lieutenants of staging the assassination attempt in order to garner votes and to deter soldiers from voting by placing them on alert during the next day’s election. When Chen Shui-bian won reelection by a wafer-thin margin of thirty thousand votes out of thirteen million cast,
Pan-Blue leaders refused to accept the outcome. During the following days and weeks they encouraged hundreds of thousands of their supporters to protest the election and demand a new one. President Chen denounced the opposition protests as approximating an attempted coup. Although the protests gradually subsided, Pan-Blue leaders promised still more massive demonstrations at Chen’s second inauguration on May 20. On that day, no opposition leader attended the inauguration ceremony other than the KMTaffiliated president of the Legislative Yuan, Wang Jing-ping, who performed his constitutional duty of handing the National Stamps to Chen before

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quickly leaving to join opposition leaders, who were addressing a large protest rally nearby. At that rally, the defeated Pan-Blue presidential candidate,
Lien Chan, accused President Chen of ‘‘stealing the country’’ and he referred to the inauguration ceremony ‘‘up the street’’ as ‘‘a gathering without blessing, dignity, legality, and legitimacy.’’50
It is certainly possible to regard the 2004 election crisis, together with several bitter confrontations that preceded it, as indicating that political division, not tacit consensus, is the Taiwan elite’s defining feature, despite the transparent settlement of 1996–1997. But it is also possible to interpret the crisis as testing, and even reinforcing, tacit elite consensus about the most fundamental democratic game rules. For all their sound and fury, the PanBlue and Pan-Green elites grudgingly adhered to those rules throughout their 2004 election struggle. In the election’s immediate aftermath, for example, Pan-Blue leaders refrained from exhorting their followers to engage in violence, and Taipei’s mayor Ma Ying-jiu, a KMT leader, dutifully directed his police to ensure that Pan-Blue protestors did not commit violent acts, so that none took place. Ma’s restraining action was helped greatly by the Chen government’s stern warning to its own Pan-Green supporters not to skirmish with Pan-Blue protestors and by its decision not to deploy the military police and interfere with Ma’s handling of demonstrations. President Chen helped to abate Pan-Blue anger by agreeing promptly to the demand for a comprehensive ballot recount, instead of procrastinating and letting courts decide if a recount should be comprehensive or partial. Lien Chan and James
Soong, the Pan-Blue leaders, eventually said that they would accept the result of this recount if it were conducted with transparency. Chen also abated Pan-Blue anger by immediately agreeing to be examined by a Chinese
American forensics expert, who quickly established that the wound Chen suffered in the assassination attempt was not self-inflicted. In his May 2004 inaugural address, Chen stressed the need for domestic peace and reconciliation, and he postponed plans for several constitutional changes that Pan-Blue elites said they could not accept. In these important respects, political restraint continued to govern the behavior of Taiwan’s political elites, which remain consensually, if petulantly, united.

CONCLUSIONS
We have sought to show that elite transformations in the form of basic settlements have occurred in fifteen independent national states during the modern historical period. Let us step back from the eminently complex details of these fifteen cases to ask what generalizations they permit. The primary consequence of an elite settlement is the transformation of a disunited elite into a consensually united elite in a short period of time. Warlike, zero-sum

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political struggles are replaced by peaceful, positive-sum competitions. This happens because the principal opposing elite camps and groups make fundamental concessions to each other as regards some of their most cherished principles and interests. Accordingly, competitions no longer threaten elites with the loss of all power and influence. When one elite faction or coalition gains control of government executive power, it is able to govern with the tacit cooperation, or at least forbearance, of opposing factions. This tamed character of post-settlement politics allows a representative regime to become stable, and this development is conducive to the eventual emergence of liberal democracy. As can be seen in the post-settlement political histories of Britain and Sweden, the norms of a consensually united elite become embedded in political institutions and the wider political culture. Over time, the norms acquire a life of their own so that what is and is not permissible in politics becomes widely recognized and proscribes much behavior that could undermine a consensually united elite and its political restraint.
The tamed politics stemming from settlements are not the same as, and are no guarantee of, liberal democracy. Some scholars argue that elite settlements actually block liberal democracy. Alan Knight observes, for example, that Mexico’s 1928–1929 partial settlement ‘‘did not promote a consolidated democracy; if anything, it stood in the way of full democratization.’’51 Terry
Karl has likewise regarded ‘‘foundational pacts,’’ like those among Venezuelan elites in 1958, as producing a ‘‘markedly circumscribed’’ democracy.52
There is no way to know if barriers to democracy in Mexico and Venezuela would have been overcome in the absence of elite settlements. However, the slow and frequently halted progress toward democracy in Latin American countries where settlements did not occur is ground for doubting that, absent settlements, democracy in Mexico and Venezuela would have flourished.
Questioning a direct linkage between elite settlements and democracy is, nonetheless, appropriate. Knight notes that 240 years elapsed between the
English settlement and the establishment of Britain’s modern liberal democracy, and he asks whether one can plausibly posit a causal path that retains its force over such a long period, winding through innumerable events and political upsets. An altogether similar query could be lodged about the
Swedish case where democracy only began to be achieved in the reforms of
1907, a full century after the 1809 elite settlement. The connection between elite settlements and liberal democracy is certainly not simple and straightforward. Settlements protect the interests of the elites who make and sustain them; so they are clearly incompatible with the equal empowerment and participation of all citizens. But settlements are one of the few ways through which disunited elites can be reconfigured to support stable representative regimes that may in time become meaningfully democratic. In concert with

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other fortuitous circumstances—such as economic prosperity or the absence of deep ethnic or other cultural cleavages that undermine stateness—such regimes are likely to evolve in a liberal democratic direction. This is because a core feature of consensually united elites is the inclusion principle, namely, that any group with enough power to cause serious trouble will be allowed to hold office and influence policies so long as it expresses commitment to and abides by the norms of restrained political competition. Political inclusion is never a gift, of course. Elites that are excluded from settlements or that emerge later must always struggle for inclusion, as illustrated by the protracted battles in Britain and Sweden for suffrage extensions and for the acceptance of trade unions as legitimate political players.
In contrast to social revolutions, settlements involve quite limited elite circulations. They are carried out by entrenched elites, most of whose members retain their positions; indeed, finding a way to avoid the loss of positions and power is the main aim of settlements. Usually, only the persons and cliques occupying the uppermost positions in pre-settlement regimes—kings, dictators, and their entourages—are displaced by settlements. The lack of much elite turnover is, thus, another feature of settlements. Instead of large turnovers, power relations between existing elites are reorganized along more mutually advantageous lines.
It is worth recalling the main elite circulation patterns in a few settlements.
The elites displaced in the English settlement were mainly King James II, his immediate attendants, and the small number of Catholics and Dissenters he had appointed to high positions. Their forced exits from office did not mean, however, a sweeping loss of elite status, because many of James’s appointees retained their wealth and significant lands. Meanwhile, entirely new elites consisted primarily of William and his Dutch military leaders. But most
Tory and Whig elites, and certainly their most eminent leaders, were untouched. In Sweden, the Hat and Cap condominium that effected a settlement excised only Gustav IV and a few of his lieutenants. In Mexico’s more limited settlement, the scope of circulation was quite narrow; mainly, it involved the execution or suppression of those who led the Obregonista
´
rebellion against the new omnibus PNR in the spring of 1929. Circulation was also narrow in Colombia: Rojas Pinilla was overthrown, but there was no influx of new people; instead, long-standing leaders of the Liberal and
Conservative parties shared power for the next twelve years, and Rojas himself was allowed to run for the presidency, unsuccessfully, in 1970. In Venezuela, elite circulation involved the expulsion of Perez Jimenez and his
´
´ narrow circle, plus the communists, as well as the elevation of leaders of the three major political parties who had previously been excluded from government power centers—although AD leaders like Romulo Betancourt had
´
briefly held power during 1945–1948—and of media, intellectual, and

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church elites who had been suppressed under the Jimenez and previous dic´ tatorships. Although systematic comparative data are lacking, it appears that, except in South Africa—where the government turned from solidly white to heavily black with the 1994 elections—the most extensive settlement-induced elite circulations occurred in Poland and Hungary. After studying what happened to their communist nomenklatura elites between 1988 and 1993, Jacek
Wasilewski concluded that, overall, just one half of them continued to hold elite positions in 1993, albeit usually not the same positions; and if elderly nomenklatura elites who retired between 1988 and 1993 are excluded, the ratio of 1988 state socialist elites who still held some elite position in 1993 to those who lost elite positions was 21:10 in Hungary, and 19:10 in Poland.53
Clearly, the scope of elite circulation was wide in both countries. Although we know less about the depth of the Hungarian and Polish circulations— about the extent to which new elites came from far down social and political hierarchies—it is a plausible surmise that the opening up of roughly half of all elite positions between 1988 and 1993 enabled more than a few such persons to gain elite status.
Finally, what can be said generally about causes of elite settlements? We have argued that they are not readily explicable in terms of the structural forces most social scientists emphasize when trying to account for macro political changes. Settlements have occurred in countries that varied substantially in their preindustrial and industrial workforce configurations, class structures, cultures, geographic locations, and international circumstances. It is difficult to avoid concluding that elite settlements are preeminently contingent events. They depend on the coincidence of elites’ bitter memories of past conflicts, severe crises that threaten disastrous new confrontations, the existence of a limited number of well-defined and disciplined elite groups, the presence of skilled and bold leaders, and purely accidental events such as births, deaths, and the politics of other countries that influence the elites in question. In a word, elite settlements are unpredictable. Their study shines the light of responsibility for macro political change directly on elites, whose choices and skills are decisive.

NOTES
1. Stephen Saunders Webb, Lord Churchill’s Coup (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1995).
2. Lois G. Schwoerer, The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1981).
3. Schwoerer, Declaration of Rights.

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4. George Trevelyan, The English Revolution, 1688–1689 (London: Thornton
Butterworth, 1938), 18–19.
5. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 87.
6. Richard Gunther, ‘‘Spain: The Very Model of a Modern Elite Settlement,’’ in
Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, ed. John
Higley and Richard Gunther (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 38.
7. Gunther, ‘‘Spain,’’ 60.
8. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 101.
9. Gunther, ‘‘Spain,’’ 39.
10. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 108.
11. Mattei Dogan and John Higley, eds., Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).
12. Linz, personal communication.
13. Harvey Mansfield, ‘‘Party Government and the Settlement of 1688,’’ American
Political Science Review 63 (October 1964): 933–46.
14. J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution, 1603–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 1.
15. Gunther, ‘‘Spain,’’ 66–67.
16. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 144.
17. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 90.
18. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 92.
19. Dankwart Rustow, ‘‘Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,’’
Comparative Politics (April 1970): 337–63.
20. Charles Tilly, Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 180.
21. Tilly, Contention and Democracy, 180.
22. William Bader, Austria between East and West, 1945–1955 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1966), 24.
23. Richard Rose, ‘‘The End of Consensus in Austria and Switzerland,’’ Journal of
Democracy 11 (April 2000): 26–40.
24. For example: Paul Cammack, ‘‘A Critical Assessment of the New Elite Paradigm,’’ American Sociological Review 55 (June 1990): 415–20; Kevin Neuhouser,
‘‘Democratic Stability in Venezuela: Elite Settlement or Class Compromise?’’ American Sociological Review 57 (April 1992): 117–35.
25. Alan Knight, ‘‘Mexico’s Elite Settlement: Conjuncture and Consequences,’’ in
Higley and Gunther, 113–45.
26. Daniel C. Levy and Kathleen Bruhn, ‘‘Mexico: Sustained Civilian Rule without Democracy,’’ in Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with
Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, 2nd ed.
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1995), 171–218.
27. Andreas Schedler, ‘‘The Democratic Revelation,’’ Journal of Democracy 11
(October 2000): 15–16.
28. John Peeler, ‘‘Elite Settlements and Democratic Consolidation: Colombia,
Costa Rica, and Venezuela,’’ in Higley and Gunther, 81–112.

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105

29. Jennifer L. McCoy and David J. Myers, eds., The Unraveling of Representative
Democracy in Venezuela (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). See especially the editors’ introduction, 1–8.
30. Harold A. Trinkunas, ‘‘The Crisis in Venezuelan Civil-Military Relations:
From Punto Fijo to the Fifth Republic,’’ Latin American Research Review 37 (Winter
2002): 41–78; Gabriel Garcıa Marquez, ‘‘The Two Faces of Hugo Chavez,’’ NACLA
´
´
Report on the Americas 33 (May 2000): 18–21.
31. Trinkunas, ‘‘Crisis,’’ 53–54.
32. Trinkunas, ‘‘Crisis,’’ 58.
33. For example: Linz and Stepan, Problems, 164.
34. Guillermo O’Donnell, ‘‘Delegative Democracy,’’ Journal of Democracy 5 (January 1994): 56–69.
35. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 164.
36. Rudolf L. Tokes, ‘‘Hungary: Elites and the Use and Abuse of Democratic
¨ ´
Institutions,’’ in Elites after State Socialism, ed. John Higley and Gyorgy Lengyel
¨
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 71–85.
37. Tokes, ‘‘Hungary.’’
¨ ´
38. Jan T. Gross, ‘‘Poland: From Civil Society to Political Nation,’’ in Eastern
Europe in Revolution, ed. Ivo Banac (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992),
56–71; Klaus von Beyme, ‘‘Regime Transition and Recruitment of Elites in Eastern
Europe,’’ Governance 6 (3): 409–25.
39. Irena Pankow, ‘‘A Self-Portrait of the Polish Political Elite,’’ in Postcommunist
Elites and Democracy in Eastern Europe, ed. John Higley, Jan Pakulski, and Włodzimierz Wesołowski (London: Macmillan, 1998), 188–202.
40. Jacek Wasilewski, ‘‘Hungary, Poland, and Russia: The Fate of Nomenklatura
Elites,’’ in Dogan and Higley, 147–67.
41. Bogdan Mach and Włodzimierz Wesołowski, ‘‘Poland: The Political Elite’s
Transformational Correctness,’’ in Higley and Lengyel, 71–86.
42. David I. Steinberg, ‘‘The Republic of Korea: Pluralizing Politics,’’ in Diamond,
Linz, and Lipset, 369–415.
43. Carl J. Saxer, ‘‘Democratic Transition and Institutional Crafting: The South
Korean Case,’’ Democratization 10 (Summer 2003): 45–64.
44. Michael Burton and Jai P. Ryu, ‘‘South Korea’s Elite Settlement and Democratic Consolidation,’’ Journal of Political and Military Sociology 25 (Summer 1997):
1–24.
45. Saxer, ‘‘Democratic Transition.’’
46. Allister Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country (New York: Hill & Wang,
1995).
47. Stephen Friedman, ‘‘South Africa: Divided in a Special Way,’’ in Diamond,
Linz, and Lipset, 553.
48. Robert Mattes, ‘‘South Africa: Democracy without the People?’’ Journal of
Democracy 13 (January 2002): 29.
49. Pierre du Toit, ‘‘Why Post-settlement Settlements?’’ Journal of Democracy 14
(July 2003): 108–18.
50. United Daily News, May 21, 2004.
51. Knight, ‘‘Mexico’s Elite Settlement,’’ 141.

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52. Terry Lynn Karl, ‘‘Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela,’’ in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America, ed. Guillermo
O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 196–220. But see also Bonnie Field, ‘‘Dethawing
Democracy: The Decline of Political Party Collaboration in Spain (1977 to 2004),
Comparative Political Studies 38 (November 2005): 1079. Field’s analysis of the Spanish case leads her to conclude that ‘‘transactions by pact do not necessarily preclude more competitive and representative politics as initially feared’’ by Karl and others.
53. Wasilewski, ‘‘Hungary, Poland, and Russia.’’

4
Colonial Origins of Consensually
United Elites

Most disunited political elites, and a few elites that are or have been ideologically or consensually united, originated in the formation of independent national states. In chapter 2 we examined how disunited elites accompanied state formation in all of early modern Europe, all of Latin America at the end of Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule, and in the great bulk of countries that gained independence with the recession of British, French, Belgian,
Dutch, and Portuguese colonial rule during the decades after World War II.
In chapter 1 we alluded to the few instances in which independent national states emerged concomitant with the victories of doctrinaire elites in wars of national liberation: Kim Il Sung and his band of communists in the northern part of Korea after Japanese colonial forces were driven from the peninsula in 1945, Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh movement in northern Vietnam after the defeat of French colonial forces in 1954, Pol Pot and the Khmer
Rouge after defeating U.S.-backed royal Cambodian forces in 1975, and the eventual victory of theocratic Taliban forces after Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan in 1989. Although the Khmer Rouge’s ascendancy ended with
North Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in late 1978, and although Taliban ascendancy in most of Afghanistan was similarly short lived—from 1996 until the combined U.S. and Northern Alliance assault in fall 2001—the ideologically united elites that formed in North Korea and North Vietnam
(and then all of Vietnam after 1975) have endured, as have the totalitarian regimes they constructed, although the Hanoi regime may now be posttotalitarian.
Consensually united elites that created stable representative regimes also originated in the emergence of independent national states after colonial rule.
This sometimes happened where indigenous or settler elites in colonial terri107

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tories had prolonged opportunities to practice relatively cooperative and conciliatory politics in home-rule governments and in large and politically complex independence movements. The clearest examples are elites in Britain’s American colonies before and during their War of Independence; elites in Britain’s Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand colonies during the nineteenth century; and Norwegian elites under Swedish rule from 1815 to
1884, as well as the Indian and Israeli elites that forged a basic consensus and practiced internally restrained politics while waging long and politically complex struggles for national sovereignty during the first half of the twentieth century. A much earlier example is Dutch elites in the several United
Provinces of the Netherlands after their successful fight against Spanish colonial rule during the latter part of the sixteenth century. Less clear-cut examples are elites that emerged from long periods of British rule in Ireland,
Jamaica, Malaysia, and South Africa, and at least arguably, the Philippines elite once independence was achieved in 1946 after a brief period of selfgovernance under American tutelage and resistance to Japanese occupation during World War II.
Colonial political experiences and anticolonial independence struggles have, thus, been the origin of consensually united elites and stable representative, eventually liberal democratic, regimes in some of the world’s most important countries. However, this pattern was more widespread during the first era of colonialism, when the English/British, in particular, established and governed settler societies in the Western Hemisphere and the antipodes.
Disunited elites and unstable authoritarian or sultanistic regimes were the most frequent product of the second colonial era, when European states carved up Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia, not so much as places for Europeans to settle than as colonies from which to extract resources and gain strategic advantage in Europe itself.
This chapter’s purpose is to account for colonialism’s varying consequences for elites and regimes. Well over a hundred elites and regimes in today’s world are of colonial vintage, most of them quite recent, and we cannot discuss each case. Instead, we intend to contrast colonial political experiences that led to consensually united elites with those that did not. We start by examining the mainly Anglo-American countries that gained consensually united elites and stable representative regimes in the course of throwing off colonialism’s yoke. We then argue that, while the Anglo-American and one or two other cases are of great historical importance, the conditions for replicating them were largely absent during the second era of European colonialism. Because of the Anglo-American pattern’s prominence in colonialism’s first era and the absence of a strongly comparable pattern in the second, we want to assess the extent to which purely English/British political and cultural features may have been necessary to the colonial origin of consensually united elites and liberal democracies. Although many scholars have

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examined the broad political, institutional, and cultural imprints of British colonialism,1 we concentrate on how it affected the behaviors and structures of elites.

ELITE FORMATION DURING THE
FIRST COLONIAL ERA
Colonialism’s first era coincided with the West’s initial rise to world economic, military, and technological dominance. The Spanish and Portuguese monarchical regimes began to take over tribal areas and the Aztec, Inca, and
Mayan states of the Western Hemisphere during the sixteenth century. Tentatively, and primarily as a means of establishing trading bases, England and the Dutch provinces began acquiring small overseas territories during the seventeenth century, particularly in the East and West Indies, coastal areas of India, and the southern tip of Africa. During the seventeenth century as well, England and France established significant settler colonies in North
America. But during the 1760s the French lost their footholds in Quebec and
´
west of the Appalachian Mountains to the British, and the British then lost their thirteen rather prosperous American colonies when, with French support, the colonies waged a successful War of Independence between 1775 and
1781. Loss of its American colonies caused Britain to undertake the settlement of Australia, initially as a set of penal colonies, and also, somewhat later, to support the settlement of New Zealand, where the indigenous Maori population was eventually forced to submit to British rule.
As had already happened to Britain and France in North America, Spain and Portugal largely lost their Latin American colonies in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. Taking advantage of Spain’s internal divisions and weaknesses, populations led by Spanish settlers on the Latin American mainland seized their independence between 1810 and 1825. Portuguese settlers likewise profited from divisions and ineptitudes in Lisbon and proclaimed
Brazil’s independence in 1824. In a synopsis of colonialism’s first era, it must also be noted that Europe was itself the site of colonial entities relevant to our analysis: Dutch and what are today Belgian territories under Spanish colonial rule during most of the sixteenth century, Ireland under British rule from 1652 until 1922, and Norway under Danish and then Swedish rule from
1536 until 1884.
The American Case
It is not much of an overstatement to say that the political elite that founded the United States in 1789 directly inherited its consensually united form from England/Britain. The American progeny was certainly no

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English/British clone, but its lineage was strong. The bitter struggles over religion and monarchical power that wracked England during most of the seventeenth century (see chapter 3) reverberated throughout its growing
North American colonies. But the weight of colonial elite and mass opinion against monarchical absolutism and a state religion, whether Anglican or
Catholic, was much stronger than in the mother country. During the
Restoration era of Charles II and James II (1660–1688), only Maryland was
Catholic, and it was officially committed to religious freedom. Puritans predominated in Massachusetts, Anglicans in Virginia, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Dissenters in New Jersey. New York was officially tolerant, and Carolina took no strong stance one way or the other.2 England’s Exclusion Crisis of
1681, in which the Whigs sought to exclude James II from succession to the throne, had its counterpart in every one of the American colonies.3 Colonial opposition to James only mounted during his rule, and his displacement in the Glorious Revolution sparked so-called Protestant putsches against royalist governors in the Dominion of New England (James’s hated creation, which briefly subjected all the colonies in New England, plus New York and
New Jersey, to absolutist rule) and in Maryland.
Most American colonists regarded the Glorious Revolution as a victory for the rights of all Englishmen and women against arbitrary power. Between
1689 and 1696, seven colonial legislatures were moved to pass versions of
England’s Declaration of Rights of 1689.4 In England and the colonies, one important consequence of Stuart absolutism’s defeat and the solidification of parliamentary power was the devolution of considerable governing authority to local elites.5 In part, this devolution reflected English and colonial elites’ commitment to a newly restrained and loosely representative politics, but in the colonies it also reflected the difficulties of governing vast and undeveloped territories, whether from London or the colonial capitals.
During the nearly one hundred years that followed, elites and better-off strata in all thirteen American colonies acquired considerable political experience. With the conspicuous exception of the presence of African slaves, colonial societies beyond the coastal cities and the developed plantation economy of the southern seaboard were much less stratified than England and other European societies. They consisted largely of independent property-owning farmers and artisans who were free from the burdens of having to support an aristocratic and leisured class. However, governmental structure in each colony closely resembled that of England (which became part of Great Britain, officially the United Kingdom, after Scotland’s merger with
England in 1707). Since the government in London had no intention of financing the colonial governments, each had a powerful elected assembly, which, like the British parliament, consented to and often initiated laws and taxes. Also like the parliament at Westminster, especially after the English elite settlement in 1689, the elected assemblies tended to dominate colonial

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governments. British governors, who were usually beneficiaries of the patronage system at home, headed the civil administrations in most colonies, but unless they made peace with the colonial assemblies the governors had little real power.
The commitment of English/British elites to accommodative and restrained politics after 1689 did not greatly shape their dealings with the
American colonies. The colonists’ opportunities for self-governance stemmed mainly from their geographic isolation. During the first half of the eighteenth century, Britain made little effort to intervene in colonial politics.
But after defeating the French in what Americans called the French and
Indian Wars (1754–1763), Britain’s parliament and cabinet ministers decided to assert their supremacy over the colonies. This was in part a response to increasingly recalcitrant behavior by colonial leaders during the wars (such as insisting on controlling militias raised to fight the French), and in part it was an effort to tap into growing colonial resources to pay off Britain’s heavy war debts. Thus, the Proclamation of 1763 blocked European settlement west of the Appalachians in order to prevent further costly conflict with American Indians; the Currency Act of 1764 prohibited the colonies from using paper money to pay debts; the Sugar Act of 1764 sought to tighten collection of sugar taxes; the Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house and supply British troops; and the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed the first direct tax on the colonists, requiring them to buy and attach stamps to many items, including legal documents, newspapers, dice, and playing cards.
During the ten years that followed, the American colonial elites resisted these and other impositions by London. The British government made small concessions to this resistance, but it held firm to the principle of parliamentary supremacy and it imposed additional taxes—most notably the Townshend Acts of 1767, which levied taxes on such items as lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea, and which required that the resulting revenues be used to support British troops in the colonies and pay the salaries of royal tax collectors.
This provoked outrage and still greater resistance across the Atlantic. Parliament responded by repealing most of the taxes, but it retained the tea tax in order to symbolize its supremacy. It rapidly became clear that the British commitment to parliamentary supremacy and the colonial elites’ commitment to self-governance could not be reconciled. War broke out in 1775 and the colonial elites issued their Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
Historian Pauline Maier has shown that England’s Declaration of Rights of 1689 was a ‘‘sacred text for the authors of the Declaration of Independence and of similar declarations by many of the colonial elites.’’6 The opening section of the English Declaration specified the ways in which James II had subverted the laws and liberties of England, and it concluded that he had, in consequence, vacated the throne. The Declaration’s next section

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described how William of Orange had summoned Lords and Commons to establish a government, and it spelled out thirteen ‘‘undoubted Rights and
Liberties’’ of the English people. The last section concluded that William and Mary, upon agreeing to uphold those rights and liberties, should be declared king and queen. Maier demonstrates that the Bill of Rights adopted by the First Continental Congress in 1774 was modeled closely on the
English Declaration of Rights.7 When Thomas Jefferson drafted a preamble for Virginia’s constitution in the spring of 1776, he relied on the opening section of the English Declaration: ‘‘And why not?’’ asks Maier, for ‘‘it provided an entirely appropriate model of how to proclaim the end of an old regime.’’8 That same spring, George Mason drew upon the English Declaration to draft a document for Virginia’s Constitutional Convention, also titled a Declaration of Rights, which spelled out a series of basic rights and used some of the same language contained in the English precursor. When drafting ‘‘in haste’’ the Declaration of Independence for the Continental
Congress during June 1776, Jefferson drew heavily on his and Mason’s recent writings. Thus, despite some editing by members of the Congress, the final version of the Declaration of Independence was strongly influenced by
England’s Declaration of Rights of 1689.
While the Declaration of Independence was a revolutionary document, the Constitution and Bill of Rights enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1789 and finally ratified by the requisite number of states in 1791 reflected in many ways the formation of a consensually united elite. Colonial elites’ collaboration in the long and costly resistance to British domination contributed mightily to their integration and value consensus, and many elite-level Loyalists who opposed independence left the country when Britain was defeated, thus eliminating a disloyal opposition. As Thomas R. Dye and
Harmon Zeigler demonstrate,9 the former colonial elites shared numerous interests: the desire for a national army to ward off foreign aggressors, put down local uprisings (like Shay’s Rebellion in 1786–1787), and conquer
Indian lands; the felt need for a common currency and free trade among the colonies; the necessity to generate revenues to repay wealthy contributors to the war effort. But despite these common elite interests, substantial economic and religious conflicts among the thirteen colonies presented formidable obstacles to creating a national state, and they necessitated important elite compromises.
The Constitution’s federal design, which guaranteed considerable autonomy to state and local elites, was one compromise. Another was the constitutional provision for separating federal executive, legislative, and judicial powers to erect barriers against any one component of government becoming dictatorial. Elite compromises were also necessary to accomplish the
Constitution’s enactment. For example, the Bill of Rights, added as the first ten amendments when elites in several states made this a prerequisite for rati-

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fying the Constitution, is described by Maier as ‘‘an abbreviation of an abbreviation of an abbreviation—that is, the states’ partial ratification of
Congress’s reduction of Madison’s watered-down version of the more extensive bills of rights demanded by state ratifying conventions.’’10 The difficulties involved in adopting a statement of basic rights stemmed substantially from the southern states’ commitment to slavery, and the compromises reached allowed that institution’s perpetuation, resulting in grossly illiberal consequences for people of African descent.
The slavery question could not be compromised indefinitely, however.
The federal constitution left each state free to determine whether slavery would be practiced within its borders. With their plantation economies, the southern states uniformly allowed slavery, whereas it was made illegal in the northern states. Slavery was incompatible with the preindustrial family farm ideal that, in spite of an increasingly industrialized workforce, dominated northern political thought. The clash that occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century arose from the desire of both northern and southern economies and states to expand into the federally controlled territories west of the
Mississippi River. Both family farmers and plantation owners were, so to speak, poised to enter the new territories, but those who were prudent could not or would not do so without assurances about the future of the ‘‘peculiar institution’’ of slavery in those territories. Failing to maintain assured control of the federal government, most of the southern states resolved to secede. The northern states refused to let them go. The resulting civil war lasted four years (1861–1865) and was one of history’s major wars.
The north’s successful prosecution of the war depended in large part upon a widespread patriotic sentiment toward the national government that had developed since 1789. The north’s ability to draw on patriotism in mobilizing a massive and extremely costly war effort, as well as the by then deeply embedded codes and rules of restrained elite political practices, which Lincoln exemplified in the presidency, enabled the northern elites to remain consensually united throughout the conflict. Residues of patriotic sentiment toward the national government, which many southerners had also shared, were probably influential in motivating the southern elites to accept defeat and reunification with the north. Indeed, the seceding southern elites did not break in any conspicuous way with the practices of a consensually united elite during the war. Anchored in eleven state governments, they cooperated peacefully in a loose confederacy, despite the extremities they faced. At the war’s end, few political reprisals by the victorious northerners were visited upon defeated southern leaders, and some of the latter enjoyed venerable political statuses in the years that followed. The whole searing experience greatly cemented the basic modus operandi of American elites—not least around the maxim that a civil war must never be repeated—and no challenge

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to the colonially derived elite configuration remotely comparable to that of the Civil War has occurred during the 140 years since.
It must be added, however, that the way in which northern and southern elites reestablished cooperative relations during the decade following the
Civil War starkly illustrated that the outcomes of elite accommodation and restraint can be far from a liberal democratic ideal. Thus, in the compromise that resolved the deadlocked presidential election of 1876, southern planter elites were allowed to maintain an abundant supply of cheap labor—which also greatly benefited northern industrial and trading elites—with the system of Jim Crow laws and terrorist practices that denied for another century the basic rights African Americans were promised during the Civil War.11
The Earlier Dutch Case
A similar analysis can be made of Dutch elites under Spanish colonial rule during the sixteenth century and in their war of independence from Spain between 1565 and 1581. Constituting what amounted to counties of the
Holy Roman Empire during the late fifteenth century, and over a long period intermittently before that, the Dutch territories had been largely selfgoverning, with an array of more or less autonomous towns and with a representative body, the States-General, that met regularly to set cooperative policies and negotiate with various princes and other important personages.
This long experience of substantial self-government was interrupted when the Habsburg king and queen inherited the Spanish crown in 1504 and dragged the Dutch provinces into the struggle for continental hegemony between the Austrian-Spanish and French monarchies. The States-General could do little to resist the many exactions and governing officials that Spain imposed on the Dutch territories, although it continued to meet and symbolize Dutch elite resistance to Spanish rule. Spain’s increasing centralization of power in both the political and religious spheres ignited a revolt in 1565–
1567 by Dutch nobles, who were aided and abetted by radical Calvinists in many towns.
After fifteen years of warfare, punctuated by draconian Spanish repressions, Spain gave up its effort to dominate the territories north of the Rhine, so that the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, or what was sometimes called the Dutch Republic, became independent in 1582. This left in control what amounted to consensually united elites, derived from the long experience of cooperative self-government and forged more immediately in resistance to Spanish colonial rule and the crucible of an independence war.
The loosely confederated provinces over which these elites presided became, despite their puny population and resource base, a world power during the middle of the seventeenth century. It is interesting to note that the Dutch declaration of independence from Spain, the Plakkaat van Verlatinge, issued

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by the States-General on July 26, 1581, contained principles that were grafted into England’s Declaration of Rights a hundred years later, and some historians go so far as to claim that the Plakkaat was a model for the American
Declaration of Independence two hundred years later.12
Other Anglo-American Cases
In three national states that were once known as British ‘‘self-governing dominions,’’ the origin of consensually united elites operating stable representative and increasingly liberal democratic regimes was similar to the
American and Dutch cases. We refer to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, although, in contrast to the American and Dutch cases, none of these states had to wage a war for its independence. This is one reason why it is not possible to date their effective independence precisely.
Australia was first settled by Europeans—at the outset mainly deported
British prisoners and their guards—in 1788. The indigenous Aborigines, who may have numbered half a million in that year, did not survive European settlement in politically significant numbers or organization. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there were six distinct colonies (New
South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and West
Australia) whose governments were organized and empowered by the British to exercise a considerable degree of home rule. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the geographic remoteness of the six colonies from Britain; a considerable wave of Irish immigrants, who were hostile to most things
British; and a generally prospering economy that afforded the colonial inhabitants considerable leisure and a high standard of living gave form to an Australian identity and a desire for greater political independence from
Britain.13 The nearest thing to official independence occurred in 1901 when a constitution drafted by the representatives of the several colonies and approved by the British parliament took effect, and the Commonwealth of
Australia came into existence. Like the one drafted by the original American colonies, and for largely the same reasons, this constitution provided for a federal system that allocated substantial governing functions to the six colonies-cum-states. In this and other important provisions (e.g., a bicameral federal legislature consisting of a House of Representatives and a potentially powerful Senate containing equal-sized delegations from the six states, and a separate High Court analogous to the U.S. Supreme Court), the Australian constitution followed that of the United States.
From 1901 there was, thus, an Australian national state that was independent for all practical domestic purposes but that was as yet unwilling to abandon the international protection that being part of the mighty British
Empire afforded. After the British parliament passed the Statute of Westminster in 1931, such dominions as Australia had the right to full independence

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if and when they wanted it. World War II showed that only the United States could offer Australia serious protection, and by the end of the war, as an ally of the United States, Australia had become a fully independent participant in international diplomacy.
Elites in Australia appear to have become consensually united by the experience of acting during much of the nineteenth century in potential or actual conflict with the colonial governors and other officials appointed by London and with such empire-wide policies as London occasionally imposed. Given the colonies’ tiny populations and their relative proximity to powerful and not necessarily benign national states, such as Japan, there was no prudent way for Australian colonial elites to extricate themselves from British rule except and unless the British government lost interest in maintaining the colonies. This is, in the main, what happened, and in 1900–1901 the elites of the several colonies, all of them schooled in British elite accommodation and restraint, had little difficulty in simply amalgamating into a new national state and a structure of federal and state elites. Always pugnacious in parliamentary debates and election campaigns, and saddled with the awkward combination of an American-style bicameral federal parliament and a basically Westminster mode of government,14 the accommodation and consensus of Australian elites, and thus a stable representative and now fully liberal democratic regime, have persisted without great internal difficulties during the 105 years that have since passed.15
Canada also emerged as several separate and distinct British colonies, including one that embraced the English settlement of Ontario and the former French settlement of Quebec. In order to strengthen governmental
´
arrangements and provide more possibilities for political representation, in
1867 the British government, in concert with colonial leaders, made Ontario and Quebec into separate provinces. A central government of the Dominion
´
of Canada was erected and was intended to operate according to British principles of ministerial responsibility to the national parliament, an arrangement also implanted in the provinces. The distribution of governmental power was federal in nature, as in the United States and what was to become
Australia.16 Strictly speaking, this arrangement did not provide for Canadian independence because the British parliament did not yield any imperial powers. In practice, however, after 1867 Canadian politicians governed Canada in all significant domestic respects without claiming independent international status, until it fell into their laps via separate representation at the Versailles peace conference after World War I and separate membership in the League of Nations. Benefiting, like Australia, from the Statute of Westminster in
1931, Canada was acting as a fully independent national state by the outbreak of World War II.
The origin of a consensually united elite in Canada was, thus, similar to that in the United States and Australia. The political elites of the former col-

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onies were largely united by the need to ward off British encroachments on their local roles as political managers. They were further united by real or perceived threats of American territorial encroachments and political intimidations throughout the nineteenth century. Steeped in British political practices, like their American and Australian counterparts, they readily merged into a consensually united national elite with the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. Even more than in the United States and Australia, however, the distribution of governmental powers between the Canadian provinces and the federal government in Ottawa has regularly been disputed.
Moreover, Canada is a bilingual society with French speakers heavily concentrated in Quebec, but with English speakers predominant everywhere
´
else. Since about 1960, a quebecois secessionist movement has been promi´ nent, and, combined with the disputes that beset federal-provincial relations, it could lead to Canada’s eventual breakup. It is doubtful, however, that this development would preclude the continuation of consensually united elites operating stable representative liberal democratic regimes in whatever new independent states might result.
The case of New Zealand, uncomplicated by federalism but greatly complicated by severe conflicts between British settlers and well-organized
Maori tribes, which together numbered several hundred thousand people when the first European settlers arrived, is also broadly similar to the American and Australian cases. Settled mainly by the British, who initially came from Sydney, New Zealand was annexed by Britain only in 1840. Settler elites soon agitated against interference by British officials, prompting the British parliament’s passage of the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852. Under the act, New Zealand was organized in locally governed provinces, plus a central government that featured a British-appointed governor and a General
Assembly with a popularly elected lower house. Conflicts between the governor and the political elite in the assembly immediately ensued, and they continued until the British Colonial Office in 1856 conceded that the governor could only act in domestic matters in accordance with the advice of ministers chosen by the assembly and who enjoyed its confidence. A decade of warfare between Europeans and Maori in the 1860s strengthened the central government and probably further united the settler elites, so that in 1876 the provincial governments were abolished with only minor opposition.
From the 1890s, New Zealand’s politics involved the familiar competitions in stable representative regimes between nationwide parties, each appealing to a combination of sectional and common interests. Effectively selfgoverned from 1856, but with a tiny population and a remote location, New
Zealand was even slower than Australia and Canada to take on the role of an independent national state; only in 1947 did it enter the international diplomatic arena. With the exception of the 1980s and 1990s, during which New
Zealand’s party politics became more fragmented, while conflicts with the

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Maori were again fairly pronounced, the country’s politics have long exhibited the restrained competitions characteristic of consensually united elites that derive from the practice of self-government in comparatively benign colonial circumstances.
The Irish and South African Cases
Is our analysis of how consensual elites formed in Anglo-American settler societies, as well as among the Dutch, also applicable to Ireland and South
Africa? Possibly it is, although the ethnic and religious divisions and international circumstances that influenced elite formation and that have since beset elite politics in Ireland and South Africa prevent any simple interpretation or confident forecast about the two states’ liberal democratic futures. Nevertheless, there is much to suggest that Irish and white South African elites achieved substantial accommodation and restraint as a result of their colonial experiences. It is true that Ireland never enjoyed anything like home rule before or after its compulsory merger with Great Britain in 1800. From start to finish, British rule of Ireland was hardly benign or distant, as it was, more or less, in the several Anglo-American cases we have reviewed. However, the Irish parliament, the Dail, met regularly, and the Crown’s lack of funds for Ireland’s
´
local government left a void that local Irish elites filled.17 Moreover, throughout the nineteenth century, when elected Irish politicians held one-fifth of the seats in the British House of Commons, the Irish political elite had a good deal of experience with the practices of Britain’s consensually united elite and its stable liberal oligarchy. These experiences might be regarded as the equivalent of the home-rule experiences that the Anglo-American settler elites underwent. As in the American case, moreover, Irish independence, in the form of dominion status, was attained in January 1922 (albeit under threat of British military invasion if the terms of independence were rejected) as the result of an armed revolt that began most decisively with the Easter
Rising and the formation of the Irish Republican Army in 1916.
But unlike the American case, Irish independence was accompanied by a fratricidal struggle, amounting to a short and lopsided civil war during the summer months of 1922, between government elites, who were backed by the military, and bands of ‘‘republican’’ insurgents who were unwilling to accept the British-imposed terms of independence. Both sides in this struggle agreed about the desirability of independence, and both agreed about the republican and parliamentary forms that politics should take in an independent Ireland. In that struggle, several political leaders were assassinated, the law courts in Dublin were seized and blown up by insurgents, and roughly a hundred insurgents and others were arrested and executed. This strife stemmed directly from opposing conceptions of what an Irish Free State

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could realistically hope to achieve as regards the British-dictated partition of
Ireland into two self-governing entities—an Irish state in the south, and six
Protestant-dominated Ulster counties in the north that remained part of the
United Kingdom. Although all important elites in Dublin loathed partition, the dominant factions saw no alternative but to accept it, and in late December 1921 Michael Collins and other members of the Irish cabinet signed a treaty with Lloyd George and the British cabinet signifying Irish acceptance of partition (and that Collins accurately regarded as his death warrant).
The republican insurgents remained irreconcilably opposed to partition, and they tried, violently but unsuccessfully, to torpedo its acceptance.
Within a year, however, it became apparent to virtually all elites that partition was a fait accompli, and the republican leader Eamon De Valera urged that resistance be ended. Although most republicans, who were clustered mainly in the Fianna Fail party led by De Valera, thereafter contested and
´
participated in elections for the Dail peacefully enough, the more intransi´ gent among them continued for some years to boycott the Dail’s meetings
´
and actions. By 1932, antipathies had subsided sufficiently so that a coalition government led by Fianna Fail and De Valera began a dominance of Irish
´
government that lasted until after World War II, and the aged De Valera was elected president of Ireland in 1959.
We are inclined to interpret these dramatic, indeed tortured, Irish developments as constituting another instance in which consensually united elites originated in what approximated colonial circumstances. The fight between
Irish elites at the time of independence was much less over how politics should be conducted than over how the elites should act internationally, that is, toward the external military force that Britain was using to impose an unwanted partition. The bulk of Irish political and other leaders saw grudging acceptance of partition as the expedient course; only a small minority wanted to fight on against the British. The latter were quickly and violently suppressed, and all but the most intransigent among them soon recognized that half a loaf was better than none and that they should get on with careers in a much more tamed political environment, the codes, rules, and practices of which had been imbibed during a century’s experience with the British elite practice of restrained and representative politics.
If consensually united white elites can be said to have emerged through colonial political experience in South Africa, they did so in an even more complex and circuitous way than was done in Ireland. This involved always abrasive, frequently warlike relations between a kaleidoscope of Dutch and
British settlers; an imported Indian population; and a host of indigenous
African peoples, kingdoms, and tribes, all of which was further complicated by the interventions and pressures of Germany, Portugal, and other European powers involved in the scramble for Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. Here we can only note that British rule of two colonies, the Cape

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Colony and Natal, began with the Napoleonic Wars. The British gave the
Cape Colony representative political bodies in 1852, and twenty years later, in 1872, these bodies acquired home-rule powers. Britain attempted to exert control over the Afrikaans-created independent republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and it finally conquered them in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. The conquered republics were united with the Cape Colony and Natal when the
Union of South Africa was established under British control in 1910. Pursuant to the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the union gained full independence as a member of the British Commonwealth in that year. But in 1948, following the electoral victory of the Afrikaans-dominated and racially segregationist National Party, South Africa was excluded from the commonwealth, and it became a republic without political ties to Britain.
It is clear enough that British political practices became embedded in the white elites and among leaders of the enfranchised Coloured population (a small portion of Africans were also enfranchised) in the relatively liberal and economically powerful Cape Colony (and to a lesser extent Natal) after the middle of the nineteenth century. British parliamentary practices were adhered to, political parties formed, and electoral competitions were generally restrained. It is also clear that these practices characterized the politics of white elites after the union came into existence in 1910, although the suffrage was never extended to nonwhites in the northern provinces. Thus, the two most central features of South African elite politics from the date of union until the National Party began to consolidate white power in the apartheid system following World War II were the deliberate and sustained exclusion of the majority of the population from political participation and power, and the operation of a politically representative regime for whites only. This regime reflected consensus about political game rules and an essentially embattled unity among white elites that was, however, always attenuated by the legacies of black-white and Afrikaans-British conflicts and struggles during the nineteenth century and earlier.
When, amid deteriorating economic circumstances, black resistance to the apartheid system began to build in the 1960s, the attenuated white elite consensus and cooperation came under great strain. It is certainly plausible to say that the numerous illegal and repressive actions undertaken by the government in Pretoria, especially that headed by P. W. Botha between 1978 and
1989, made a mockery of whatever political consensus remained among white elites. On the other hand, even during those excesses, white elites largely continued to observe norms of political restraint in a bevy of hotly contested elections and referenda. Thus, the climactic settlement that occurred between white and black elites between 1993 and 1994 (discussed in chapter 3) grappled mainly with the problem of how to open a governing system whose fundamentals were accepted by most elites, both white and

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black, to the three-quarters of the population previously denied participation in it.
The complexities of the Irish and South African cases discourage any confident assessment of political prospects in the two states. Until very recently, at least, the persistence of a consensually united elite and a liberal democratic regime in Ireland could not be confidently forecast, given the relentless terror campaigns waged by the Irish Republican Army and its offshoots and by assorted Protestant groups in the counties of Ulster since the late 1960s. The
‘‘settlement’’ laboriously negotiated among the several parties to the Ulster conflict during 1997–1998 may yet prove unworkable. Nor would the avowed IRA goal of annexing the Ulster counties to the Irish republic be other than explosive, first in triggering massive and violent Protestant resistance, and then in creating destructive conflicts in the republic, to whose dominant elites the IRA leadership is nearly as opposed as it is to British control of Ulster. Likewise in South Africa, the peaceful grant of majority rule to the extremely large and downtrodden African population, which was the main consequence of the elaborately orchestrated elite settlement between 1993 and 1994, may well, over a period of twenty or thirty years, undermine the impressive elite cooperation manifested by the settlement.
Achieving enough economic growth to permit significant wealth redistribution to the black population without triggering a crippling emigration of the more skilled and predominantly white part of the population is a challenge that the now dominant ANC elite may fail to meet. The Irish and South
African cases thus illustrate both the strengths and limitations of elite analysis. On one side, elite analysis helps to account for the origin and persistence of political patterns—comparatively tamed and democratic politics in these two cases—in circumstances that societally centered approaches seem less capable of explaining. On the other side, elite analysis confronts major obstacles in attempting to encompass the political consequences of regionally based ethnic-racial, religious, and other cultural cleavages, such as the linguistic cleavage in Canada and those that beset South Africa, or of external interventions, such as that of Britain in partitioning Ireland.
The Norwegian Case
Except for the singular Dutch case in the sixteenth century, British political practices, as shaped by the fundamental elite settlement of 1689 in
England, have figured in all the colonial origins of consensual elites and stable representative regimes that we have so far considered. During the first era of colonialism, however, there was at least one other case, that of Norway, to suggest that the pattern in which we are interested was not patented solely for British colonies. Norway entered the modern historical period without an aristocratic and leisured class, the Viking ruling groups having been oblit-

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erated in the Black Death of 1349–1350. After two centuries of disorder and disintegration, Norway was annexed to Denmark by the Danish king, Christian III, in 1536. Officials and emissaries from Copenhagen ruled Norway for the next three centuries—a ruling structure of officialdom (embetsverket). When the Swedes took control of Norway late in 1814 as a consequence of Denmark’s position on the losing side in the Napoleonic Wars, it was a comparatively egalitarian society in the sense that there was no indigenous bastion of conservatism and privilege. But before the Swedes could fasten their grip on Norway, 112 leading citizens convened a constitutional convention, wrote a liberal constitution, and proclaimed Norway an independent constitutional monarchy. The dispatch with which this was done indicated a considerable amount of elite cooperation and consensus, derived from long resentment of Danish rule. The Swedish elite recognized this constitution as the general framework in which Norway would be governed, albeit as a distinct component of the Swedish kingdom.
Swedish rule of Norway during the nineteenth century was for the most part benign and distant; it afforded Norwegian elites considerable autonomy.
After the elite settlement of 1809 in Stockholm (see chapter 3), Sweden was itself a constitutional monarchy governed by a consensually united elite, and principles of representative politics had, therefore, to be followed in matters pertaining to Norway’s governance, as well as to Sweden’s. The parallel with
Britain’s governance of its colonies in accordance with political legacies of the English elite settlement of 1689 is striking. Thus, while their formal, occasionally very concrete, subordination to Stockholm’s decisions and policies greatly irked Norwegian elites and nationalists, they were nevertheless able to operate a home-rule regime more or less throughout the nineteenth century. Simmering Norwegian discontent with Swedish rule nevertheless came to a boil during the 1870s in a struggle to make members of the cabinet in Oslo
(then called Christiania), who were appointed by and responsible to the
Swedish king, participate in meetings of the Storting (the Norwegian parliament) and otherwise be responsible to that body. Faced with a considerable mobilization of Norwegian nationalists, the Swedes eventually acceded to this demand, and ministerial responsibility to the Storting was enacted in
1884. From that date, the political elite in Oslo, though technically still subordinate to the Swedish crown, controlled Norwegian domestic affairs in all practical ways. Independence in foreign affairs was obtained in 1905, although only after several risky confrontations with Sweden that involved considerable forethought, secret consultations, and cooperation within the
Norwegian elite.
The Norwegian case, thus, has the earmarks of a consensually united elite forming under colonial rule, especially that of the Swedes during the nineteenth century. As in America, Britain, Sweden, and other rapidly industrializing societies, which Norway was from the 1890s onwards, elite

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accommodation and consensus was far from monolithic. But it was sufficient to manage the peaceful political incorporation of the professedly revolutionary Labor Party and wider trade union movement of manual industrial workers that emerged after 1890. (Norway’s Labor Party was the only Western socialist party to join the Bolshevik/Soviet-sponsored Comintern, albeit only for a short period, 1919–1923.) By 1935, the Labor Party had repudiated most of its socialist orthodoxies, and it began a long period of political dominance by forming a coalition with the Agrarian Party. Resistance to
German occupation of Norway during World War II further solidified the consensually united elite, so that Norway was one of the clearest examples of the exceptionally stable and politically quiescent period that a number of
Western countries with consensually united elites enjoyed for upwards of two decades after that war.
*
*
*
Beyond the British settler colonies and the white South African, Dutch, and Norwegian cases, there were no other instances of consensually united elites forming during the first colonial era. The Latin American colonies of
Spain and Portugal were forged at a time when the two home countries were moving through the European phase of royal absolutism. There was no inclination in Madrid or Lisbon to foster self-government in their Latin American colonies when the whole movement of elite politics at home was in the opposite direction. Thus, aside from a few municipal corporations, Spanish and Portuguese colonists in Latin America had no opportunity to learn and practice representative politics. When the colonists seized their independence in the early nineteenth century, politics were greatly complicated by the fact that there were almost no recognized national state boundaries. Particularly in Spain’s colonies, prominent persons organized what military forces they could to fight both the Spaniards and each other, and this fighting largely determined the partitioning of Central and South America. It also contributed to the subsequent centrality of military elites in all Latin American states. Influenced by what was then the internationally progressive political fashion, the newly independent Latin American elites wrote constitutions based on the American and French models, but they utterly lacked the political experiences and restraints with which these constitutions could be peacefully and effectively implemented. As far as Latin America is concerned, we draw a blank when looking for elites that were consensually united by colonial experiences.
ELITE FORMATION DURING THE
SECOND COLONIAL ERA
The first crop of European overseas colonial empires had largely disappeared by the middle of the nineteenth century, apart from some scattered Euro-

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pean holdings in Africa, plus British military control of parts of India, which was still nominally chartered to the British East India Trading Company. By the 1880s, however, the British were totally dominant in India, and the other
European powers had become anxious to use investments and controlled trading in Africa as ways of maintaining prosperity in Europe. Thus, a wholesale partitioning of Africa by the European powers, agreed upon at a conference in Berlin in 1889, ushered in a second colonial era that lasted until about 1960. Apart from the Latin American countries, it was from this second wave of empires that a great many of today’s independent but usually politically divided and economically weak national states sprang.
It may still be too soon to judge confidently whether some states that became independent at the end of the second colonial era and that have since displayed cooperative and restrained politics are cases in which consensually united elites originated in the same way that we have traced in eight states during the first era. Caution is warranted by the theoretical point, which we discussed in the context of elite settlements in chapter 3, that the consolidation of a consensually united elite requires both propitious circumstances and time. Thus, American elites were fortunate that the slavery conflict did not reach its climax until three generations of elites had practiced accommodative and restrained politics while presiding over an independent state.
English elites were fortunate that they had a similar amount of experience and time before having to deal with the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–1746, in which the young Stuart pretender Charles Edward marshaled Scottish support for invading England but was soundly defeated.
Yet, allowing for uncertainties about the persistence of recently created consensually united elites, the likelihood of finding such elites among the crop of states that emerged from colonialism after World War II is not great.
This is because the empires that the European powers began to build in the late nineteenth century, primarily in Africa, were very different from those of the first colonial era, when Spain, Portugal, England, and France sought territories for overseas settlement. With indigenous peoples roughly thrust aside or exterminated, the colonies of the first era, especially in the Western
Hemisphere, were seen as extensions of the home country, inhabited by persons of European descent little different from those back home. Thus, a firstera imperial state like Britain could readily contemplate giving the inhabitants of its colonies home rule for many purposes, even to include their eventual independence.
The colonies of the second era were quite different in these respects. Large and densely settled indigenous populations existed in most of them, and they could not be easily pushed aside. The imperial European countries were in the more advanced industrial phase of development, and their occupational structures afforded many interesting, prestigious, and well-remunerated careers and positions at home. Consequently, relatively few persons follow-

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ing those careers and aspiring to such positions found the prospect of living in agrarian or incipiently preindustrial colonial territories enticing. Officials and important trading and business personnel in the colonies tended to be temporary emissaries who expected to end their days back home in comfortable retirement. Moreover, the colonies were governed through the large and impersonal bureaucracies that industrialization had created in the imperial states, with all important positions filled by officials sent out from those bureaucracies and all serious policy questions referred back to them for decision—something that was much more feasible technologically in the second era than the first. For the most part, in short, the circumstances that gave practical political experience to local elites during colonialism’s first era did not exist during the second era. In the second era, therefore, it was quite likely that local elites would end up ruling largely by default if and when the imperial powers abandoned their colonies because their economic and political costs became unsustainable. This was, of course, what happened during the two decades after World War II.
There were, however, a few cases, again mainly British and tending to date from the first colonial era, in which local elites, although not composed of persons of European descent, had significant opportunities to learn accommodative political practices. While these elites seldom had much home-rule experience, they often had European educations, career experience in modern bureaucracies, and, most important, substantial political experience in extensive, complex, and fairly influential national independence movements that the British, in particular, sometimes tolerated. Let us briefly consider these cases.
India
India is the most conspicuous example of a stable representative regime that stems primarily from the second colonial era. Even after the refusal of
Pakistan to join in a union, India’s enormous size and its wide variety of professional sectors and educational institutions meant that it was bound to be of major importance in the postcolonial world. Since independence in
1948, India has maintained a representative democratic regime based on universal suffrage, although there was a brief resort to emergency—many would say authoritarian—rule by Indira Gandhi during 1975–1977. However, the electoral basis of Indian politics was not interrupted then or since. Political power has in general passed from one elite camp to another on the basis of election outcomes, even though for the first twenty years after independence the Indian National Congress party was crushingly dominant. Nearly sixty years without any threat of military intervention in domestic politics have passed, and this is a highly impressive record compared with that of neigh-

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boring Pakistan and the records of most other countries that emerged from colonial rule after World War II.
India’s postcolonial politics strongly suggest the presence of a consensually united elite that formed in and around the complex independence movement led by the Indian National Congress after its creation in 1885. Inclusive of castes, classes, and ethnic, urban, and rural communities, the Congress was led by a well-articulated elite that became practiced in the delicate balancing of diverse interests and that was committed, mainly by dint of its leaders’ educations in British-operated elite schools, to the principles and practices of representative government. At independence in 1948, Congress immediately dominated India’s politics. It constituted an omnibus governing party, not unlike the PRI in Mexico, in which diverse and conflicting interests were placated, mainly by distributing jobs and other benefits of a steadily expanding state apparatus. At the same time, India’s manifold and regionally based cleavages were managed through the periodic creation of semiautonomous states for the most discontented regional elites and populations.18 The Congress seemed to be, in short, the primary organizational manifestation of a consensually united elite.
Congress’s dominance of Indian politics did not outlast the 1970s, however. In 1969 it split into factions for and against Indira Gandhi and her plebiscitary style of politics. Association with Gandhi’s high-handed emergency rule in the mid-1970s further damaged Congress, and in the 1977 election it lost government executive power to an opposition coalition. Ethnic and religious conflicts mushroomed during the 1980s and 1990s, and their encouragement and containment involved increasingly serious political irregularities. These indicated increasing disregard of established political practices, with leaders like Gandhi, before her assassination by Sikh bodyguards in 1986, trying to manipulate conflicts for personal and factional advantage. Repeatedly since independence, fanatical adherents of one or another religious sect or ethnic community have perpetrated massacres of other sects and communities, and there is no sign that this aspect of Indian political life is subsiding. On the contrary, fervent ethnonationalism, manifested most clearly in the Hindutva movement, appears to be spreading, and political corruption is rife.19 Although there is currently much talk about
India’s leap to an economy driven by high technology, how this economy will absorb hundreds of millions of impoverished, barely literate, and essentially surplus laborers is unknown. As happened to the American elite in the 1850s, after three generations of tamed and accommodative politics it is conceivable that the consensually united elite in India may be pulled apart by ethnic and religious conflicts, while problems arising from the enormous labor surplus may also be unmanageable.

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Sri Lanka
The scenario we have just entertained for India is far advanced in Sri
Lanka. Obtaining independence from Britain in 1947, a year before India,
Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, has also maintained a technically unbroken string of contested democratic elections and a succession of governments formed according to election outcomes. Ethnic and religious cleavages are much simpler than in India, but the armed conflict to which they have led has been so severe that India was induced to intervene militarily in the late
1980s in an unsuccessful attempt to maintain some semblance of order. The difficulty in Sri Lanka has centered on a large and more economically successful ethnic minority, the Tamils, who have maintained, or been forced to maintain, their separateness from the majority Sinhalese population over several centuries and who have long been concentrated in the country’s northeast region. The Tamils are Hindus, and the Sinhalese are for the most part
Buddhists. By insisting that Sinhalese be the official language, the Sinhalesedominated government has limited career opportunities for Tamils and, thus, helped fuel interethnic strife. This has reached the point where one can only with great difficulty speak of a single national elite and regime, with the fragile and always ethnically lopsided elite cooperation and consensus of the early postcolonial years having disintegrated along ethnic lines.
Malaysia
In spite of distinct ethnic and religious cleavages between Malays, Chinese,
Indians, and other smaller groups, Malaysia is also a former British colony that has maintained an orderly succession of governments since the Federation of Malay States became independent in 1957 (and then was united with the separate British colonies of Sabah and Sarawak and, briefly, Singapore, in
1963). This political pattern stems from relatively long tutelage under British colonial rule and from a basic bargain struck between Malay and Chinese elites in the process of drawing up a constitution in 1956. In that bargain,
Malay elites obtained the lion’s share of political and state positions in exchange for guaranteeing that Chinese elites would not be hindered in their economic activities by state actions.20 The elites have since operated a weakly centralized federal system in rough accord with the so-called Malay way of resolving conflicts through consensus, although Malay communal violence against the Chinese in 1969 forced a temporary suspension of parliamentary government. The political hegemony of the Malay-dominated National
Front coalition of parties appeared to embody a consensually united elite sustained by elaborate mutual payoffs in the form of patronage and a pervasive ‘‘money politics.’’21

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As in India after the 1960s, plebiscitary tendencies, centered in the aggrandizing governing style of the long-serving prime minister, Dr. Mohammed
Mathathir, provoked recurring confrontations inside the National Front and between the government and the judiciary during the 1980s and 1990s. A sharp economic downturn that began in 1997 constituted a crisis that tested elite accommodation and restraint. However, the government in Kuala Lumpur managed the financial aspects of this crisis with dexterity, Dr. Mathathir eventually announced his intention to retire, and in 2004 he voluntarily handed the reins of government to a successor. In 2002 the Mathathir government, in cahoots with the Electoral Commission, carried out an intricate and highly partisan electoral redistricting aimed at staving off inroads by the strengthening Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party. This maneuver, together with many other self-serving and dubiously democratic practices by the omnibus
National Front coalition throughout its uninterrupted period of dominance, indicates that the Malaysian regime is a stable representative regime that has not advanced beyond a liberal oligarchy.
Jamaica
England colonized Jamaica in 1655, and Britain retained control until
Jamaica’s independence in 1962. Jamaican elites thus had an exceptionally long exposure to British political practices. A two-party system was in existence before World War II, and there was a short but significant experience of self-government from 1944 until independence. Since independence, a social class division that has racial overtones in the guise of lighter and darker skin colorations has shaped politics. This division, manifested politically in the contests and seesawing fortunes of the Labour and People’s National parties, has contributed to a politics that feature considerable violence, especially during election campaigns when there are also regular allegations of fraudulent practices. Still, both sides in Jamaican politics adhere to wellestablished parliamentary and associated political practices, no interruption of national elections has occurred since independence, and we are inclined to believe that persistent elite accommodation and compromise, if ragged in its concrete manifestations, is the central aspect of Jamaican politics.
Kenya and Tanzania
Coming under British control and organized as colonies only in the early
1920s, both these states seemed for a while after independence in the early
1960s to be operated by elites whose consensual unification had been accomplished in the process of organizing and leading relatively complex independence movements: the Kenya African National Union and the Tanganyika
African National Union. Moreover, both states were long led by prestigious

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‘‘fathers of independence’’: Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya until his death in 1978, and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania until he retired from the presidency in 1990.
During their many years in power, however, the behaviors of Kenyatta and
Nyerere and their entourages more and more approximated that of presidential monarchies. In Kenya, a sultanistic tendency became pronounced under
Kenyatta’s successor, Daniel arup Moi, who presided over gross political irregularities while perpetuating his control from 1978 until the end of 2002, when Moi’s chosen successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the illustrious first president, was defeated in an election won by Emilio Mwai Kibaki at the head of a fifteen-party coalition. But this first peaceful transfer of executive power in Kenya’s independent history did little to dilute one elite camp’s hold on power because most of the new government consisted of politicians who had served the preceding Moi presidencies in one capacity or another.22
This continuity, together with allegations and evidence of pervasive corruption and recent crackdowns on independent media critical of the government, indicate a disunited elite and an unstable illiberal democratic regime.
In Tanzania, deep conflicts between political forces on the mainland and increasingly fundamentalist Islamic forces on the affiliated island of Zanzibar, disarray among the elite formerly centered around Nyerere, and Nyerere’s meddling in politics despite his retirement, plus serious irregularities and opposition boycotts during elections in the 1990s, indicate an elite and regime pattern comparable to Kenya’s.

BEYOND THE BRITISH CASES
If we ignore small states located in the Caribbean Sea such as Barbados, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago, the politics of which are not frequently reported, and whose tiny size makes the application of elite analysis dubious, the preceding enumeration exhausts the former British colonies that obtained independence after World War II and might be thought to contain consensually united elites that originated in colonial conditions. It can be argued that Botswana should be added, but as a mere British protectorate after 1885, the territory fell well short of colonial rule, and the country became formally independent in 1966 with little or no experience in representative political practices.23 In the African context, however, Botswana has had two important advantages: a small and ethnically homogenous population, and plentiful diamond lodes that have yielded large export revenues with which to placate competing elites and their supporters and help keep politics peaceful. Note that, except for Kenya and Tanzania, all the former
British colonies we have considered dated back, in some degree, to the first colonial era, when Britain was more lenient in granting self-governing and home-rule privileges. The circumstances of the second colonial era were, as

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we have suggested, less propitious for the formation of consensually united elites. Virtually all the British colonies that did not have significant roots in the first era—we have mentioned Kenya and Tanzania, but one could add
Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe— became independent with disunited elites. Their unstable regimes have since oscillated between illiberal democratic and authoritarian or sultanistic forms and have, from a liberal democratic standpoint, been studies in political failure. There are two cases in which the influence of British political practices on colonial elites was indirect. That is, it was transmitted via former British colonies that themselves acquired colonies. The first is the Philippines, which was a U.S. possession after 1898, and which became a self-governing territory under American tutelage in 1935 and an independent state in 1946. The second is Papua New Guinea, which was administered by Australia from roughly World War I until 1975, but with effective home rule granted only in 1970. Papua New Guinea’s experience as an independent state has been brief. Its politics have involved intertribal conflicts, much corruption within a small political class, and rampant social disorganization in the capital of
Port Moresby, as well as an insurgency on the island of Bougainville against the national government. During 1997, the government’s hiring of British mercenaries to repress the Bougainville insurgency triggered a military mutiny in Port Moresby that ousted the prime minister. There is, in short, no basis for thinking that a consensually united elite formed under Australia’s colonial administration of Papua New Guinea.
The Philippines are a more ambiguous, important, and theoretically interesting case. Liberated from Japanese wartime occupation by United States troops in late 1944, the Philippines became independent in 1946, the year the
United States had promised when it granted home rule a decade earlier. After independence, executive power passed peacefully on the basis of competitive elections between six presidents, the last of whom, Ferdinand Marcos, was elected in 1965 and reelected in 1969. Jason Brownlee observes that between independence and Marcos’s consolidation of power in the presidency there existed a disorderly ‘‘clientelistic democracy,’’ in which elites jockeyed for political power that was, nonetheless, substantially diffused across the country’s seventy-eight provinces and thirteen regions. Between independence and Marcos’s election, for example, no two successive presidents had come from the same region.24 The regime appeared in those years to be a stable liberal oligarchy involving extensive patron-client relations and the dominance of a small number of landed and extremely wealthy families whose shifting alliances and antagonisms shaped most political outcomes.
In 1972, Marcos imposed martial law, citing threats to national integration posed by regional ethnic and religious insurgencies. He subsequently instituted a new constitution and engineered a referendum that extended his

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presidential tenure, during which he replaced numerous government officials and high-ranking military officers with cronies from his home region, thus breaking the pattern of diffused power. Marcos terminated martial law early in 1981. By then, however, an informal but steadily widening coalition of political, business, church, and military leaders, disaffected from Marcos’s increasingly authoritarian rule, was forming. The assassination of a popular dissident, Benigno Aquino, at Manila Airport in August 1983 galvanized anti-Marcos elites to form the United Democratic Opposition (Unido), which made common cause with a clique of disgruntled military leaders led by General Fidel Ramos. Under American pressure, Marcos held an early presidential election in February 1986. In spite of manifest vote-counting irregularities, he claimed victory over Corazon Aquino, the widow of
´
Benigno Aquino.
Mass demonstrations orchestrated by the elites opposing Marcos ensued.
In a matter of days, key elements of the military elite abandoned Marcos, who was allowed to flee to Hawaii. Aquino was promptly installed in the presidency, and as president she restored the liberal oligarchic practices of
Filipino elites before the Marcos interregnum. With the help of allies in the military high command, seven attempted coups by small military units were put down, and Aquino managed to keep the lid on a boiling political pot.
She was followed in office by three duly elected presidents—although one of them, the politically inexperienced but widely popular Joseph Estrada, a former film star who was elected with broad elite and mass support in 1998, was nearly impeached by the Senate in late 2000 for corrupt practices, declared by the Supreme Court to be unfit to continue in office, and arrested a few months later. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the vice president elected with
Estrada, ascended to the presidency, almost immediately alleged a coup plot against the government, and declared a week-long state of emergency during which several Estrada associates were arrested, only to be subsequently released. Insisting, controversially, that she had been elected as Estrada’s vice president and was therefore entitled to run for a one-term presidency,
Arroyo was in June 2004 declared the winner of a bitter and violent election contest. Evidence surfaced in 2005 that Arroyo had made improper contacts with election officials during the counting of ballots, and a move to impeach her, possibly contrived by Arroyo because she was confident of enough votes in the Senate to defeat impeachment, failed, albeit amid another round of mass protests. In February 2006, Arroyo claimed that a military coup was imminent, and again she declared a state of emergency. Colonel Gregorio
Honasan, a widely revered officer who had been instrumental in unseating
Marcos and had since become a senator, was accused of involvement in the
2006 coup plot and went into hiding.25
Most observers have interpreted this long string of turbulent events as involving a democratic breakdown under Marcos, followed by a democratic

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transition with his overthrow and Aquino’s victory in 1986.26 In terms of elite analysis, however, the pattern is more ambiguous. First, a plausible argument can be made that a consensually united elite originated under
American colonial rule, solidified while resisting Japanese occupation during
World War II, and operated a stable liberal oligarchy featuring regular but always volatile electoral contests during the 1950s and 1960s. Second, circumstances and events that would have indicated the elite’s disintegration, such as a clearly irregular seizure of power by Marcos after his reelection to the presidency in 1969, were not obvious. There was no question that Marcos played fast and loose with accepted political practices and that the ways he contrived to prolong his presidential tenure had earmarks of an autogolpe—an executive coup. But until Benigno Aquino’s murder in 1983, no major elite faction mounted a serious effort to unseat Marcos by other than electoral means, and it is not clear from the record of the late 1970s and early
1980s that such an effort was widely expected. Possibly, fear of territorial disintegration was uppermost for many elites, and it induced them to tolerate Marcos’s relatively unbridled rule. Third, there was impressive cooperation between diverse elites to end Marcos’s tenure once the Aquino assassination and the 1986 election irregularities persuaded many that Marcos and his cronies were bent on dictatorial rule. Fourth, having driven Marcos from office and restored discipline in the military, political and other elites reverted, at least for a while, to a pattern that suggested significant political accommodation and restraint. But fifth, the fact that Estrada’s ouster from the presidency depended on the military high command’s decision to side with the broad elite coalition led by the vice president, Arroyo, which had mobilized against Estrada, indicated rather clearly that executive office holding in the Philippines is subject to military veto. Further evidence of this was the preoccupation with the question of how the military might respond to the upheavals of early 2006. Although in important respects a borderline example of how a consensually united elite might have a colonial origin, the most prudent interpretation is that such an elite never quite formed in the Philippines, so that the country’s politics have been mainly those of a disunited elite operating an unstable and substantially illiberal democracy. Beyond the British cases and the borderline Philippines case, it is hard to find instances in which consensually united elites originated in colonial circumstances. Three possible candidates among the score of France’s former colonies are worth considering: Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Tunisia. French colonial rule of all three was lengthy, and it enabled small and somewhat privileged political classes to develop, from which various leading figures were elected as delegates to the National Assembly in Paris. There they acquired experience of democratic politics in France’s unstable Third and
Fourth Republics. Much like India under the Congress Party until the late

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1960s, post-independence politics unfolded almost exclusively within an omnibus party led by an illustrious figure: in Tunisia the Destourian Socialist
Party (called since 1988 the Democratic Constitutional Assembly) led by
Habib Bourguiba, in Ivory Coast the Democratic Party led by Felix Hou´ phouet-Boigny, and in Senegal the Progressive Party (later calling itself the
¨
Socialist Party) led by Leopold Senghor. All three parties and leaders held
´
the lion’s share of political power for long periods without overt recourse to authoritarian rule. Like France itself in the Fifth Republic that Charles de
Gaulle established in 1960, these and several other former French colonies erected presidential monarchies in which power sharing among the newly independent elites was not wide, and the representative character of politics was slight. One could at most speak of incipiently liberal but basically oligarchic regimes. The danger was that when the presidential monarch died or otherwise departed office, elite power struggles to gain control of the uppermost executive office would unfold. This is what eventually happened in
Tunisia and Ivory Coast.
It is interesting to note that in Tunisia in 1987, Habib Bourguiba was effectively deposed by the military on grounds that he had become senile, to which a panel of doctors testified and which most political insiders believed to be the case. Such a military intervention normally indicates a disunited elite and an unstable regime. In the Tunisian case, however, one could ask what top-level persons in a consensually united elite would do if their chief and duly elected leader showed incontestable signs of senility. The answer might well be that they would collude to get rid of the leader, through irregular means if necessary. A close knowledge of this Tunisian episode might reinforce a view of the elites as consensually united, stemming from their circumstances and experiences under French colonial rule and their unifying struggle for independence. However, following Bourguiba’s removal, Tunisian elites rather quickly came under the thumb of his successor, former
General Ben Ali, and the regime’s far-flung secret police. Since the mid- to late 1990s, moreover, the ruling elite has confronted implacably fundamentalist Islamist movements, so that the political elite as a whole is clearly disunited, and the regime is unquestionably unstable and authoritarian.
Ivory Coast also looked like an instance of a consensually united elite that formed under French colonial rule. Although local Ivorian elites had only two years’ experience of autonomous self-governance—between 1958 and independence in 1960—Houphouet-Boigny and his omnibus Democratic
¨
Party dominated politics and operated what appeared to be a stable liberal oligarchy, winning seven successive elections to the presidency along with nearly all seats in the National Assembly, albeit always against weak and muffled opposition. Military intervention in politics was conspicuous by its absence. Immediately upon Houphouet-Boigny’s death in 1993, however,
¨
his presidential-monarchical form of rule fell prey to the standard problem

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of monarchies: elite power struggles to succeed the ‘‘monarch.’’ Within hours of Houphouet-Boigny’s death, the prime minister, Alassane Ouattara,
¨
and the president of the National Assembly, Henri Bedie, each laid claim to the presidency. Ouattara gave way, and when he attempted two years later to stage an electoral comeback, he was blocked by changed election rules that reserved the presidency for persons who could prove Ivorian birth, which Ouattara could not. There were allegations of an attempted military coup in 1996, and a successful coup occurred in 1999, after which events moved rapidly toward civil war between the predominantly Muslim north and the Christian south. By 2004 one could no longer speak of a territorially integrated state or an intact political elite.
A French colony for forty years, Senegal became independent, like Ivory
Coast, in 1960, and its father of independence, Leopold Senghor, also soon
´
erected what amounted to a presidential monarchy, in which Senghor and his Progressive Union party dominated politics for the next two decades, winning four successive elections by lopsided margins in dubiously democratic contests. But unlike Bourguiba in Tunisia and Houphouet-Boigny in
¨
Ivory Coast, Senghor stepped aside voluntarily in 1980, allowing his prime minister, Abdou Diouf, to ascend to the presidency in accordance with the constitution. Subsequent election contests became increasingly competitive, although pushing and shoving among elite factions tested the limits of restrained politics. On two occasions in the 1990s, the principal opposition leader, Abdoulaye Wade, was arrested but was then acquitted by the courts and allowed back into political life. In 1998 Diouf engineered the abolition of a two-term limit on presidential office holding, but he lost his bid for a third term in the 2000 election. Like Senghor before him, Diouf relinquished the presidency with democratic aplomb, enabling Senegal to undergo its first transfer of executive power to opposition forces, which were led by Wade, who became president. One year later, a new constitution was adopted, and its provisions bolstered the legitimacy of opposition parties and their ability to compete for executive power. It remains to be seen if Abdoulaye Wade will follow the examples of Senghor and Diouf when his turn to vacate the presidency comes, but we are inclined to regard Senegal’s elite as consensually united and operating an increasingly stable and representative liberal democratic regime. As such, it is the only instance that we can identify in which French colonial rule spawned a postcolonial political success.

CONCLUSIONS
We have seen in this chapter that quite special circumstances were evidently necessary for consensually united elites and stable representative liberal oligarchies and liberal democracies to emerge from the extremely widespread

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practice of colonial rule during the modern historical period. Predominantly, these circumstances were confined to some British colonies after English politics had been tamed and elites had adopted accommodative practices in the watershed settlement of 1689. On our reading of the historical record as regards the foundations of liberal democracy, the English settlement was the pivotal political event in modern history. That it occurred in a state,
England-cum-Britain, that went on to dominate a large part of the world had enormous consequences for how much of the world evolved politically during the next three centuries. To be sure, there was a Dutch precursor, which itself had significant influence on the English elite settlement, and there was a Swedish duplication a hundred years later that fundamentally tamed politics in the Scandinavian peninsula. But no comparable taming of politics by elites occurred in the other European imperial states, all of which replicated overseas the condition of disunited elites that underlay their politics at home.
Only the Senegalese offshoot of French colonialism may constitute a deviation from this uniform pattern.
Several important caveats must be appended to the analysis pursued in this chapter. One is that the liberal democratic successes of English/British colonial rule, especially the Anglo-American liberal democracies, doubtless depended upon favorable geographic locations and population-resource ratios. Where British settlers were resisted only by small and militarily ineffective indigenous populations, where vast lands where available from which the bulk of the settlers could extract prospering livelihoods that were not siphoned off by entrenched aristocratic and leisured classes, and where the settlers were remote and safe from the depredations of other imperial powers, the political practices the settlers brought with them from England/Britain were likely to flourish. Yet these favorable geographic and population resource conditions do not seem to have been decisive, for they also existed in Latin America during the first colonial era and, to a lesser extent, in some parts of Africa during the second. Moreover, where such favorable conditions did not exist, as they by and large did not in India and Malaysia, British colonial practices still bore much political fruit in our analytical sense.
A second caveat is that consensually united elites and liberal oligarchies or democracies were possible outcomes of colonialism in other than just the
British cases. The Swedish-Norwegian case demonstrates this, as does the earlier Dutch case, and even the ambiguous outcome of American colonial rule in the Philippines during the twentieth century at least points toward it.
A third caveat is that what happened at the elite level under colonial rule was not immutable. In at least a dozen instances, charted in chapter 2, disunited elites that emerged from colonial conditions were later able to transform their behaviors in ways favorable for liberal democracy.
The overt colonial rule with which this chapter has been concerned has presumably ended. The present and future are, ostensibly, postcolonial. In

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this respect, one of the most important routes to consensually united elites and, thus, the foundations of liberal democracy is now closed. From a liberal democratic standpoint the implication is ominous, for in a numerical sense the colonial route was the most important generator of the elite configuration essential to liberal democracy. A lessened incidence of new consensually united elites thus seems likely during the twenty-first century. However, there is one more way in which such elites may originate and found liberal democracies, and it is the next chapter’s subject.
NOTES
1. For example: Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation (New York: Basic
Books, 1963); Myron F. Weiner, Competitive Elections in Developing Countries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987); Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The
Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
2. Stephen Saunders Webb, Lord Churchill’s Coup (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1995), 182–216.
3. Webb, Lord Churchill, 205.
4. Jack P. Green, ‘‘The Glorious Revolution and the British Empire, 1688–1783,’’ in The Revolution of 1688-1689: Changing Perspectives, ed. Lois Schowerer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 265.
5. Green, ‘‘Glorious Revolution,’’ 266–68.
6. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 51.
7. Maier, American Scripture, 54.
8. Maier, American Scripture, 55.
9. Thomas R. Dye and Harmon Zeigler, The Irony of Democracy, 20th ed. (New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1996).
10. Maier, American Scripture, 196.
11. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency:
1930–1970, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), chapter 5.
12. Stephen E. Lucas, ‘‘The Plakkaat van Verlatinge: A Neglected Model for the
American Declaration of Independence,’’ in Connecting Cultures: The Netherlands in Five Centuries of Transatlantic Exchange, ed. Rosemarijn Hoefte and Johanna C.
Kardux (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994), 189–207; Lois G. Schwoerer, The
Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); but cf. Maier, American Scripture, 264.
13. Lynn Spillman, Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
14. John Higley and Rhonda Evans Case, ‘‘The Executive Prerogative Issue,’’ Australian Journal of Political Science 35, 3 (November 2000): 523–27.
15. John Higley, Desley Deacon, and Donald Smart, Elites in Australia (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979).
16. David E. Smith, The Republican Option in Canada, Past and Present (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1999).

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17. Jack P. Green, ‘‘Glorious Revolution,’’ 268–69.
18. Arend Lijphart, ‘‘The Puzzle of Indian Democracy: A Consociational Interpretation,’’ American Political Science Review 90 (June 1996): 258–68.
19. Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003),
106–13.
20. William Case, Elites and Regimes in Malaysia (Clayton, Australia: Monash
Asia Institute, 1996), 85–87.
21. Case, Elites and Regimes.
22. Richard Joseph, ‘‘Africa: States in Crisis,’’ Journal of Democracy 14 (July 2003):
165.
23. John D. Holm, ‘‘Botswana: A Paternalistic Democracy,’’ in Democracy in
Developing Countries: Africa, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin
Lipset (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner), 183–84.
24. Jason Brownlee, ‘‘Durable Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization’’
(unpublished manuscript, University of Texas at Austin, 2005), 283–84.
25. Seth Mydans, ‘‘For Philippine Military, Politics Remains Crucial Mission,’’
New York Times, March 5, 2006.
26. For example: Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the
Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 14–15 and seriatim. 5
Convergences among Disunited Elites

Are democratic elections, not consensually united elites, the main foundation of liberal democracy? ‘‘The essence of democracy,’’ writes Samuel P.
Huntington, ‘‘is the choosing of rulers in regular, fair, open, competitive elections in which the bulk of the population can vote.’’1 If, following a transition to democracy, two turnovers of power take place between the parties and forces contesting subsequent elections, democracy becomes consolidated and increasingly liberal. This is because ‘‘the long-term effect of the operation of democratic politics is probably to broaden and deepen individual liberty. Liberty is, in a sense, the peculiar virtue of democracy.’’2
The idea that democratic elections lead to liberal democracies is widespread. Among policy makers it is axiomatic, says Thomas Carothers, that
‘‘achieving regular, genuine elections will not only confer democratic legitimacy on new governments but continuously deepen democratic participation and accountability.’’3 On the other hand, some leading analysts of democratization caution against exaggerating the effects of elections. Juan
Linz and Alfred Stepan warn of the ‘‘electoralist fallacy,’’ in which ‘‘a necessary condition of democracy, free elections, is seen as a sufficient condition of democracy.’’4 And Guillermo O’Donnell reminds those who believe in the transforming power of democratic elections that they are often compatible with long-lasting competitive authoritarian, delegative, or other hybrid regimes located in a ‘‘gray zone’’ between democracy and its absence.5
During the twentieth century many countries held contested and participatory elections at regular intervals, even though elites remained disunited and politics were not noticeably tamed. In most of these countries, irregular power seizures eventually occurred and overtly authoritarian regimes replaced what had seemed to be relatively well-established democracies (see chapter 2). Only in a handful of countries with disunited elites did democratic elections appear to lead over time to liberal democracies. In none of
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them was there clear indication of an elite settlement prior to, or concomitant with, the initiation of democratic elections, and in none had there been a recent and unifying experience of colonial home rule and national independence struggle. Yet regular and competitive elections were held, elites gradually became consensually united, and liberal democracies blossomed.
This appears to deny the relationship between elites and liberal democracy that, we argue, always obtains. If democratic elections precede and help foster consensually united elites, are not those elections, rather than the elite configuration they spawn, the foundation of liberal democracy? Our answer is complex and more uncertain than we would like. It centers on what we call an elite convergence: a gradual shift among disunited elites who judge that participating in free and fair democratic elections does not jeopardize their vital interests, or that, more minimally, there is no realistic alternative to participating in such elections and accepting their outcomes. These are judgments that disunited elites may or may not make. Democratic elections do not in themselves unite elites. But in certain circumstances they present disunited elites with the opportunity to converge toward a consensus about game rules that govern future competitions. If elites choose to exploit this opportunity, liberal democracy is the eventual result; if they ignore it, democratic elections are an arena for power struggles that, sooner or later, will abrogate elections or render them a facade for one camp’s unbridled rule.
¸
In countries that have transited to democracy and are holding relatively free and fair elections, a convergence may begin if some of the opposing factions in a disunited elite form a broad political coalition that mobilizes enough voters to win the elections repeatedly. This enables the coalesced factions to dominate government executive power and obtain the greater security that derives from such domination. A convergence may continue if other factions that remain hostile to the winning coalition conclude that seizing power by irregular means is not a realistic possibility, so they must beat the winning coalition at the polls if they are to escape permanent political subordination. This means acknowledging the value of elections and promising to accept their results. A convergence may be considered complete when formerly hostile and losing factions gain power through an election and govern in a way that is respectful of established institutions and tacit live-and-letlive reciprocities with the previously dominant coalition. As happens more clearly and quickly in elite settlements, through convergences elites gradually reach an underlying consensus about the norms of restrained political competition so that politics are tamed. Accordingly, an unstable democratic regime stabilizes, and a liberal democracy may start to take shape.
Elite convergences depend upon several important conditions. The first is a relatively high level of socioeconomic development and the prosperity it creates. This tends to dispose a majority, or at least a plurality, of voters to support elites that promise to defend the socioeconomic status quo against

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those that propose its radical alteration. The disposition of a large proportion of voters to endorse the status quo is the bedrock on which a winning elite electoral coalition may be built. A second condition is the presence of a dynamic and popular leader able to meld some discordant factions into a winning coalition. The presence of such a leader is not inevitable, of course, and his or her coalition-forging success may depend upon a third facilitating condition, namely, a political crisis that induces some mutually distrustful factions to collaborate under the leader’s mantle. A fourth condition is the emergence of cross-cutting issue cleavages that present competing elite factions with opportunities to increase their vote shares by broadening and diluting ideologically rigid manifestos and programs. Searching for issue packages that maximize voter support becomes an important part of elite competition; losers increasingly think in terms of repackaging their programs in order to prevail at the next election.
But even where these conditions are present, elite choices remain crucial.
Elites may decide to paper over animosities, or they may continue to rail against injustices, exploit scandals in destabilizing ways, and depict opponents as the devil’s agents. They may choose responses to international events and pressures that ameliorate or exacerbate domestic hostilities. In short, elite convergences do not stem inexorably from democratic elections; the modern historical record shows that in most countries and times where such elections have been held, elites have remained disunited and liberal democracy’s emergence has been stymied. It is also necessary to entertain the possibility that in the relatively few countries where elite convergences have accompanied democratic elections, they have been so dependent on accidental circumstances or on the political-ideological polarities of a particular historical period, such as the Cold War, that one cannot generalize from the cases. Yet, because the other routes to consensually united elites and liberal democracies—elite settlements or experiences of relatively benign colonial rule coupled with independence struggles—are so rare or so closed in today’s world, it is worth considering whether elite convergences are a distinctive third route.

ELITE CONVERGENCES IN WESTERN
EUROPE AND JAPAN
Elite convergences occurred in six West European countries and in Japan between 1950 and 1990. All were at a relatively high level of socioeconomic development and general prosperity when the convergences took place. The two clearest cases are France and Italy during the 1960s and 1970s, and we will examine them in some detail. It is also plausible to hold that West German elites underwent a convergence during the 1950s and 1960s when the

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country experienced its so-called economic miracle, and that Japanese elites did so between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s during a still more dazzling economic expansion, although in both West Germany and Japan the consequences of defeat in World War II and postwar military occupation complicate the analysis. During the 1970s and 1980s, disunited elites in Belgium,
Greece, and Portugal were transformed in ways that approximated convergences, so that their fledgling and unstable democratic regimes gradually stabilized and acquired liberal democratic trappings. Before turning to these seven cases, however, we want to consider, very briefly, two interesting Scandinavian precursors: Norway and Denmark between the two world wars.
Scandinavian Precursors?
As discussed in chapter 4, Norway was controlled by Sweden between
1814 and 1884, with Norwegian elites operating a home-rule regime along representative political lines. We argued that this colonial experience— following nearly three centuries of rule by Danish officials, and marked elite cooperation in designing a liberal constitution during Norway’s momentary independence in 1813–1814—was the primary origin of a consensually united elite. It must be recognized, however, that when the Swedishappointed cabinet in Oslo was finally made responsible to the Norwegianelected Storting in 1884, Norwegian elites were arrayed in conservative and liberal camps, each of which exhibited considerable distrust of the other.
Within a few years, moreover, elites leading disaffected manual industrial workers, whose numbers increased dramatically with Norway’s exceptionally rapid industrialization during the twenty-five years before World War I, emerged at the head of a powerful labor movement and allied Labor Party.
These socialist elites were openly hostile to bourgeois rule and the putatively democratic regime that, in their view, embodied it.
After World War I, radical egalitarian goals and a revolutionary program were ascendant in the socialist elite camp. As noted in chapter 4, the Norwegian Labor Party became the only Western socialist or social democratic party to join the Bolshevik-controlled Comintern, although for just a brief period, 1919–1923. In the face of this professedly revolutionary movement, conservative and liberal elite factions mobilized enough voters to form governments that kept the Labor Party excluded from executive power. After repeated electoral defeats, the magnitudes of which varied directly with the radicalism of socialist rhetoric and threats employed by Labor leaders during election campaigns, these leaders began to tone down their socialist program.
Having had an eighteen-day taste of executive power when it emerged from the 1927 election as the largest party, Labor entered into coalition with the
Agrarian Party to form a left-of-center government in 1934. Because it was beholden to agrarian interests and because its Labor leaders recognized that

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a strict socialist program enjoyed nothing approaching majority support, this government pursued moderate reforms until Hitler’s forces invaded Norway in April 1940. Further united by the experience of German occupation, which entailed the imprisonment of political leaders of all stripes in the same concentration camps, a consensually united elite and a liberal democracy were almost immediately apparent once Norway was liberated in 1945.
Prior to 1901, Danish elites were deeply divided over issues of parliamentary sovereignty, the power of the monarchy, and the extent of the suffrage.
The cabinet was responsible to the monarch, not to the lower house of the
Folketing, which was in any case elected on the basis of a restricted male suffrage. In 1901, the principle of cabinet responsibility to parliament was accepted by dominant conservative elites, and in 1914–1915 the suffrage was made universal, which further strengthened the Folketing’s lower house. But in combination with Denmark’s rapid industrialization during the century’s first two decades, these changes increased the political power of socialist elites who, like their Norwegian brethren, were avowedly revolutionary. To contain the socialists, conservative and liberal factions collaborated in numerous coalition governments during the 1920s, the electoral dominance of which eventually forced leftist leaders to recognize that their revolutionary program had no chance of gaining majority electoral support. During the 1930s, these leaders began to pose much less alarming alternatives to
Danish voters, and once German occupying forces were driven out in 1945 this more moderate stance enabled the Social Democratic Party to dominate
Danish governments during the next several decades, although it never won a majority of votes.
Changes among Norwegian and Danish elites during the interwar period could be said to approximate convergences. However, in neither country did a coherent winning elite coalition actually form; rather, anti-socialist elites merely cooperated to keep right-of-center governments in power so long as socialist radicalism prevented the formation of coalition governments across the deep socialist and anti-socialist divide. As well, the eventual game rule consensus among all main elite factions received powerful support from circumstances extraneous to the convergence process: the long experience of
Norwegian elites in practicing a cautious politics under Swedish control during the nineteenth century, elites’ successful drive for the full independence
Norway achieved in 1905, and in both countries the ways in which German occupation and resistance to it during World War II enhanced elite accommodation and cooperation. Discerning elite convergences in the Norwegian and Danish cases may, therefore, be illusory. On the other hand, there is no clear evidence of an elite settlement in either country’s political record, and the analytical question of how disunited elites in Denmark and mutually suspicious elites in Norway became consensually united finds a plausible answer

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in the thesis that gradual convergences within both elites took place prior to
1945.
France and Italy: Paradigm Cases of Elite Convergence
As brought out in chapter 2, French and Italian elites were disunited throughout their countries’ histories as independent national states, except perhaps during the period of Fascist dictatorship in Italy (1926–1943) when
Mussolini’s ruling elite displayed some ideologically united features. Fueled by bitter memories of the revolution during 1789–1794, French elites’ deep hostilities and incessant power struggles during the nineteenth century produced several regime changes, and they made the Third Republic a very precarious affair from its inception in 1875 until its downfall in 1940. Parallel elite hostilities and struggles made Italy’s politics increasingly chaotic and violent after 1890, and they brought Italy to the brink of civil war in the early 1920s, when the Fascists took over and repressed elites that opposed them. French and Italian elites remained disunited after World War II, although
Maurizio Cotta observes that in Italy the formation of an anti-Fascist grand elite coalition in 1943, which lasted until 1947, might be viewed as an attempted but ultimately unsuccessful elite settlement.6 In both countries immediately following World War II, the liberating American and British forces were essentially in control, as conquerors in Italy, and as somewhat reluctant supporters of a provisional regime under General Charles de
Gaulle in France. Because communist and socialist leaders prudently considered that these liberating forces would support right-of-center elites in any confrontation, they abstained from overt revolutionary actions. Partly because their association with the hated Germans had discredited them, and partly because they also felt sure that the liberating forces would side with them in a confrontation, right-wing elites refrained from fully reopening the political struggles of the prewar decades and earlier. These circumstances made a liberal democratic constitution possible in each country (from 1946 in France and 1948 in Italy), together with an initial coalition government consisting of all major elite factions, including the communists.
With the onset of the Cold War in 1947, however, the communists were excluded from ministerial office, and both countries thereafter had governments consisting of more or less extended coalitions of anti-socialist elites.
In France, the prewar system of tendances, as distinct from fully organized national parties, revived as the ways in which right wing and centrist elites labeled themselves in election contests. Without establishing robust parties, various conservative movements, notably the Gaullists and Poujadists, formed and re-formed. Although a shifting constellation of right-of-center tendances, flash-in-the-pan movements, and centrist factions comprised a

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parliamentary majority, the residues of France’s unique historical divisions militated against the formation of a coherent center-right winning elite coalition.
With communist and socialist elites and movements staunchly opposed to the existing socioeconomic order, and with moderate and conservative elites and tendances jockeying for ascendancy, observers who took a comparative perspective could only conclude that French elites were disunited and that the Fourth Republic was an unstable democracy. Comparing French and
British elites during the years after World War II, Raymond Aron observed,
‘‘In Britain the struggle was only for the exercise of power, in France it was also for the seizure of power.’’7 Representatives of extreme right-wing and left-wing parties and movements together held nearly half of all National
Assembly seats during the 1950s. Deep ideological and programmatic differences, combined with partisan fragmentation within the various tendances and with the unrestrained pursuit of personal ambitions by many deputies, meant that the average government did not survive for more than about eight months. The Algerian crisis in 1958 was a turning point for French elites. Its upshot was the return of Charles de Gaulle to power in circumstances that facilitated the consolidation of what had previously been a disorganized alignment of right-wing and centrist elite factions. After becoming prime minister in May
1958, de Gaulle set about transforming the Fourth Republic into the ambiguously ‘‘presidential’’ Fifth Republic, which gave him, as its duly instituted president from January 1959, the central position. At the same time, de
Gaulle’s associates rapidly organized a wide-ranging political movementcum-party, the Union pour la nouvelle republique (UNR), to support him.
´
During the next few years, until the Algerian problem was finally settled, the clear choice facing French voters was de Gaulle or civil war. Contrary to their ideological habits, many voters supported the president in successive elections and referenda solely on pragmatic grounds. These victories gave de
Gaulle authority to act in ways appropriate to the changing situation. In a process of highly deceptive politics, he gave Algeria and most of the French colonial empire independence while also subduing rebellious elements in the
French military that opposed Algerian independence.
The period between de Gaulle’s return to power in June 1958 and the winning of an absolute majority by Gaullist forces in the National Assembly elections of November 1962 should be seen as the first phase of an elite convergence. During those years, right-wing and centrist elite factions that had previously fought each other became persuaded that they could protect their interests by cooperating in electoral contests against still radical left-wing factions. Thus, the center-right elite coalition that dominated French politics for the next twenty years took shape. Communist and socialist elites and their trade union allies had little choice but to conform to the situation as de

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Gaulle and the solidifying center-right coalition defined it; they presumably saw the sanguinary civil war that would almost certainly follow any overthrow of the president and his new regime as distinctly unprofitable.
The initial phase of the Italian elite convergence occurred during the early
1960s. With the Cold War’s onset in 1947, a split in the Socialist Party over collaboration with the Communists, as well as U.S. backing for antiCommunist forces, made it possible for the Christian Democratic leader,
Alcide De Gasperi, to exclude the Communists from government and then win a majority of parliamentary seats in the April 1948 elections. These events terminated the period of anti-Fascist elite cooperation that began in
1943, and the Communists promptly reverted to a militant mobilization of their supporters on a ‘‘revolutionary’’ basis. As also indicated by the emergence of a neo-fascist movement (the Movimento Sociale Italiano, or MSI) and by a number of highly disruptive strikes and protest actions mobilized by dissident leftist elites, the Italian elite as a whole remained disunited throughout the 1950s. Although no attempt at an irregular seizure of government executive power occurred, fears of a right-wing coup or a left-wing uprising were widespread. By this measure the democratic regime was unstable. Victories in the two national elections of the 1950s enabled the Christian
Democrats and other bourgeois parties, principally the right-wing Liberals, to control parliament. However, the absence of a coherent center-right elite coalition impeded policy implementation. Beginning in 1958, a gradual distancing of the Socialist Party from the Communists and a gradual rapprochement between the Socialists and the Christian Democrats eventually gave the latter a clearly dominant position. With the formation of the
‘‘organic’’ Christian Democrat-Socialist coalition government under Aldo
Moro’s capable leadership in 1963, it was clear that, henceforth, the Christian
Democrats could govern either by moving to their right or their left for coalition partners. By clarifying and more or less guaranteeing the Christian
Democrats’ continuing hold on the lion’s share of government executive power, this development in 1963 signaled the first phase of an Italian elite convergence. As in France, hostile Communist and other leftist elite factions had little choice but to adjust to the existence of a winning elite coalition.
From the early 1960s, in sum, French and Italian elites were more coherently organized into two broad camps than during the early postwar years.
On one side there was a dominant and increasingly unified coalition of centrist and right-of-center elites who defended existing political institutions and practices and adhered to capitalist doctrine at least as regards the provision of rational incentives in the economic sphere, and whose allies held the key posts in the higher civil service, business companies and associations, the church and its affiliated organizations, most of the media, and some trade unions. Arrayed against this coalition were Communist and some Socialist party leaders, most trade union leaders, and many prominent intellectuals

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and celebrities who were affiliated with the Communist and Socialist parties and movements. This second camp held a basically Marxist perspective on economic and social matters, coupled with orientations that were at most semiallegiant toward the bourgeois regimes. During the next twenty years— until the early 1980s—the ideological distinctiveness of the second, smaller elite camp blurred, and its organizational coherence fragmented. Eventually, this blurring and fragmentation led to the completion of elite convergences.
The process unfolded quite differently in the two countries, however. In
France by the late 1960s, the Communist Party elite had begun to jettison tenets of Marxism/Leninism, flirting with, but never formally embracing, an ambiguous Eurocommunist orientation. In 1972 Communist and Socialist party leaders negotiated a Common Government Program that explicitly endorsed the concept of a multiparty system, the sovereignty of the suffrage, the legitimacy of alternations in government office, as well as the protection of basic civil liberties. Communist leaders agreed to share posts with the
Socialists in a future leftist government, and in 1976 they discarded their old dogma about establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat. By the mid-1970s, in other words, the previously Stalinist Communist elite had effectively abandoned its antisystem stance and committed itself to work within established institutions and to play the game of politics according to rules laid down by the elites who established and dominated the Fifth Republic. This major shift was motivated largely by the logic of elite convergence: realizing the impossibility of coming to power by storming the Winter Palace—made manifest by the enormous defeat leftist parties suffered in elections that followed the ostensibly revolutionary street protests and strikes of May 1968— and tiring of a futile opposition to the ensconced Gaullist rule, Communist
Party leaders concluded that only an explicit break with their antisystem stance could give a majority of French voters sufficient confidence to support a Socialist-Communist electoral coalition.
The Socialist elite in France also underwent significant change. Several formerly independent socialist factions merged with the old and organizationally inadequate French Section of the Workers’ International (SIFO) to form a new Socialist Party (PSF) in 1971. Party institutions were rebuilt to pose a more credible electoral challenge to the dominant center-right coalition. In bargaining with the Communists over the Common Government Program, the Socialists modified many of their policies to make them compatible with those of the Communists. This amounted to a shift to the left by the Socialists. However, by 1978, when the Communists withdrew from the Common
Government Program, the Socialists had become the major opposition party.
In reducing the Communists to little more than a rump faction on the left, the stunning electoral triumph of the Socialists in the presidential and
National Assembly elections of 1981 signaled the end of elite division into two or more hostile camps and the onset of a consensually united elite. Ini-

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tially, the Socialist government, over which Francois Mitterrand presided as
¸
president, sought to implement several radical reforms, in particular the nationalization of some banks and industrial conglomerates, and it took risky fiscal steps to halt an economic recession. Within two years, however, these policies had clearly failed, and after suffering serious losses in elections for the European Parliament in June 1984, the Socialist government made an abrupt about-face in economic policy, abandoning nearly all the reforms it had instituted and opting for the moderate, managerial social democratic policies that have characterized the Socialists’ agenda ever since.
In Italy, by contrast, the Communist Party elite avoided being eclipsed by a reformist Socialist Party because it undertook a longer and more comprehensive moderation of its doctrines and policies. By the end of the 1970s, the
Communists could convincingly portray themselves as no longer revolutionary and as, in fact, a bulwark of the established order. The most concrete indicator of this change in the principal leftist elite faction, and probably the best indicator of a completed elite convergence, was Communist support for
Christian Democrat minority cabinets after the 1976 elections and in the face of a considerable terrorist threat by revolutionary groups such as the Red
Brigades. Lasting for three years, this informal Christian Democrat-Communist coalition depolarized Italian elites and signified a tacit consensus about existing institutions and rules of the game.8
It is useful to ask why the final phase of the elite convergence in Italy differed from that in France because, to an important extent, the answers highlight the crucial role played by elite actions and choices in convergences.
From early in the twentieth century, Communist elites in France and Italy adopted what might be called a tribune strategy, which involved defending the working class in the way that Roman tribunes were empowered to intervene on behalf of the plebs.9 In both countries, Communist elites perpetuated their tenures as party, parliamentary, trade union, and local government leaders and officials by always speaking for the working class, by making demands on behalf of working people when it was expedient to do so, by living without ostentation, and by providing counsel and various other services for their followers. In France, working-class support for the Communists was comparatively stable, and workers’ expectations were on the whole limited, so the tribune strategy created little need for leaders of the Communist Party to modify its ideology. French Communist elites performed their tribune function for a relatively undemanding rank-and-file with an ideology that defined the working class narrowly, while also promising the workers’ ultimate triumph.
The circumstances of Italian Communist elites were different. Mussolini’s long fascist dictatorship, during which Communists could act only from exile or underground, prevented a tribune strategy from becoming as firmly implanted. In Italy, moreover, the Catholic Church was a much more formi-

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dable competitor for working class loyalties than in France. Thus, Italian
Communist elites could not as readily establish a stable and exclusive relationship with the working class. They were forced to plunge into society, to associate closely with Communist and Catholic believers and nonbelievers, and to establish a presence wherever they could.10 In time, this competitive process brought the Communists into dominant positions in many local governments where, to survive in the face of multiple and competing interests and claims, they routinely had to calculate forces and make expedient concessions well beyond what French Communist leaders felt compelled to do. Additionally, Italian Communist leaders became regular participants in policy making through membership in parliamentary committees, where much of the business of governing Italy is really done.11 As they became more fully integrated into the governing political elite, the Communists’ distinctive organization and ideology eroded.
These considerations help to account for the different evolutions of Communist elites in France and Italy during the 1960s and 1970s. The more limited but also more secure political roles of French Communist elites enabled them to cling to ideological orthodoxies longer than their Italian counterparts. The concessions French Communist leaders gradually made to liberal democratic principles did not arise out of everyday political necessities to the degree that they did among their Italian cousins, and, consequently, those concessions were more widely viewed as belated and possibly insincere.
Much longer than their Italian cousins, moreover, French Communist elites presided over a monolithic party of cells that gave intellectuals and other supporters from the expanding middle class few opportunities to exert influence within the party. But in this way, the Communist elites merely invited the mobilization of such middle-class cadres by their competitors, the Socialist elites.
In Italy, again by contrast, Communist elites began to distance themselves from the international Communist movement as early as the 1950s, when
Palmiro Togliatti, the Communist Party’s leader, spoke of the movement’s
‘‘polycentrism.’’ They recruited a larger proportion of their ranks from educated middle-class circles; they replaced the party’s cell structure with ‘‘sections’’ not unlike those of social democratic parties; and they tolerated a wide range of ideological and policy positions in the party press and at party congresses. Thus, the Italian Communist elites adjusted more effectively to the increased size and political importance of the bureaucratic and service sectors in advanced industrial workforces than did the French Communists.
This adjustment eventually brought Italian Communist leaders to positions not fundamentally different from those of the other major elites. By the mid1970s, when they endorsed vague Eurocommunist ideas and called for a
‘‘historic compromise’’ between Communism and Christian Democracy, the
Communist elites were far advanced in possessing both the access to decision

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making and the consensus on political game rules that mark a consensually united elite.
This close approach to a consensually united elite, in which Italian Communist leaders were increasingly a mainstay of the established order, enraged
Italian intellectuals who were deeply committed to an oppositionist stance.
Many intellectuals widely condoned, or at least did not condemn, the terrorist movements that sprang up, primarily among disaffected university students, and that brought the Italian state under siege in the late 1970s.
Paradoxically, however, the efforts of terrorists and their sympathizers among intellectuals to, in effect, impede the final unification of Italian elites greatly facilitated completion of the elite convergence. Thus, in the wake of
Aldo Moro’s capture and assassination by left-wing terrorists in 1979, the
Communist Party leadership joined the Christian Democrats, the Liberals, and the Republicans in flatly condemning the terrorists and in voting for laws enabling their suppression. This overt defense of existing institutions by the core component of the formerly hostile elite camp completed the transformation of Italian elites from the disunited to the consensually united configuration. West German and Japanese Elite Convergences
Political changes in West Germany and Japan after World War II can also be interpreted as involving elite convergences and consequent stabilizations of democratic regimes. However, the West German and Japanese processes differed sharply from the French and Italian. The West German convergence proceeded rapidly between 1949, the date of the first postwar elections, and
1966, when a grand coalition government was formed, and it did not involve a political crisis analogous to the Algerian upheaval in France in 1958 or the terrorist onslaught in Italy during the late 1970s. The Japanese convergence, by contrast, began much later in the postwar period, and its completion during the mid-1980s was not marked by a dramatic event like the French
Socialist electoral victory in 1981, the German grand coalition government in 1966, or the murder of Aldo Moro and Christian Democrat-Communist cooperation to repress left-wing terrorism in Italy during 1979.
That German and Japanese elites were disunited following German unification in 1870 and the Meiji Restoration in 1868, respectively, needs little demonstration. Semifeudal, monarchical, and rigidly hierarchical beliefs and practices continued to characterize governing elites in both countries after those dates, while distinct camps of liberal and then also revolutionary socialist-communist elites opposed and reviled the two imperial regimes.12
In Germany, elites remained deeply disunited during the Weimar Republic, fueling several insurrections against the democratic regime and opening the way to the Nazi takeover in 1933.13 In Japan, intense elite struggles barred a

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tamed democratic politics during the 1920s, and a politics of assassination led to control by the military elite during the 1930s.
Whether West German elites reverted to the disunited condition after
World War II can be debated. The Nazi regime, the total defeat Germany suffered in the war, and establishment of a Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic in eastern Germany immediately following the war effectively liquidated the more extreme elite groups on both the left and the right, and those events thoroughly discredited the ideological positions that extreme left- and right-wing elites had articulated. Furthermore, the allied occupation authorities sought to exclude from leadership positions anyone suspected of being antidemocratic. Emerging elites and political parties in
West Germany after 1945 were, in effect, ‘‘licensed’’ and closely scrutinized by those authorities.14 Finally, in the ashes of their cities, the division and occupation of their country, and in their memories of the chaotic politics of the Weimar regime, West German leaders had cardinal evidence of the costs of unchecked elite conflicts. It is possible to argue, in short, that elites basically committed to operating a stable democratic regime existed from the
Federal Republic’s outset and were consensually united. To the extent that this was so, then no elite convergence, or at least none of fundamental importance, occurred subsequently; rather, a consensually united elite was effectively imposed on West Germany through foreign conquest, and accommodation and cooperation merely became embedded among elites during the following decades of rapid reconstruction and unparalleled economic expansion.
One can, on the other hand, view West German elites as disunited in the late 1940s. Few elites, for example, looked upon the new Federal Republic and its Basic Law with much enthusiasm. Officially at least, the Social Democrats viewed the new regime as an interim one pending German reunification. Moreover, the first federal elections in 1949 provided evidence that political alignments were nearly as fragmented as they had been during the
Weimar period: fully ten parties were represented in the Bundestag after those elections, with no party enjoying anything close to a majority of seats or winning a majority of votes at the polls. The newly formed Christian
Democrats (CDU) represented highly diverse views and interests, while the revived Social Democrats (SPD) led by Kurt Schumacher and other surviving Weimar leaders articulated the Party’s longstanding socialist, pacifist, and anticlerical positions. The resurrected Communist Party meanwhile captured nearly 6 percent of the vote, and the possibility of a neo-Nazi movement could not be dismissed. These were reasons why analysts of West
German politics as late as the 1960s were quite uncertain about the elite’s basic condition and, perforce, the democratic regime’s stability.15 There was much discussion of the autocratic and arbitrary nature of Konrad Adenauer’s so-called chancellor democracy; much dismay about former Nazis in

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elite and subelite positions;16 and much concern, in Ralf Dahrendorf’s memorable phrase, that the elite in the early 1960s was a Kartell der Angst lacking self-confidence, cohesion, and consensus.17
However one assesses the West German elite’s basic condition in the early postwar years, it is the case that political changes in West Germany between the late 1940s and late 1960s closely followed the pattern of an elite convergence. After the inconclusive 1949 elections, Konrad Adenauer, the leader of an ad hoc CDU and Christian Socialist (CSU) coalition, patched together one vote more than was necessary in the Bundestag to secure his election as federal chancellor. Much in the manner of Charles de Gaulle ten years later in France, Adenauer then capitalized on his personal prestige and the absence of any obvious alternative leader to construct a durable and clearly dominant center-right elite coalition. This was in existence after the 1953 elections, in which the CDU-CSU coalition came within one seat of having a majority in the Bundestag, so that the coalition could readily govern with the support of the Free Democrats (FDP) and two small right-of-center parties.
Not later than 1953, then, West German elites were organized into two relatively coherent camps: a dominant center-right coalition led by Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, Adenauer’s successor in 1963, and a smaller, disaffected elite camp consisting primarily of SPD, trade union, and various intellectual and cultural leaders. Major policy differences over West German rearmament and military conscription, European integration and a European Defense
Community, West Germany’s relations with East Germany and with the
NATO Alliance, and, initially, a proposed system of employer and worker
‘‘co-determination’’ in industrial relations separated the two camps. A socialist-cum-pacifist, or at least neutralist, stance was taken by the disaffected elites, while those in the dominant center-right camp took staunch anti-communist and anti-socialist stances and proclaimed their pro-Western attachments. West Germany’s exposed location, the bellicose nature of Soviet policy toward Central Europe, the presence of powerful foreign military forces, and the rapid economic expansion that began in the early 1950s kept these elite divisions from threatening the new democratic regime’s survival. As the
1950s progressed, disaffected leftist elites were presented with numerous faits accomplis in national security and foreign policy arenas, while rapid economic expansion defused industrial relations conflicts. The winning character of the center-right elite coalition was conclusively demonstrated in the
1957 elections: the CDU-CSU won an absolute majority of Bundestag seats and began governing without the Free Democrats. By the late 1950s, as well, many foreign policy and industrial relations issues that had elicited strong socialist and pacifist sentiments among SPD leaders and their allies were less salient, and a younger postwar generation of SPD and trade union leaders were rising to leadership positions.

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Many of these new leaders believed that, if they were to compete seriously for government executive power, the SPD and the wider labor movement had to adopt policy positions and an electoral platform not radically different from those of their opponents. This was accomplished in 1959 in the
SPD’s famous Bad Godesberg program, which repudiated the party’s revolutionary Marxist tradition, denied anticlerical aims, and barely mentioned the socialist nostrum of nationalizing private enterprises.18 At its 1960 party conference, the SPD confirmed Willy Brandt as chancellor candidate for the
1961 elections, and it set about competing for votes mainly on the basis of its candidates’ competence and personalities instead of the party’s ideological distinctiveness. At the 1961 elections, the SPD improved its shares of the popular vote and Bundestag seats enough to strip the CDU-CSU of the majority it enjoyed after 1957, so that the CDU-CSU-FDP governing coalition had to be revived. The 1965 election had the same result, with the SPD again improving its vote and seat shares.
The absence of sharp ideological and policy disputes in both the 1961 and
1965 elections can be interpreted as indicating that West German elites were consensually united shortly after the SPD’s Bad Godesberg conference in
1959. It seems sensible, however, to look for a clear political event that indicates the completion of an elite convergence, and the formation of the grand coalition CDU-CSU-SPD government in 1966 was such an event. In the face of the first economic downturn since the Federal Republic was founded, doubts about Ludwig Erhard’s leadership spread within the CDU and CSU and among their FDP coalition partners. The extent to which a neo-Nazi party was profiting politically from the economic downturn in several state elections added a sense of crisis. Fearing they might be onboard a sinking government ship, the Free Democrats withdrew from their coalition with the CDU-CSU, leaving the latter without a majority in the Bundestag. After complicated and unprecedented negotiations between all the important political elite factions, the upshot was a grand coalition government, led by a new CDU chancellor, Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, but with Willy Brandt, the
SPD leader, as vice chancellor and foreign minister. This event clearly demonstrated the readiness of elites to cooperate in managing problems and upholding institutions, and it signified the completion of an elite convergence that, in our analysis, began in the early 1950s with the formation of the CDU-CSU-FDP winning elite coalition.
The grand coalition government of 1966–1969 proved to be the Social
Democrats’ route to a thirteen-year ascendancy in federal politics, from 1969 until 1982, during which SPD leaders choked off a serious outburst of leftwing terrorism in the early 1970s while also pursuing conspicuously moderate and pragmatic domestic and foreign policies. Throughout this period, conflicts between different elite factions were less pronounced than conflicts between elites and discontented, mainly university-educated, cadre person-

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nel, especially within the SPD itself. Such elite-cadre conflicts were common to all stable Western democracies during the 1970s and early 1980s.19 The shift back to a right-of-center government in 1982 resulted from calculations of political expediency by the FDP leadership and involved no major changes in policy or increased elite conflict. Comprehensive survey studies of West German elites in 1968, 1972, and 1981, and then of elites in reunified
Germany in 1995–1996, produced much evidence of integration and consensus about democratic game rules.20 Assessing the overall condition of West
German elites in the mid-1980s, Lewis Edinger observed that ‘‘elite relations are marked today by an unprecedented degree of mutual trust and cooperation,’’ so that ‘‘every major leadership group today has a share of policymaking, and the elite political culture allows all key actors some influence as long as they observe the rules of the game.’’21 The most problematic aspect of the West German case is, thus, the extent of elite unity or disunity during the early postwar years. Between 1949 and 1966 elite change conformed closely to the convergence process, but this may have been because, after the traumas of the Nazi period and wartime defeat and occupation, the elites were already substantially united and consensual.
The most problematic aspect of the Japanese case, by contrast, is not the occurrence of an elite convergence per se so much as the event or events signifying its completion. American occupation (1945–1952) altered the composition of Japanese elites, especially in the political and military spheres, but it did not unite them. Japanese political activity in the first few months after August 1945 indicated that, if left alone, the elites would perpetuate the prewar and wartime power structure under a revision of the Prussian-style
Meiji Constitution. However, by the end of formal American occupation in
April 1952, political and military elites, and to a much lesser extent bureaucratic and business elites, had been purged of their more extreme right- and left-wing members,22 and there was a regime based on a democratic constitution written and imposed on Japan by the Americans. These changes were important bases for the emergence of a consensually united elite, but they did not produce one.
The immediate postwar period in Japan was politically chaotic. In 1946, the occupation authorities ordered the purge of 35,000 national and local leaders associated with the wartime regime. This decimated the potentially dominant Conservative Party, which fragmented into many small and competing factions and parties. Communist and Socialist elites had not been as systematically liquidated before and during World War II as they were under the German Nazi regime, and in an initially favorable environment created by postwar occupation, these elites quickly reemerged. The Communist
Party elite consisted of unreconstructed Stalinists who took their orders from Moscow and adhered to the Marxist/Leninist orthodoxy of proletarian revolution, as did an important segment of the Socialist Party elite, although

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it lacked ties to Moscow. Together, the two party elites mobilized roughly a quarter of all votes in early postwar elections.23
An ineffective Socialist-led coalition held government power briefly during 1947–1948, but it soon collapsed in defections and bitter doctrinal struggles between radical and moderate factions. In 1950, the purge of some
22,000 communists and their ‘‘sympathizers’’—a cooperative effort of the occupation authorities, the conservative government of the day, and democratizing elements within the labor movement24 —created a leadership vacuum on the radical left, which was filled for a time by the left-wing faction of the
Socialist Party. The resulting increase in power of the party’s left wing triggered a formal three-way party split, which lasted from 1950 to 1955.
Thus, except for the brief coalition government of 1947–1948, which only saddled the Socialists with a reputation for ineffectiveness, government power fell more or less by default to various conservative coalitions between
1946 and 1955. During this period, ideological and policy cleavages among elites were deep, and interelite cooperation and trust were minimal. Elites were clearly disunited. Although the American occupation, the dismantling of the Japanese military, and a continuing U.S. military presence after 1952 made coup attempts infeasible, the legacy of prewar elite enmities and conflicts was great, and the stability of the new democratic regime was at best precarious. The difficulties posed by this shaky regime were substantially ameliorated, however, because real governing power rested primarily in the government bureaucracy, with Diet politicians mostly rubber-stamping the policy initiatives of career civil servants, whose overriding goal was to rebuild the economy.25
Reunification of the Socialist Party in early 1955, plus concerted pressures from business elites, prompted the two principal right-of-center parties, the
Liberals and the Democrats, to merge and form the Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) in late 1955. The avowed purpose was to construct a barrier against Socialist political dominance.26 For a while it seemed that Japanese political alignments were moving toward a two-party, left-versus-right pattern that would involve periodic alternations in government by Liberal Democrats and Socialists.27 But no alternation occurred, and 1955 marked the start of the LDP’s more or less unbroken control of government executive power. The formation of the winning LDP coalition in 1955 might be seen as the start of a Japanese elite convergence. But at the time it was by no means clear to elites that LDP domination would be unshakeable. For that matter, LDP commitment to existing institutions and rules of the game was clouded by its publicly stated goal of overturning the American-imposed constitution.28
Until the early 1960s, elites were aligned in opposing camps of more or less equal political strength, and it was an open question which camp would prevail. Elite disunity and regime instability were suggested by the large and

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violent demonstrations that leftist elites mobilized before and during revision of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960. The demonstrations led to the
LDP prime minister’s resignation, and they were followed by the assassination of the Socialist Party leader, Ichio Asanuma, in November 1960.
However, 1960 was the high point of postwar elite conflict. Because radicals continued to dominate the Socialist Party’s leadership, a moderate faction split off to form the Democratic Socialists in that year. In 1964, another centrist alignment emerged, the Buddhist-oriented Komeito party. This fragmentation of the two-camp elite division suggested that leftist elites would probably never be able to form a government on their own and would, henceforth, constitute an elite bloc with distinctly limited electoral support.
This is what transpired, and it is why the start of an elite convergence is best dated from the emergence of centrist factions between 1960 and 1964. In those years also, LDP elites stopped agitating for a new constitution, and they adopted moderate positions on a range of issues. In short, during the early 1960s a winning, if somewhat de facto, center-right elite coalition formed, and other elites had to start thinking about how to adjust their actions and positions accordingly.
If an elite convergence began in Japan during the early 1960s, how did it progress and when was it completed? During the next ten years, the Communist Party (JCP) elite moderated its Marxist/Leninist stance. Ties to the
Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes were severed during the mid-1960s;
JCP leaders stood by the LDP government during serious student protests in the late 1960s; they publicly pronounced the Diet a legitimate institution in 1971; and in 1976 they abandoned the dogma of an eventual dictatorship of the proletariat. Yet, by remaining committed to a ‘‘scientific socialism’’ and by regularly claiming that policies of the LDP governments were opening the way to Japanese-style fascism, JCP leaders did not garner wide voter support. Their share of the total vote hovered around 10 percent until well into the 1980s, and like the French Communist elite in the same period, the
JCP leadership constituted a significant but only semiallegiant elite.
Because of severe factionalism in the Socialist Party (JSP), it was for a long time difficult to discern a clear trend toward ideological moderation in this larger and politically more important elite. Foreign policy conflicts during the Vietnam War, coupled with the radicalization of university students, led many JSP leaders to take highly confrontational positions during the late
1960s and much of the 1970s. Penetration of the party’s cadre ranks by radical activists led to further splintering in 1977. Thus, it was not until about
1983, when a new party leader, Masashi Ishibashi, was chosen that any pronounced trend toward doctrinal moderation began in the JSP as a whole. In
1986, the party’s 1955 Road to Socialism program was rewritten, and most
Marxist baggage was jettisoned, although the more moderate program was adopted only after bitter resistance by the party’s left wing. During the

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1980s, the Socialists steadily lost electoral support and, after a shattering defeat in the 1986 elections when they lost a quarter of their Diet seats, they looked like they were becoming but another of the small parties confronting the LDP juggernaut.
JSP electoral fortunes remained in the doldrums during the early 1990s.
In 1991, the JSP changed its name to the Social Democratic Party (SDJP), and in 1993 it again revised its platform, finally abandoning socialism as a goal and dropping its long-held neutralist foreign policies. With the LDP’s fortunes also waning at that time, the SDJP entered the first non-LDP coalition government in four decades in 1993. A year later, in what amounted to the former socialists’ full incorporation into Japan’s political power structure, it formed a coalition government with its archenemy, the LDP, so that the Social Democrat leader, Tomiichi Murayama, became the first socialist prime minister since 1948. This SDJP-LDP coalition government undertook no radical reforms or dramatic policy innovations, and it suffered from severe intraparty factionalism from the outset. It nevertheless limped on until early 1998, albeit on an informal basis after late 1996, when the SDJP, so enfeebled electorally that it had become but a shadow of the old JSP, left the government coalition, so that the LDP has since governed with the support of Komeito and the small New Conservative Party.
To return to our question: When was the elite convergence in Japan completed? The simplest answer is to regard the formation of the SDJP-LDP grand coalition government in 1994 as indicating its definitive completion.
However, there are several reasons to think that the convergence was effectively completed during the mid-1980s, once the JSP largely jettisoned its
Marxist baggage. First, the absence of any alternation between governing and opposition forces until the 1990s was due in large part to the skill with which
LDP leaders responded to and manipulated the predominant centrist tendencies among Japanese voters. Second, although unable to win control of government, JSP politicians, in their version of the French and Italian communists’ tribune strategy, concentrated on winning secure positions as leaders and spokespersons for quite narrow constituencies. This involved espousing radical positions to satisfy party militants while behaving moderately at election time and within the Diet, and it indicated that in terms of behavior the JSP elite was substantially integrated into the wider Japanese elite by the mid-1980s.29
Alterations in the LDP provide further evidence that the convergence process was completed in the mid-1980s. During its by then thirty years in power, the LDP had come to encompass a wide range of interests, and it manifested internally much of the competition that is found between parties in other democratic regimes. For example, the leaders of well-articulated
LDP factions regularly advocated policy positions at odds with those of the incumbent LDP prime minister. This produced significant changes of style

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and policy orientation from one LDP prime minister to the next, and it robbed opposition politicians of many effective election issues.30 Entrenched factional competition within the LDP, combined with a well-established pattern of cooperation and compromise among LDP and opposition party leaders, plus the LDP’s close cooperation with business and bureaucratic elites, strongly suggested an elite structure that allowed most powerful persons and groups satisfactory access to decision making under widely accepted, albeit wholly tacit, rules of the game. We are, therefore, inclined to conclude that
Japanese elites have been consensually united since the mid-1980s, so that the
Japanese political regime has been interchangeable with the liberal democracies of the West European and Anglo-American countries ‘‘while at the same time being utterly unique.’’31
Other West European Elite Convergences: Belgium,
Greece, and Portugal
Changes from disunited to consensually united elites in Belgium, Greece, and Portugal during the twentieth century’s second half also appear to have involved elite convergences. But because of regionally based linguistic and cultural divisions, the Belgian case is ambiguous and complex, while the
Greek and Portuguese cases deviated in important ways from the modal convergence pattern.
It can be argued that, consonant with the absence of irregular seizures of power throughout Belgium’s history as an independent national state, its elites have been consensually united since the country seceded from the
Netherlands in 1830. On this reading, the struggle against Dutch rule gave birth to a consensually united elite. However, between independence in 1830 and the 1960s, Belgian elites were deeply conflicted, and serious political crises were frequent. It can, therefore, also be argued that Belgian elites had not experienced colonial political conditions and an independence struggle sufficient to unite them when the national state emerged in 1830; instead, the elites were basically disunited, and the regime was fundamentally unstable.
Specifically, there were sharp conflicts between Catholic and Liberal elite camps over church-state issues long after 1830.32 The bitterness of these conflicts and the frequent recourse of both camps to mob actions aimed at intimidating their opponents were pronounced.
As in other European countries toward the end of the nineteenth century, moreover, the oligarchic Catholic and Liberal parties faced emerging elites leading a large and violence-prone industrial working class. A law passed in
1893 enacted universal suffrage, but not in a straightforward way. Many upper-class persons were allowed more than one vote on the basis of their greater wealth and education. Whether anticipated or not, this extension of the suffrage gave the Catholic Party supremacy over the previously more or

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less equally influential Liberal Party, whose free trade and secular positions had limited popular support. Thus, a newly formed Socialist Party entered
Parliament in 1894 with a larger delegation than the Liberals. It was soon apparent that the conservative Catholic Party dominated the new electoral system, and it controlled the central government for the next 20 years.
The precariousness of Belgian politics after 1894 stemmed mainly from the presence of a clearly radical elite camp, the Socialists. Unable to form a government in its own right for want of an electoral majority or a large enough plurality, the Socialist Party could only hope to achieve some measure of power in coalition with the Liberals or the Catholics, and the Socialists participated in coalition governments for slightly less than half of the interwar period, nearly always as junior partners. With their egalitarian programs and goals stymied to this extent, Socialist elites organized or encouraged strikes and disorders to protest government policies. As in the French
Third Republic during the same period, political institutions escaped irregular overthrow, and the regime retained a democratic form. But there were harsh clashes between camps of elites and their followings, including four general strikes before 1914, frequent popular disorders during the interwar period, a large and ominous fascist movement during the 1930s, and in 1950 a general strike that raised the specter of civil war in Wallonia and forced the abdication of Leopold III.
During the 1950s, the ethnic consciousness of the Flemish and Walloon regions increased as a result of the newly apparent numerical superiority, more-rapid modernization, and greater prosperity of the Flemish. In the winter of 1960–1961 widespread strikes and protests broke out over the burden allegedly placed on the industrial working class by the government austerity measures that followed Belgium’s loss of its Congo colony in 1960.
Class based and egalitarian in thrust, these disruptions conformed initially to the pattern of frustrated outbursts with which the socialist elites had long been associated. On this occasion, however, the character of social protest changed in midstream and became mainly a manifestation of Wallonian ethnic defensiveness against increasing Flemish power. This soon provoked vengeful Flemish protests against the advantages that the French-speaking
Walloons had previously enjoyed. Within a few years, all three traditional parties (the Catholics by then known as the Christian Socialists) split into distinct ethnic organizations, and a number of new regionally based parties and movements also emerged.
By blanketing the class-oriented radicalism of socialist elites, these upheavals over ethnic and linguistic cleavages in the early 1960s appear to have laid the basis for what amounted to an elite convergence during the next two decades. Henceforth, elite divisions tended to run strongly along ethnic rather than class lines. The elites associated with the three traditional parties, each now split into Wallonian and Flemish parties, strove to contain the wid-

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ening regional divisions. They eventually agreed, in the Egmont Pact of 1977, on a restructuring of political institutions amounting to ‘‘federalization without federalism.’’33 However, the restructuring ran into repeated political roadblocks until 1992, when all major elite groups assented to a set of accords establishing a formal federal system. In itself, the convergence of elites to manage potentially disastrous ethnic and linguistic divisions could hardly be expected to eliminate those divisions or prevent the country’s possible breakup along ethnic and regional lines. But the convergence largely erased the threat to regime stability that the old left-versus-right antagonisms had posed for many decades.
The political experience of Greece during the twentieth century was one of disunited elites and unstable regimes that oscillated between authoritarian and fledgling democratic forms. A deep and long-standing division between republican and royalist elite camps led to the monarchy’s elimination in
1924, but then to the exiled king’s recall with the onset of a military dictatorship in 1936. Politics were punctuated by at least four coups or attempted coups during the 1920s and 1930s. When Greece was liberated from German wartime occupation in 1946, the monarchy resumed in the midst of a fiveyear civil war (1944–1949) between communist and anti-communist forces.
The election in 1964 of a center-left government, headed by George Papandreou, led immediately to conflict with the monarch, Papandreou’s dismissal a year later, and a series of increasingly ominous crises that culminated in a military coup in April 1967. The coup instituted a harsh Colonels’ regime, which lasted until an ill-fated intervention in Cyprus triggered its downfall in July 1974.
Hasty negotiations during the days following the Colonels’ downfall portended an elite settlement when some civilian and military leaders agreed to let a prestigious conservative leader, Constantine Karamanlis, return from abroad and head an interim, pro-democratic government that was confirmed in office by free elections in November 1974. However, major left- and rightwing elites, notably those leading the Panhellenic Socialist Movement
(PASOK) and the Communist Party (KKE), played little role in the negotiations, and they boycotted Parliament when Karamanlis and his supporters pushed a new constitution through Parliament in 1975. Only after Karamanlis and his New Democratic Party won a second round of free elections, in
1977, did PASOK and KKE elites start to recognize that abandoning their semiallegiant stances was the surer route to government power. An elite convergence was most conspicuous in the lessening of PASOK’s left-wing militancy, but it could also be seen in the KKE’s moderation and in the restrained practices of the Karamanlis government. What might have been a remarkably rapid convergence appeared to near completion with PASOK’s election victory and return to executive power in 1981, albeit with Karamanlis serving as president between 1980 and 1985.

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The 1980s proved to be politically turbulent, however. Numerous sharp confrontations between competing elites and a flurry of allegations about incompetent or corrupt actions by the PASOK leader and prime minister,
Andreas Papandreou, fostered increasing political deadlock. During the second half of 1989, attempts to break, or at least circumvent, deadlock included a curious three-month anti-PASOK coalition government consisting of the previously deeply opposed New Democrats and Communists. This rightleft government was followed, after a brief caretaker interlude, by an equally short-lived grand coalition government consisting of all three main parties.
These two cross-party coalition governments at the end of the 1980s, and the extensive and intensive elite negotiations they involved, probably best mark the completion of an elite convergence. With the rise of a new generation of political leaders during the 1990s, political conflicts moderated further, and much attention was turned to pursuing a rapprochement with Turkey and preparing to enter the European Monetary Union in 2001. With the KKE’s supporters having dwindled to about 5 percent of the electorate, Greek politics settled into a fairly routine electoral competition between the center-left
PASOK and center-right New Democrats. There was little question that
Greece had become a liberal democracy.
With a history of disunited elites and unstable regimes as lengthy as
Spain’s (see chapters 2 and 3), Portugal’s transition to democracy in the mid1970s and its subsequent evolution to a liberal democracy was one of the more remarkable political surprises of the twentieth century’s last quarter.
An elite convergence drove this fundamental change. The revolutionary turmoil that accompanied Portugal’s democratic transition in 1975–1976 left the military elite in a controlling position. A constitutionally prescribed Council of the Revolution consisting of military leaders had the power to veto actions of duly constituted civilian governments. This undercut democratic politics and generated much uncertainty about their duration. The hotly disputed role of the military, as well as the existence of a Communist Party whose
Stalinist orthodoxies made its allegiance to the new and putatively democratic regime doubtful, indicated a disunited elite and regime instability.
The military question in Portuguese politics was resolved, and the challenge of an unreformed Communist Party was greatly reduced by the convergence of elites during the 1980s. In 1982, political party elites agreed to a constitutional reform that abolished the Council of the Revolution, which was a crucial step to extricating the military from politics. The election of a civilian president in 1986 (Mario Soares, the Socialist leader and former
´
prime minister) tended to affirm civilian control, as did understandings with the military high command about the extent of its autonomy in deciding personnel and other matters. By deleting a constitutional clause that committed Portugal to socialist goals, and providing for full parliamentary control of economic policy making while clearing the way for the accelerated

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privatization of state-owned enterprises, a second round of constitutional reforms in 1989 assured right-wing elites about economic prospects and laid to rest remaining doubts about the constitutional order’s acceptability to all major elites.
Accompanying these important institutional changes and driving the elite convergence was the hold that the right-of-center Social Democratic Party had on government executive office for fourteen years, first as the junior partner in a coalition government led by the Socialist Party between 1983 and 1985, and then as the sole governing party from 1985 until 1995. By the end of this long period of right-of-center dominance, the Socialists had abandoned virtually all of the goals and symbols of socialism, even changing their party’s emblem from a clenched fist to a rose in time for the 1995 election, in which they defeated the Democratic Socialists and returned to power on a platform promising better governmental management, full integration into the European Union, further privatization of public enterprises, and other pragmatic measures. The formation of this moderate Socialist government in
1995 can be taken as marking the completion of an elite convergence. During the ten years since, Portuguese politics have displayed the routine cut and thrust of party and policy competitions characteristic of liberal democracies.
ELITE CONVERGENCES IN LATIN AMERICA
Elite convergences in Latin America have not been numerous, and those that appear to have occurred had ambiguous features. In the Dominican Republic, political developments over a long period showed aspects of convergence, but some important questions remain open. In more prosperous Argentina and Chile, developments since the early 1990s approximated convergences, and both have recently been completed. In Brazil, which displays glaring socioeconomic inequalities, elite divisions have narrowed, possibly indicating a convergence, but there are too many open questions to be certain. Elsewhere—in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, as well as Guatemala—increasingly powerful political leaders mobilizing marginalized indigenous peoples do not auger well for the formation of consensually united elites and liberal democracies. We will consider the Dominican, Argentine, Chilean, and Brazilian cases.
As regards experience with democratic politics, the Dominican Republic started from scratch following the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in 1961 and the overthrow of his sultanistic regime in early 1962. Under U.S. pressure, democratic elections were held late that year, and they resulted in a strong victory for social democratic reformer Juan Bosch and his Dominican
Revolutionary Party (PRD). But Bosch’s plans for reform alienated military, economic, and church elites, who backed a coup seven months after he took office. Amid deepening economic problems during the next two years, elites

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were polarized between a constitutionalist camp seeking to return Bosch to power and a loyalist camp of factions that had long been entrenched. Civil war broke out in April 1965, but it was choked off when the United States intervened with military force and instigated negotiations between the warring elite camps under international auspices. These negotiations paved the way for a second democratic election in 1966.
Joaquın Balaguer and his right-of-center Reformist Party (PR) soundly
´
defeated Bosch and the PRD in that election. By skillfully mixing genuine reforms with selective repressions during a period of economic growth,
Balaguer won the elections of 1970 and 1974. By 1978, the leftist PRD— from which Bosch departed in 1973 to form a Dominican Liberation Party— had moved toward the political center under the leadership of Jose Pena
´
˜
Gomez. Reflecting the moderating political climate, Balaguer and Antonio
´
Guzman, the PRD presidential candidate, signed a nonaggression pact sev´ eral months before the 1978 election; and business, professional, intellectual, and church elites all urged the government to respect the election’s outcome.
Nevertheless, a crisis arose when the PR and the military were accused of using violence against the PRD, the PR accused the PRD of electoral fraud, and the national police temporarily suspended the ballot count. Extensive private negotiations among Guzman, Balaguer, and military leaders
´
ensued.34 The Central Election Commission finally declared Guzman and
´
the PRD victorious, but initial results showing that the PRD had won a Senate majority were reversed, so that Balaguer’s PR emerged with Senate control and the ability to check PRD government actions.
Although the 1978 crisis and the negotiations it sparked had some earmarks of an elite settlement, the central issue—who won the presidential and congressional elections—was narrower than those that eventuate in settlements. The 1978 agreement is more accurately viewed as a limited elite pact.
Dominican developments between 1966 and 1978 are perhaps better interpreted as involving a convergence of elites from the antidemocratic right and strongly reformist left toward a democratic center in the context of regular elections that right-of-center forces repeatedly won. Like Charles de Gaulle in France during the 1960s, Balaguer gradually led entrenched right-wing elites toward the center, while Pena Gomez at the same time transformed the
´
˜
PRD into a more moderate force. The conciliatory behavior of both elite camps in the 1978 crisis suggested that substantial accommodation and consensus had been achieved.
Subsequent political developments indicated, however, that regarding the
1978 crisis and its outcome as marking the completion of an elite convergence is too simple. It is true that politics were more pacific during the 1980s, when Balaguer was defeated in the presidential election of 1982 but won the
1986 and 1990 elections (by 30,000 disputed votes in 1990). In the 1994 election Balaguer again appeared to win the presidency, although there was evidence of widespread polling irregularities. When the Election Commission

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ignored this evidence and certified Balaguer’s election, a full-blown crisis, with the threat of military intervention, occurred. As had happened in 1978, open strife was averted by a pact between Balaguer and Pena Gomez: the two
´
˜ leaders agreed to Balaguer’s installation as president for a shortened term of eighteen months, after which a new election would be held. But when constitutional amendments that lengthened Balaguer’s term to two years were later rammed through Congress, Pena Gomez and the PRD saw this as
´
˜ a violation of the pact, and they boycotted the congressional proceedings.
As in Greece during the 1990s, a new generation of more pragmatic leaders, who have since replaced Balaguer, Bosch, and Pena Gomez in leadership
´
˜ positions, may have ended the recurrent electoral crises and reduced the corruptions that long indicated elite distrust and democratic instability. But it is doubtful that an elite convergence has occurred.
Defeated by Britain in the Falklands War during 1982, the Argentine military regime—which had brutally controlled the country after its 1976 overthrow of a shaky regime headed by Juan Peron and, following his death,
´
Isabel Peron—sought a pact with leaders of the two parties that had long
´
vied for dominance in Argentine politics, the peronist Justicialist Party (PJ) and the Radical Civic Union (UCR). The military elite wanted guarantees against retaliations for its actions if it quit government. But with the military elite humiliated and divided, its calls for a pact were spurned. Reluctantly, the military allowed freely contested elections in late 1983, and the winners,
Raul Alfonsın and the UCR, took power in early 1984. Sniped at by the mili´
´
tary and undercut by the peronistas from its start, the UCR government weakened steadily, and Alfonsın stepped down six months before the end of
´
his five-year presidency.
Led by Carlos Menem, the PJ then won the 1989 elections, ended a series of military uprisings by amnestying most officers for their deeds during military rule, and collaborated with senior officers to crush one final revolt by military renegades. Menem was, however, limited constitutionally to a single presidential term. His efforts in 1992 and later to remove this bar against reelection threatened to ignite a political crisis. A surprise pact between
Menem and Alfonsın in December 1993—the so-called Olivos Pact—cleared
´
the way for a new constitution, adopted in 1994, which reduced the scope of presidential power, an issue over which Argentine elites had long been divided, while allowing an individual to hold two consecutive four-year terms as the directly elected president. Handily reelected later that year,
Menem and the peronistas dominated Argentine politics for the remainder of the decade, albeit amid worsening economic conditions and, consequently, reduced control of Congress after 1997. It appears that this substantial period of rule by Menem and the peronistas, coupled with the Olivos Pact and the strengthened role of Congress after the constitutional changes of
1994, broke what had amounted to an elite logjam. Barred from a third consecutive term as president, Menem was replaced by his vice president, Edu-

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ardo Alberto Duhalde, as the PJ’s presidential candidate in 1999. Duhalde was defeated by Fernando de la Rua, who led an opposition alliance of the
´
UCR, and a new political entity, Frepaso, which had been formed by centrist defectors from both the PJ and UCR two years earlier. Thus, Argentina’s first peaceful alternation in executive power since the 1920s took place.
Profiting from a financial crisis, a bribery scandal, and the vice president’s resignation to protest that scandal, the peronistas staged a major comeback in the October 2001 congressional elections. De la Rua then called upon
´
them to join in a national unity government, but the peronistas refused. De la Rua’s own UCR supporters in Congress turned against him and forced
´
his resignation from the presidency on December 20, 2001. This triggered fevered negotiations among political leaders of all parties in Congress, punctuated by the appointment of three interim presidents in ten days, until it was agreed that a joint congressional session would elect Menem’s former vice president, Duhalde, to serve out the remainder of de la Rua’s four-year
´
term. ‘‘In essence,’’ Hector E. Schamis observes, ‘‘what happened was a week of high-level bargaining of the kind that is typical of parliamentary systems after an election has been held or a government has collapsed.’’35 As the new president, Duhalde governed in a generally conciliatory way and, most importantly, he declined to entrench himself and allowed another peronista,
Nestor Kirchner, to become the PJ’s successful candidate in the 2003 presi´ dential election. Elite management of the double-barreled political and economic crisis in 2001, which was of a magnitude that would almost certainly have produced a coup at any earlier time in Argentina, as well as the respect for the new constitutional order that both elite camps showed in that crisis, suggested the completion of a convergence from a disunited to a consensually united elite.
After the downfall of the Carlos Ibanez dictatorship in 1931–1932, Chil˜ ean elites entered a long period of relatively peaceful democratic practices.
Between 1932 and 1970, nine presidents succeeded each other on the basis of contested elections and in accordance with constitutional prescriptions.
Chile was, in consequence, frequently classified as a stable democracy.36
However, there had been no settlement or other process of basic elite accommodation in 1932 or after. Like France’s Third Republic, Chile’s democratic regime was only accidentally long lasting. During the 1950s, the resurgence of an extreme right-wing elite faction centered in elements of the military and supporting the former dictator, Ibanez, was paralleled by the resurgence
˜
of a revolutionary socialist faction, while communist leaders were imprisoned. During the 1960s, clearly demarcated conservative, centrist, and socialist elite camps became steadily more polarized, producing ‘‘a pervasive feeling of permanent crisis.’’37 It could be expected that if one of the more extreme camps gained executive power, a major disruption would occur. This came to pass after a coalition of socialists and communists, led by Salvador

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Allende, was allowed to form a government despite having won only a voter plurality of 38 percent in the 1970 elections.
The military executed a bloody coup against the Allende government in
September 1973. This inaugurated a repressive military regime, soon headed by General Augusto Pinochet, that held power for the next sixteen years and annihilated most of the extreme left’s leaders. In 1988 centrist Christian
Democratic and moderate Socialist elites mobilized a narrow majority of voters against a referendum proposal that Pinochet continue as president for another eight years. Further cooperation between Christian Democratic and
Socialist elites, cemented in a Coalition of Parties for Democracy (CPD), as well as negotiations between this coalition and the military regime and its right-wing civilian allies, enabled the CPD to win the 1989 presidential election and form a government in early 1990. However, the military elite had ensured its continued influence through a 1980 constitutional stipulation that government appointees serving eight-year terms should hold nine of the
Senate’s thirty-five seats.
Although the CPD won all elections during the 1990s, as well as the congressional election in 2001 and the presidential election in 2003, it faced a
Senate in which two right-wing parties and the nine appointed senators were able to prevent CPD governments from prosecuting military leaders for human rights violations during their sixteen years in power. In particular, the issue of prosecuting the aged and ailing Pinochet for presiding over the liquidation of several thousand opponents of the military regime continued to divide elites. However, the explosive issue of Pinochet’s prosecution was largely side-stepped, first through his lengthy detention under house arrest in Britain based on a warrant issued by a crusading judge in Spain, and then by a laborious judicial process in Chile that dragged on until, late in 2004, the eighty-eight-year-old Pinochet was declared subject to prosecution and the military acknowledged its collective ‘‘institutional blame’’ for ‘‘excesses’’ that occurred when it held power.38 Even then, further legal maneuvers, combined with the strong right-wing faction in the Senate, implied that Pinochet’s prosecution would be devoid of serious consequences for him.
Is it possible to discern an elite convergence in these Chilean complexities?
It is indisputable that a winning CPD coalition of elites existed after 1990, with right-wing elites apparently finding no alternative but to participate in democratic contests that they regularly lost. Thus, a novel center-left winning elite coalition could be regarded as the locomotive of a convergence.
But so long as the politically subordinate right-wing elites protected the military by blocking government prosecutions, and so long as they implied that the military’s reentry into politics was a possibility, the elite convergence remained incomplete. Two recent developments appear to have removed these obstacles. First, the alliance of right-wing parties broke apart when the more moderate of them, the National Revolution party, decided to contest

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the December 2005 presidential election with its own candidate. Second, the reserve powers of the military, which had haunted democratically elected governments since 1990, were terminated by a special joint session of Congress in August 2005 that voted overwhelmingly (150–3 with one abstention) to abolish the clause in Pinochet’s 1980 constitution providing for nine appointed senators. This joint session also gave presidents the power to dismiss military commanders. These developments were evidence that the fifteen-year convergence of Chilean elites had reached completion.
Throughout Brazil’s history as an independent country, elites attempted to maintain a semblance of representative and increasingly democratic politics, but their disunited condition was indicated by irregular power seizures in 1889, 1930, 1945, and 1964. The 1964 coup initiated two decades of military rule that ended with a cautious transition back to democratic politics in
1985. In the restored democratic order, however, there were many members of Congress and right-wing party, state government, bureaucratic, and business elites who had held prominent positions in, or had directly profited from, the military regime, and who were at most semiallegiant to the new order.39 The first directly elected civilian government (1990–1994) lacked a governing majority in Congress; its president, Fernando Collor de Mello, was impeached on corruption charges in 1992; and its vice president proved ineffectual while serving out Collor’s term. Between 1985 and 1993, seven different plans failed to stem the country’s mounting economic problems, which featured an annual inflation rate of about 2,000 percent by 1993. The possibility of another military intervention could not be dismissed.
The May 1993 appointment as finance minister of Fernando Henrique
Cardoso—a respected sociologist, pioneer of anticapitalist dependency theory, opposition senator under the military regime, and then foreign relations minister—may have been a turning point. With much political skill, Cardoso persuaded Congress to adopt a neoliberal economic stabilization program, which came into full effect in mid-1994 just as Cardoso entered that year’s presidential race. Monthly inflation dropped from 50 percent in June to 1 percent in September, and Cardoso won the October election with 54 percent of the vote—twice that of his nearest rival, Luiz (Lula) da Silva of the left-wing Worker’s Party (PT). Having won with a center-right electoral coalition, Cardoso broadened it by appointing a number of non-PT opposition politicians to his cabinet. Through presidential decrees and legislation, he implemented several reforms, including curbs on the military’s role in government. As evidence that an elite convergence was underway, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan report, ‘‘At the elite level, conversations had changed radically by mid-1995 from those in 1993. There were few, if any, conversations about democracy breaking down.’’40
On the strength of his having tamed inflation and achieved other reforms,
Cardoso easily won reelection in 1998, defeating da Silva without need for a

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run-off election. However, Cardoso’s second term proved rockier than his first. Financial crisis forced a currency devaluation, annual GDP growth averaged a meager 1.75 percent, unemployment increased, government debt rose to record levels, and Congress thwarted a number of Cardoso’s intended reforms. Still, evidence of an elite convergence perhaps nearing completion could be found in the landslide victory achieved by Lula da Silva and the PT in the 2002 presidential election. Da Silva and his dominant faction in the PT moved substantially toward the center during the run-up to that election. Having taken a number of radical positions in the past, including the call for a possible default on Brazil’s international loans, da Silva now promised to pay the loans, abide by IMF strictures attached to a further $30 billion loan, and not depart in any marked way from Cardoso’s economic policies. The election was widely seen as free and fair, and the transfer of executive power went smoothly. As the Economist observed, ‘‘It is a sign of how much Brazil’s democracy has matured that nobody is surprised that not a peep has come from the armed forces.’’41 Mirroring what Cardoso had done eight years before, Lula, after cobbling together a center-left electoral coalition, managed in his first year as president to expand this into a governing coalition through strategic cabinet and other governmental appointments; and he won approval in the Chamber of Deputies for significant reforms that had eluded Cardoso. During the next two years, booming international commodity markets greatly lifted the GDP growth rate and began to give Brazil the image of an economic powerhouse.
It is nevertheless doubtful that in the context of Brazil’s fragmented party and federal systems, Lula da Silva’s PT-dominated government will progress very far in tackling Brazil’s gigantic problems: an antiquated and dysfunctional justice system, a profligate civil service pension scheme, one of the world’s highest violent crime rates, one of the world’s most unequal income distributions, a massive national debt, uprisings by landless peasants and their violent repression by land owners, a large body of surplus labor, and widespread political corruption. Indeed, during 2005 revelations about top
PT leaders buying votes in Congress and engaging in other corrupt practices weakened Lula’s government greatly. Although no significant elite faction on the left or right advocates an alternative to democratic politics, it is possible, as Timothy Power observed at the end of the 1990s, that a right-wing camp still unwilling to engage fully in accommodative and restrained elite political practices only ‘‘pretends not to exist.’’42
ELITE CONVERGENCES IN
EAST CENTRAL EUROPE?
Elite alignments, authoritative leaders, and the other conditions necessary for basic elite settlements existed in Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia when

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they transited from state socialism to democracy during 1989–1991, and in chapter 3 we examined those settlements and how they opened the way to liberal democracies. By now in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, elites display the degree of partisan restraint and tacit consensus necessary for liberal democracy, although ethnic tensions in Slovakia remain worrisome. An elite convergence has been relatively apparent in Slovakia, but the way in which
Czech elites reached substantial consensus and unity is more puzzling. In
Bulgaria and Romania, meanwhile, evidence of elite convergences is at best skimpy. In Czechoslovakia near the end of 1989, an ossified and politically isolated state socialist regime suddenly imploded under pressures emanating from the settlements and political changes that were taking place in neighboring
Poland and Hungary. A rapid and wide circulation of Czechoslovak elites, especially leading political actors, occurred in the so-called velvet revolution of November–December 1989 and the subsequent June 1990 parliamentary elections.43 A number of 1968 Prague Spring reformers returned to power, accompanied by 1980s dissidence leaders like Vaclav Havel, who was elected
´
president in July 1990. In June 1992, in Czechoslovakia’s next parliamentary elections, liberal right-of-center elites in the Czech territories, led by Vaclav
´
Klaus, and Slovak nationalist (formerly communist) elites in the Slovak area, led by Vladimir Meciar, displaced the 1968 reformers and 1980s dissidents, with Meciar and his Slovak forces forming the political opposition in Prague after that election. Studying these changes, Lubomir Brokl and Zdenka Mansfeldova concluded that the ‘‘gray zone’’ of midlevel state socialist technocrats and managers rose to front-rank elite positions in the Slovak area, whereas elite circulation in the Czech territories was greater in range and depth.44
The elite-engineered ‘‘velvet divorce’’ between Czechs and Slovaks at the end of 1992 contributed to a unification of Czech elites by removing ethnic and economic conflicts with which they would otherwise have had to contend. The Slovaks’ departure also opened up numerous elite positions in
Prague for young Czech technocrats and professionals.45 Despite sharp animosity between ‘‘the two Vaclavs’’ (President Havel and Prime Minister
Klaus), a rough consensus encompassed most Czech governing and opposition elites. Havel and his entourage, the governing Civic Democrats led by
Klaus, and the opposition Social Democrats all stressed their support of democratic principles, eventual EU membership, and privatization of stateowned enterprises. They differed over the pace of economic reforms, Klaus’s haughty governing style, and welfare policies. The trade union elite by and large supported economic reforms and cooperated with the right-of-center
Klaus government. An unreformed Communist Party elite also helped grease relations between the principal governing and opposition elites by being too small and discredited to mobilize much public discontent and

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being a handy scapegoat to which the main elites could attribute responsibility for the economic privations that followed in the wake of state socialism.
After his Civic Democrats suffered a setback in the June 1996 parliamentary elections, Klaus formed a minority right-of-center coalition government, which collapsed in late 1997 amid corruption scandals. A period of caretaker governance ensued, and new elections in June 1998 produced a hung parliament in which no party had enough seats to form a government, although the Social Democrats enjoyed a seat plurality. Secret negotiations between Klaus and the Social Democrats’ leader, Milo Zeman, produced a surprise ‘‘opposition contract’’ according to which Klaus and his Civic
Democrats agreed to abstain on crucial parliamentary votes if doing so enabled a Social Democrat minority government to remain in office. In effect, the two main elites acknowledged each other’s right to govern in accordance with election outcomes, however indecisive they might be. The contract enabled the Social Democrats to govern for a full parliamentary term, during which, in 2000, both sides colluded further to enact mutually beneficial electoral reforms that truncated smaller parties’ election prospects.
In 2004, after still more elite tradeoffs and cooperation to prepare for EU membership, the Czech Republic entered the EU and was widely recognized as one of the few stable liberal democracies in Eastern Europe.
It is hard to identify a clear convergence—or, for that matter, an elite settlement—in these changes among Czech elites. One could argue that the relatively brief electoral dominance of Klaus’s right-of-center Civic Democrats between 1992 and 1997 accorded with a convergence’s first phase—the emergence of a winning coalition appealing to voters inclined to support the socioeconomic status quo. But in the 1990s the Czech status quo was far from prosperous, and the Social Democrats were certainly no less supportive of the new democratic institutions and practices than were Klaus and his party. So, among the main elite groups at least, there was little to converge over. One could argue, alternatively, that the opposition contract hammered out by Klaus and Zemin after the indecisive 1997 election approximated an elite settlement. But again, it was not clear that principled matters were in dispute, or that the contract, though it surprised many Czech political observers, was more than the tacit understanding or quid pro quo often necessary to sustain minority governments in multiparty political systems. The consensual unification of Czech elites is a puzzle for which we have no persuasive solution.
From its independence at the start of 1993 until the late 1990s, Slovakia’s elites were clearly disunited, and the regime was an illiberal democracy. On one side was a cluster of pro-reform and pro-West European liberal factions; on the other were ‘‘preservationist’’ and nationalist factions, some of which wanted closer ties with Slovakia’s eastern neighbors. Students of Slovak politics emphasize the cavalier adherence of Vladimir Meciar and his governing

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‘‘party of power,’’ the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), to democratic practices.46 Ex-communists held most top government posts, and
HZDS membership was a criterion for appointment to key administrative posts. A bitter and long confrontation between Meciar, the prime minister, and Michal Kovac, the president, was emblematic of elite division and dis´ trust. The readiness of Meciar and his HZDS to bend or flout rules of the democratic game became apparent as Kovac’s term ended in early March
´
1998. Refusing even to nominate a successor to Kovac, Meciar arrogated
´
presidential powers and used them to halt a police investigation of the mysterious kidnapping of Kovac’s son two years earlier. Meciar also cancelled a
´
Kovac-endorsed referendum that called for direct presidential elections.
´
However, an all-out mobilization of anti-Meciar elites, assisted by international condemnations of the Meciar regime and by voter discontent arising from the end of a period of deficit-financed economic growth, proved fruitful. Greatly increased cooperation between previously dispersed and ethnically distinct Slovak and Hungarian elite factions opposing the Meciar regime produced a broad electoral coalition that managed to defeat the
HZDS and its allies in the October 1998 elections.
The victors patched together a shaky coalition government that nevertheless lasted a full parliamentary term and had one of its leaders elected president in 2000 after a strong challenge by Meciar. During this four-year period, the HZDS moderated its stances significantly in order to compete more effectively in the parliamentary elections scheduled for 2002. In those elections, Meciar and the HZDS were firmly defeated by a reshuffled coalition of the governing parties after warnings by the EU and NATO that a government formed by Meciar and the HZDS would be unacceptable. In
2004 Slovakia, in step with the Czech Republic, gained EU membership.
Although indications of a substantial convergence among Slovak elites are reasonably clear, regionally based ethnic tensions between the Slovak and
Hungarian populations and their leaders—the bugbear of so many multiethnic democracies—are sufficiently acute to make Slovakia’s status as a stable liberal democracy questionable.
The significant changes among Czech and Slovak elites since 1990 are thrown into sharper relief if we note the absence of comparable changes among Bulgarian and Romanian elites. In Bulgaria and Romania for much of the 1990s, holdover elites from state socialism dominated government and rode roughshod over weak and fragmented opposition elites. In Bulgaria, after ousting Communist Party secretary Todor Zhivkov in early November
1989, holdover elites from state socialism formed an ideologically loose coalition of convenience centered in the formerly communist Bulgarian
Socialist Party (BSP). Only the threat of a national strike pushed them into desultory roundtable talks with opponents during 1990, but the holdover elites continued to dominate, although not monopolize, important positions

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in the post-communist regime. Operating through the BSP, they constituted a party of power anchored in governmental bodies and governmentcontrolled industrial firms.47 Political opposition was marginalized and harassed, although not suppressed. Opposition elites formed an ineffectual minority government for a year following elections in 1991, but this gave way to a caretaker government of technocrats until the BSP won a decisive electoral victory in 1994. Two opposition leaders were elected in succession to the largely ceremonial presidency, but elite fissures were wide, with the dominant Socialists’ distaste for economic and political reforms bringing the country to the brink of national insolvency during 1996. As indicated by the mafia-style murder of a prominent businessman and former Socialist prime minister, Andrei Lukanov, public life was substantially criminalized.
Late in 1996, however, the situation began to change with the election of a reformist Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) leader, Petar Stoyanov, to the presidency; the resignation of BSP prime minister Zhan Videnov; and widening splits within the BSP elite over obviously failed economic policies.
A bloodless revolution involving large-scale demonstrations in Sofia and other cities in early 1997 led to the removal of BSP supporters from local councils and the scheduling of early parliamentary elections. Those elections, in April 1997, were won overwhelmingly by the SDS, which then constructed a reform-oriented government. No doubt recalling how the SDS’s
1991–1992 attempt at governing disintegrated, this second SDS government fostered a closing of elite ranks around a democratic and economic reformist program. The government served a full term, although the austerity program it implemented, while a considerable economic success, provoked much discontent among voters.
Neither the SDS coalition nor the somewhat discredited BSP was able, therefore, to withstand the sudden entry of the exiled Bulgarian king,
Simeon II, into the parliamentary election lists at the head of the upstart
National Movement Simeon II. In June 2001 elections, this interloping force won half of all parliamentary seats, which was enough to have the former king designated prime minister at the head of a new government.48 The vulnerability of the previous main elite camps to the sudden onslaught of an outside force like Simeon’s suggests that alignments conducive to an elite convergence in Bulgaria have not solidified.
In Romania, a meager two-day elite roundtable at the end of January 1990 was a smokescreen for reorganizing relations among the party and military elites that had toppled and executed Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife on
Christmas Day 1989 after a popular uprising spread from the Timisoara area during the preceding weeks. Painting the Ceausescus as the source of most evils, former communists Ion Iliescu and Petre Roman consolidated power and won a landslide electoral victory in May 1990 over weak and dubiously credible parties from the pre-communist era that had resurfaced. Protests

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against the Iliescu-Roman government were crushed by government-mobilized, club-wielding coal miners a month later. When the miners returned to
Bucharest that September to protest against reforms, they forced Roman’s resignation as prime minister. Because of interparty squabbles and lack of media access, funds, and effective organization, opposition parties fared poorly in the next elections, in 1992. As illustrated by the Iliescu government’s high-handed dismissal of opposition city mayors during late 1994 and early 1995, opposition elites were kept on the run, and the old communist establishment’s entrenchment was even more pronounced than in Bulgaria’s
BSP.
In the November 1996 presidential and parliamentary elections, however, a three-cornered contest that pitted former comrades Iliescu and Roman against each other and against a reformer, Emil Constantinescu, enabled the latter to win the presidency. Negotiations produced an opposition-dominated government that managed to remain in office, albeit with numerous changes of leaders and realignments of the factions constituting it, for the next four years. But in November 2000, Iliescu again won the presidency, and in accompanying parliamentary elections the ultranationalist Greater
Romania Party won the second largest number of votes and emerged as a force ominous for stable democratic politics. When he announced in July
2000 that he would not stand for reelection to the presidency, Constantinescu denounced the elites and parties for engaging in ‘‘a blind struggle’’ for power in which ‘‘people buy and sell principles, ideologies, seats in the parliament and the cabinet, making use to that end of lies, blackmail, vulgarity, and manipulation.’’49 There was no sign of a convergence within Romania’s disunited elite.

CONCLUSIONS
Few students of comparative politics would deny that France, Italy, reunified
Germany, Japan, Belgium, Portugal, and Greece are now liberal democracies.
Yet their liberal democratic regimes are, in fact, of quite recent vintage, even though, as Gerard Alexander has noted, the first five countries are almost never discussed in the context of democratic transitions and consolidations.50
In all these countries until quite recently, however, there were strong leftwing elite camps publicly committed to revolutionary action, and there were intransigent right-wing forces highly suspicious of democratic politics, which the right-wingers viewed as working to the advantage of their leftwing opponents. The French Fourth Republic collapsed in the face of an army rebellion in 1958, and ten years later a massive student-led uprising seemed for a brief moment to auger the Fifth Republic’s collapse.51 In Italy,
1969 was a year of great industrial labor unrest, and in the late 1970s wide-

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spread terrorist actions brought the Italian state under siege. The stability of
West Germany’s democratic regime was in doubt until the mid-1960s, when the CDU-CSU-SPD grand coalition government formed, and even then, in the early 1970s, the country’s political institutions were, like Italy’s a few years later, under violent attack by extremists. In Japan, a deep conservativeprogressive cleavage separated elites until the 1960s, while large and frequently violent protest actions aimed at blocking or sabotaging government policies were routine. Belgium skirted civil war in the late 1940s and its elites were clearly divided into leftist, centrist, and rightist camps until ethnolinguistic tensions started to threaten national integration in the 1960s. Portugal and Greece were in the grip of military regimes until the mid-1970s. But all seven countries overcame these challenges and obstacles to democratic politics, and before the twentieth century ended they were all liberal democracies.
The emergence of liberal democracies in Latin America’s southern cone has been still more recent. Until as late as 2005 Chile’s military elite and its right-wing civilian allies cast a shadow over politics. Argentina’s discredited military has for the past fifteen years been firmly on the political sidelines, but the country staggered under financial crises and political deadlocks until elites engaged in the intensive maneuvers that appeared to cement its democratic regime at the end of 2001. In Brazil two decades have passed since the military regime handed power back to civilians. Henrique Cardoso’s centrist coalition governments and the consequent moderation of the now-governing
Worker Party appear to have brought about a substantial unification of elites.
However, the country’s fragmented political system, its still deeply corrupt politics, and its enormous socioeconomic and labor problems dictate caution in thinking that elite accommodation and restraint are at last a reliable feature of Brazil’s democracy. Further north, the Dominican Republic has earmarks of a liberal democracy, but one that is tarnished by much corruption and risks being sundered by its proximity to Haiti, Latin America’s political and economic basket case. Several of the Central American republics have for ten years or so adhered to democratic practices, but, like the Andean countries, they face explosive ethnic conflicts and large numbers of unemployed and surplus workers from which insurgent elites and movements may spring. In East Central Europe, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and, if subnational ethnic tensions are containable, Slovakia have consensually united elites and stable liberal democracies, and this is also the case in Slovenia. Although politics remain relatively turbulent in all five countries, they are now anchored in the European Union, whose norms and policies buttress their recent elite unifications. At present, one looks in vain for comparable unifications in other countries that emerged from state socialism between 1989 and 1991.

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This chapter has explored these European, Japanese, and Latin American shifts in line with our thesis that consensually united elites, whose members share access to decision making and consensus about rules of the political game, are the sine qua non of liberal democracy. We observed that elites in all the West European countries we have discussed (apart from the Norwegian and Danish precursor cases), as well as Japan, were disunited following
World War II. The most important aspect of subsequent political changes in them was elite transformations from the disunited to the consensually united configuration. We found little or no evidence that these transformations involved sudden and deliberate settlements in which warring elite camps negotiated compromises on their most basic disputes. Although Italian elites attempted such a settlement between 1943 and 1947, the attempt failed, and they remained disunited for another twenty years. There is no evidence of even attempted settlements in France, Japan, West Germany, or Belgium during the postwar period, nor is there any compelling evidence of attempted settlements in Portugal and Greece when their military regimes collapsed in the mid-1970s. Although the rigors of World War II, especially in the defeated countries of West Germany and Japan, doubtless truncated elite divisions, we found no clear linkage between the war and a postwar unification of elites. While wartime defeat and postwar occupation undoubtedly contributed to the creation of consensually united elites in West Germany, that was by no means the whole story, and in Japan, it was clear that elites remained disunited long after the effects of the war and its aftermath had receded. We have posited, instead, that the several West European elites, as well as
Japan’s, underwent a distinctive process of convergence during various parts of the second half of the twentieth century, and they did not preside over stable liberal democracies until the convergence process was completed. In the first step of this process, previously antagonistic right-wing and centrist elite factions entered into sustained, peaceful collaborations in electoral politics in order to mobilize majorities, win elections repeatedly, and protect their interests by dominating government executive power. In the second step, the major leftist factions opposing the winning center-right elite coalition eventually tired of losing elections. Seeing no other way to gain executive power, they jettisoned their distinctive ideological stances and began to advocate policies not greatly at variance with those of the winning coalition.
In West Germany this second step was taken between 1959 and 1966; in
France and Italy it was taken during the latter half of the 1970s; in Belgium it was part of the emergence of overriding regionally based ethnolinguistic conflicts during the 1960s and 1970s; in Japan it took place primarily during the 1970s and 1980s. Once the second step was taken, unstable democratic regimes soon became stable liberal democracies. Less clear cut, elite convergences occurred in Greece and Portugal during the 1980s and early 1990s.

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While we sketched completed elite convergences in Argentina, Brazil, and
Chile, we concluded that a convergence in Brazil remains unfinished. In East
Central Europe, the Slovak elite has clearly shown the convergence pattern, although we think that the Czech elite is consensually united and are frankly at a loss to chart how this came about.
Our analysis raises several theoretical issues. First, to what extent were the convergences the products of elite actions and choices or of changes forced on elites by changing electorates and mass conditions, especially the emergence of large middle classes and segments of working classes with a stake in defending their relative prosperity? Second, to what extent did the convergences depend upon fortuitous and unique circumstances, such as the bitter political lessons learned by West European elites during the 1920s and 1930s, the liquidation of extremist elites during and after World War II and under harsh military regimes in South America, Cold War centripetal pressures, the allures and requirements of European Union membership, and the wherewithal that spreading prosperity afforded political elites to placate discontented population segments at bearable cost to themselves and their business and trade union allies? Finally, does the apparent unfolding of elite convergences in several Latin American countries and Slovakia help ensure that we are not mistaking elite and political changes that were peculiar to a handful of European countries, plus Japan, during the post-World War II and Cold
War decades for a more general phenomenon?
We have not resolved these theoretical issues satisfactorily. There is, however, the widespread belief, especially among policy makers and political commentators, that merely holding democratic elections begets liberal democracy. If a country can but initiate contested elections and other minimal trappings of democratic politics, those politics will inexorably move in a liberal democratic direction. This assumes, as we so often hear these days, that people in large numbers want democracy and that they quickly become habituated to democratic politics once such politics are initially practiced.
But it is a historical fact that democratic politics usually have not taken hold; their initial practice has frequently broken down; and authoritarian rule has often resumed. Democratic politics take hold only if the elites that conduct them find some way of uniting to tame their competitions. The thesis of elite convergence explains how elites in a number of important countries have done this.

NOTES
1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 257.
2. Huntington, Third Wave, 27.

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3. Thomas Carothers, ‘‘The End of the Transition Paradigm,’’ Journal of Democracy 13 (January 2002): 15.
4. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 4.
5. Guillermo O’Donnell, ‘‘In Partial Defense of an Evanescent ‘Paradigm,’ ’’
Journal of Democracy 13 (July 2002): 8.
6. Maurizio Cotta, ‘‘Elite Unification and Democratic Consolidation in Italy: A
Historical Overview,’’ in Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and
Southern Europe, ed. John Higley and Richard Gunther (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 146–77.
7. Raymond Aron, ‘‘Social Structure and the Ruling Class,’’ British Journal of
Sociology 1 (March–June 1950): 16 (emphases in original).
8. Cotta, ‘‘Elite Unification,’’ 173.
9. Georges Lavan, ‘‘Le parti communiste dans le systeme politique francais,’’ in
¸
`
Le communisme en France, Fondation Nationale des Science Politique, Cahiers 175
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1969), 7–81.
10. Sidney Tarrow, ‘‘Le parti communiste et la societe italiene,’’ in Sociologie du
´ ´ communisme en Italie, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politique, Cahiers 194
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1974), 1–53.
11. Joseph LaPolombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 115.
12. Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, ‘‘Germany: Twentieth-Century Turning Points,’’ in
Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes, ed. Mattei Dogan and John Higley (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 169–88; Hiromitsu Kataoka, ‘‘Japan: The
Elite Legacies of Meiji and World War II,’’ in Dogan and Higley, 189–212.
13. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2004).
14. Lewis J. Edinger, ‘‘Post-totalitarian Leadership: Elites in the German Federal
Republic,’’ American Political Science Review 54 (April 1960): 58–82.
15. Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1967), 265–79; Rudolf Wildenmann, ‘‘Germany 1930–1970: The Empirical Findings,’’ Sozialwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch fur Politik 4 (1971): 273–301.
¨
16. Wolfgang Zapf, Wandlungen der deutschen Elite (Munich: Piper, 1965).
17. Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy, 277.
18. Otto Kirchheimer, ‘‘The Transformation of West European Party Systems,’’ in
Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph LaPalombara and Myron
Weiner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 177–200; David Conradt,
The German Polity (New York: Longman, 1989).
19. G. Lowell Field and John Higley, ‘‘Elites, Insiders, and Outsiders: Will Western Political Regimes Prove Non-viable?’’ in Legitimation of Regimes, ed. Bogdan
Denitch (London: Sage, 1979), 127–40.
20. Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, Eliten, Macht und Konflikt in der Bundesrepublik
(Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1992); Hoffmann-Lange, ‘‘Germany’’; Wilhelm Burklin
¨
and Hilke Rebenstorf, Eliten in Deutschland (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1997).
21. Lewis Edinger, West German Politics (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986), 132.

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22. Kataoka, ‘‘Japan.’’
23. Peter Berton, ‘‘The Japan Communist Party: The ‘Lovable’ Party,’’ in The Japanese Party System: From One-Party Rule to Coalition Government, ed. Ronald J.
Hrebenar (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986); J. A. A. Stockwin, ‘‘The Japan
Socialist Party: A Politics of Permanent Opposition,’’ in Hrebenar, 83–115.
24. Gerald Curtis, The Japanese Way of Politics (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988).
25. Curtis, Japanese Way, 10.
26. Nobuo Tomita, Akira Nakamura, and Ronald J. Hrebenar, ‘‘The Liberal Democratic Party: The Ruling Party of Japan,’’ in Hrebenar, 240–41.
27. Robert A. Scalapino and Junnosuke Masumi, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962); Hrebenar, Japanese Party System.
28. Curtis, Japanese Way, 16.
29. Curtis, Japanese Way, 123–24.
30. Curtis, Japanese Way, 236–40.
31. Curtis, Japanese Way, 249.
32. Val R. Lorwin, ‘‘Belgium: Religion, Class, and Language in National Politics,’’ in Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, ed. Robert A. Dahl (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 147–87.
33. Aristide Zolberg, ‘‘Splitting the Difference: Federalization without Federalism in Belgium,’’ in Ethnic Conflict in the Western World, ed. M. J. Esman (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1977), 103–42.
34. Peter Sanchez, ‘‘The Dominican Case,’’ in Higley and Gunther, 300–22.
35. Hector Schamis, ‘‘Argentina: Crisis and Democratic Consolidation,’’ Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 91.
36. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1960), 30–32.
37. Arturo Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 19.
38. Larry Rohter, ‘‘Chile’s Army Accepts Blame for Rights Abuses in Pinochet
Era,’’ New York Times, November 6, 2004.
39. Timothy J. Power, The Political Right in Postauthoritarian Brazil: Elites, Institutions, and Democratization (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2000).
40. Linz and Stepan, Problems, 188.
41. ‘‘Lula’s Burden of Hope,’’ Economist, January 4, 2003, 26.
42. Power, Political Right, 207.
43. Pavel Machonin and Milan Tucek, ‘‘Czech Republic: New Elites and Social
Change,’’ in Elites after State Socialism, ed. John Higley and Gyorgy Lengyel (Lan¨ ham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 25–46.
44. Lubomir Brokl and Zdenka Mansfeldova, ‘‘Czech and Slovak Political and
Parliamentary Elites,’’ in Postcommunist Elites and Democracy in Eastern Europe, eds. John Higley, Jan Pakulski, and Włodzimierz Wesołowski (London: Macmillan,
1998), 131–40.
45. Pavel Machonin, ‘‘Social and Political Transformation in the Czech Republic,’’
Czech Sociological Review 2 (1994): 71–87.

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46. John A. Gould and Sona Szomolanyi, ‘‘Slovakia: Elite Disunity and Convergence,’’ in Higley and Lengyel, 47–70.
47. Stephan E. Nikolov, ‘‘Bulgaria: A Quasi-elite,’’ in Higley, Pakulski, and Wesołowski, 213–25.
48. Zoltan Barany, ‘‘Bulgaria’s Royal Elections,’’ Journal of Democracy 13
(November 2002): 141–55.
49. Phelim McAleer, ‘‘Resignation Strengthens Iliescu’s Hand,’’ Financial Times,
July 19, 2000, 12.
50. Gerard Alexander, The Sources of Democratic Consolidation (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2002), 10–18.
51. Mattei Dogan, ‘‘How Civil War Was Avoided in France,’’ International Political Science Review 5 (1984): 245–77.

6
Elites and Liberal Democratic
Prospects

This book has presented the circumspect view of liberal democracy’s foundations that emerges from elite theory and analysis. Political regimes are created and sustained by elites, and their basic features—stability or instability, representative or unrepresentative practices, mixes of force and persuasion— reflect elite behaviors and structures. Liberal democracies are no exception; they depend above all on the formation and persistence of consensually united elites. Liberal democracies are possible only where the few thousands of persons in a modern society who have the organized capacity to make real and continuing political trouble—elites—agree to practice and respect rights of contestation, opposition, and participation, together with the civil liberties essential for exercising those rights. Elites are seldom consensually united, however. Most often, they disagree deeply about political rights and practices and fight to advance mutually exclusive interests. Much less often, elites profess fidelity to a single belief system, and this severely inhibits or flatly prevents meaningful contestation, opposition, and participation. Both elite configurations—disunited and ideologically united—are inimical to liberal democracy. Liberal democracy’s prospects in the twenty-first century hinge primarily on the formation of consensually united elites where disunited or ideologically united elites now hold sway, and on the persistence of consensually united elites where they now exist.
In chapter 2 we saw that consensually united elites were rare prior to
World War II, and that their number has increased only modestly since. In most places and times, independent national states were formed by disunited elites. Constructing states out of disparate territories or colonies was such a conflict-ridden and violent process that unremitting elite hatreds and resentments were the usual result. This pattern was evident in all the independent
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states that formed early in the modern historical period in Europe, Japan,
China, Thailand, and Ethiopia. It was also the nearly uniform pattern when independent states emerged from Western colonial rule of Latin America,
Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. After independent states formed, disunited elites persisted for long periods because deeply opposed factions rarely experienced, and even more rarely seized, opportunities and incentives to tame their dog-eat-dog struggles. In the language of game theory, disunited elites constitute a vicious circle.
The more virtuous circle that consensually united elites constitute came about in three ways. In chapter 3 we examined fifteen countries in which disunited elites that confronted serious political crises suddenly and deliberately negotiated settlements of their core disputes in order to alleviate or avert the crises. Such settlements occurred at different times during the past three centuries in countries that varied greatly in socioeconomic levels, class structures, cultures, geographic locations, and other features. Unique conjunctions of circumstances were crucial to the occurrence of these settlements: bitter elite memories of inconclusive power struggles, crises that threatened disastrous new confrontations, a limited number of well-defined and disciplined elite groups, the presence of adroit and authoritative leaders, and accidental but propitious events. With considerable political skill, successful management of subsequent crises, and perhaps also some luck, elites gradually became habituated to the accommodations reached in settlements, and this, usually over long periods, enabled liberal democracies to take shape. In chapter 4 we examined thirteen more countries—almost all former British colonies—in which elites became consensually united while practicing representative politics in colonial home-rule governments and in leading politically complex, protracted, and sometimes quite risky struggles for national independence. However, in most colonial circumstances, including several that we also examined in chapter 4—Kenya, Tanzania, Tunisia, Ivory
Coast, and the borderline Philippines case—the formation of a consensually united elite was prevented by one or more circumstances: local elites replicated the disunited elite configuration that existed in the colonizing country, home-rule political experience was too brief or otherwise restricted, ethnoregional conflicts were frequently too deep, or independence was too easily obtained. In chapter 5 we discussed nine important countries (Belgium, France,
Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and West Germany between the 1950s and
1980s, preceded by Denmark and perhaps Norway during the first half of the twentieth century) in which disunited elites gradually converged to the consensually united configuration. This happened when entrenched and powerful right-of-center elite coalitions found that they could secure their vital interests by mobilizing majorities or large pluralities of relatively pros-

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perous voters who consistently favored the status quo against extreme leftor right-wing alternatives. Elites championing those alternatives eventually had little choice but to abandon their dogmas and try to defeat the winning coalition by echoing its more moderate voter appeals. We also considered a handful of Latin American and East Central European countries (Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) in which disunited elites have similarly converged or appear to be doing so at present.
But it is possible, we cautioned, that most of these elite convergences were peculiar to Cold War political alignments or to the powerful attraction in
East Central Europe of EU membership and its political requirements, so that the cases of convergence may not represent a path that disunited elites in many countries will follow.
It remains to consider liberal democracy’s twenty-first-century prospects in light of its elite foundations. Because the colonial route to consensually united elites is now presumably closed, our analysis implies that the future creation of such elites must occur through settlements or convergences. But settlements, as we have just said, depend upon rare conjunctions of contingent triggering crises, elite lineups that are basically dichotomous, and authoritative leaders with sufficient skills to make and impose reciprocal concessions on matters that divide elites fundamentally. And even if the possibly unique effects of the Cold War era or EU membership requirements are disregarded, a precondition of elite convergences appears to be a relatively high level of socioeconomic development that many countries with disunited elites will not soon attain. In light of these considerations, prospects for a large increase in the number of consensually united elites, and thus of liberal democracies, seem quite limited. We will assess this outlook.
Our other concern in this concluding chapter is a tendency toward fragmentation among consensually united elites in some well-established liberal democracies. Although they have been highly durable in nearly all historical instances, consensually united elites can degenerate or even break down—as evidenced by the regionally based elite division in the United States prior to the Civil War, Venezuelan elites during the 1990s, and a serious erosion of elite accommodation in Colombia during the past twenty-five years. At present in the United States and some other Western countries—Australia,
France, Italy, United Kingdom—political elites appear to be separating into more tightly organized and mutually antagonistic camps. Employing large financial, media, and other types of resources in election campaigns and policy fights, competing elites close ranks and become more centralized. Elites more and more portray competitions and conflicts in winner-take-all terms, and they more sweepingly purge opponents from high offices upon gaining executive power. Claims about the superior instincts and strengths of each camp’s leader, and scurrilous accusations about an opposing leaders’ personal deficiencies, are drumbeats in election campaigns and policy disputes.

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Although it is easy to mistake short-run developments for a lasting trend, diminished elite accommodation and restraint in some of today’s best-established liberal democracies is worrisome, and it demands attention.

WILL DISUNITED ELITES REMAIN THE NORM?
It is widely accepted that the twentieth century was, as a recent Freedom
House report termed it, Democracy’s Century.1 According to Freedom
House, no country in 1900 met today’s standards of electoral democracy, let alone the more stringent ones of liberal democracy. By 2000, however, eighty-five countries had become liberal democracies and another thirty-five were electoral democracies, so that a majority of the world’s 192 independent countries were democracies of one or another kind, and they were home to about two-fifths of the world’s population. This Freedom House tabulation also documents democracy’s accelerating spread during the last quarter of the twentieth century—the third wave of democratization. Extrapolating from the evidence roughly midway in the third wave, Francis Fukuyama concluded that liberal democracy might well spread everywhere during the twenty-first century.2 More recently, Larry Diamond has been ‘‘cautiously optimistic’’ that every country may become democratic—but not necessarily liberal democratic—by 2050.3 Fukuyama and Diamond epitomize the dominant view of democracy’s progress and prospects. Especially in the United
States, policy makers, their advisors, and most opinion leaders of liberal internationalist and neoconservative persuasions have embraced democracy promotion as perhaps the most fundamental foreign policy goal.4
Our analysis gives less cause for optimism. We find that even if cases about which there is still some doubt—Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Slovakia— are counted, and if tiny Iceland and Malta are included, elites in fewer than fifty of the eighty-five liberal democracies listed by Freedom House in 2000 were consensually united. In the remaining three dozen (e.g., Bulgaria, Croatia, Ghana, El Salvador, Mongolia, Peru, Philippines, Romania), no consensually united elite had formed, regime stability was consequently ambiguous, and significant illiberal practices were evident. Our specific finding in chapter 2 was that the twenty-first century began with forty-five larger countries in which elites were consensually united and in which stable representative regimes, most of them approximating liberal democracies, were in place. We noted that this was considerably less than a third of the world’s national states with populations greater than one million. In a strictly quantitative sense, we said, disunited elites and unstable, mostly unrepresentative regimes remain far and away the most common pattern, as has been true during all of modern history. Are there reasons for thinking that this will no longer be the case at some point in the next several decades?

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People who live in countries where consensually united elites practice a generally peaceful and tamed politics have difficulty recognizing that politics are normally plagued by sharp and essentially unrestrained elite conflicts.
Elites are divided into warring factions, each seeking political supremacy at virtually any cost and by virtually any means. Power plays entailing much ruthlessness and violence are routine, and elite persons customarily lead very risky lives. With deep mutual distrusts and little security, elites typically regard open competitions for votes as simply another way by which enemies will undermine them. Consequently, attempts at representative democratic politics lead quickly to political crises, which frequently culminate in one elite faction seizing or reinforcing its power by a coup d’etat or other usur´ pation. The severe conflicts that mark disunited elites force political and other leaders to concentrate on ensuring their own survival instead of making prudent assessments of their countries’ difficulties and needs. To be sure, some amount of insecurity and risk is an inherent aspect of elite status everywhere.
But where elites are disunited, insecurity is the overriding aspect of elite status, and concerted efforts to reduce it color elite behavior deeply. These efforts collide with the survival efforts of other elite individuals and groups.
The aim is to weaken or destroy opponents and challengers, which is why the political records of countries with disunited elites are litanies of scandals, impeachments, detentions, and murders of political leaders and activists. It is not too much to say that disunited elites are addicted to political crisis.
Politics lurch from one impropriety to the next, from one attempt to discredit or eliminate opponents to the next.
Closely associated with these destructive actions is the amassing of personal wealth and other possessions—such as secret bank accounts and lavish sanctuaries in Miami, Switzerland, or elsewhere—as a hedge against political defeat. Saddam Hussein and his sons are said to have stashed billions of dollars abroad, and there is at present a crescendo of allegations that during the occupation of Iraq by American and allied forces, billions of procurement and reconstruction funds and oil earnings have been siphoned abroad by eminently insecure Iraqi leaders and officials. Surveying postcolonial Africa,
Martin Meredith observes that the continent ‘‘has suffered grievously at the hands of its Big Men and ruling elites. Their preoccupation, above all, has been to hold power for the purpose of self-enrichment.’’5A French scholar,
Jean-Pascal Daloz, describes the many ways in which Nigerian and other
African elites use ostentatious, but usually illicitly gained, personal accoutrements to defend or expand their power.6
Our point is that disunited elites do indeed constitute a vicious circle from which escape is exceptionally difficult. Memories of historical misdeeds and resentments of recent and current actions concatenate and become edifices of mistrust, fear, and hate. The leader who seeks to compromise with enemies is

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usually at greater personal risk than those who exploit conflicts and hatreds in order to destroy opponents. The intractability of politics where elites are disunited is why the fundamental settlements that we examined in chapter 3 have been so rare and are likely to remain so. If escapes from the vicious disunited circle are to be numerous, it is likely that they will occur through the convergence process, despite our reservation that most elite convergences to date may have depended on Cold War alignments or the enticement of EU membership. The fact that democratic elections, however blemished, are at present held on a more or less continuing basis in about sixty countries whose elites are disunited (we again exclude countries with populations less than a million) implies that at least some of them could follow the convergence path discussed in chapter 5. Winning coalitions of entrenched elites may form and find that free and fair elections guided by the norm of restrained partisanship do not greatly jeopardize their interests; disaffected and challenging elites may decide that they have little alternative but to beat winning coalitions at their own electoral game.
The waning of a credible socialist program, in step with the travails and eventual disintegration of the Soviet and Yugoslav state socialist regimes and
Soviet satellite regimes facilitated convergences among disunited European and Japanese elites and among some elites in South America’s southern cone and in Eastern Europe. By the 1970s in France, Italy, and other Western
European countries; the 1980s in Japan; and the 1990s in Latin America’s southern cone and newly independent Eastern Europe, the socialist program for political and economic change could no longer be plausibly embraced.
Nor was there a plausible antisystem doctrine that could readily be substituted for socialism. Except for small die-hard political groups, leftist elites in
Western Europe, Japan, and the southern cone had to accommodate themselves to a socioeconomic order that would remain capitalist indefinitely. In much of Latin America, neoliberal policies and the elites promoting them became ascendant.7 It was this set of circumstances that led us to wonder if elite convergences during the second half of the twentieth century occurred mainly because of the attenuating confrontation between socialism and capitalism, which was the period’s defining feature. However one assesses this, electoral competitions among disunited elites in the absence of an ideological divide comparable to that between capitalism and socialism might all the more rapidly foster elite convergences toward consensus on liberal democratic principles and practices.
But there are at least two reasons for doubting this. First, there are indications that anti-globalization is a new doctrinal horse that disaffected elites will ride. Amounting to a deus ex machina, globalization can be held responsible for almost any and all ills, and it is a specter that resonates among discontented mass publics. Even in the United States, France, the Netherlands,
Australia, and other ‘‘engines’’ of globalization, the outsourcing of much

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work abroad and the consequent downsizings and extinctions of companies and industries make anti-globalization a political stance to be reckoned with.
In much of Latin America and Africa, anti-globalization is a watchword among elites deeply mistrustful of those in power, who are portrayed as agents and handmaidens of nefarious globalizing forces emanating from the
West’s core capitalist countries. In the Middle East especially, anti-globalization is yoked to religious and nationalist identities, and the resulting ideological mix is toxic. Anti-globalization may well become the doctrine of choice among elites seeking to dislodge those with the upper hand. The paradox of democracy, in which democratic elections sometimes produce victories of forces not committed to democracy, may spur such dislodgements. Most current American policy makers would say, for example, that this is a scenario that has been followed in Venezuela by Hugo Chavez and the elite he
´
leads.
Second, factions in many disunited elites mobilize and lead ethnic and religious communities that are more or less unalterably opposed. Jack Snyder has charted the incidence of violent subnational ethnic conflicts, in which at least 1,000 people died, between 1945 and 1999.8 He lists thirty-five countries in which such conflicts killed or displaced roughly twenty-five million people. Twenty-seven of the countries—Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Myanmar, Burundi, Chad, Croatia, Cyprus, Ethiopia,
Georgia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Moldova, Morocco,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Rwanda, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Turkey— had disunited elites whose main warring camps appealed to distinct ethnoreligious population segments for support.9 It is hard to find many signs of convergences, let alone settlements, among these twenty-seven disunited elites. In Turkey it is conceivable that the moderation shown by the main
Muslim party, now called the Felicity Party, signals an incipient convergence of its leaders with the entrenched elites at the head of the large secular parties, and that the simmering insurrection by Turkish Kurds will not scuttle this. In Croatia it may be that the ‘‘cleansing’’ of Serbs who previously resided there has opened the way for a convergence of elites who badly want to be accepted by the European Union. But the readiness with which disunited elites can deepen and enflame ethnoreligious conflicts makes the persistence of such elites in the other twenty-five countries on Snyder’s list probable. Unless they can be united in some other way, disunited elites are likely to remain the norm. One alternative, recently touted, is the idea held by some segments of the American political elite that democracies, even liberal democracies, can be created through American or international interventions utilizing military force. This amounts to the hypothesis that foreign countries can forcibly transform disunited elites into consensually united ones.
But as the American government’s Iraq imbroglio illustrates so vividly, there

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is no basis for thinking that this can be accomplished at acceptable economic and political costs for the intervening country or countries. Unless disunited elites transform themselves into the consensually united configuration, there is little possibility that outside forces can make regimes meaningfully democratic in anything other than a temporary sense.
The fundamental problem in disunited elites, as we have said, is pervasive personal and group insecurity. Departures from the disunited configuration require arrangements that make the main elite groups and persons more secure. This was achieved historically through the formation of liberal oligarchies, in which elites took turns governing on the basis of periodic competitions for the support of small numbers of relatively well-off and reasonably secure citizens. Liberal oligarchies are, of course, anathema to the many who today so enthusiastically urge mass democracy’s spread. But on the whole, mass democracy does not increase the security of disunited elites; if anything, it heightens their insecurity. Enthusiasts of liberal democracy should recognize that transforming disunited elites and the unstable regimes associated with them probably requires some form of liberal oligarchy as a first and relatively long-lasting step.

WILL IDEOLOGICALLY
UNITED ELITES IMPLODE?
In one of the twentieth century’s great political changes, the ideologically united elite that controlled the Soviet Union for nearly seven decades imploded between 1989 and 1991, and in the last days of 1991 the USSR ceased to exist. As befits such a momentous event, its causes and consequences are the subjects of a mountainous literature, in which ossification of the Soviet elite and rapidly deepening fissures within it are predominantly depicted as the driving force.10 In what sense, however, did the Soviet elite implode? It is widely recognized that most members of the old elite survived the Soviet Union’s demise by repackaging themselves as democrats, liberals, and nationalists. Some retained their old Soviet positions in the new Russian regime; many others transited to influential positions in the emerging private and parastatal sectors by expropriating Soviet assets.11 What imploded was not the Soviet elite per se, but its united structure and ideological consensus.
A plethora of elites jostling for power and influence and espousing diverse ideological aims quickly took shape in the form of a bloated presidential entourage confronting leaders of start-up parties inside and outside the State
Duma, competing business and parastatal elite groups, relatively autonomous but internally divided military and state security elites, powerful provincial governors and regional elites, several trade union leaderships and an influential collective-farm lobby, a watchdog media elite, and a clerical elite

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leading the resurgent Orthodox Church—as well as a number of organized and influential criminal groups. In place of the single professed ideology of state socialism during Soviet rule, various elites now professed to be democrats, nationalists, capitalists, and, in the case of a still large Communist
Party, defenders of the old socialist faith.
Throughout the 1990s, these disparate elites fought to control the assets of a ‘‘soft’’ Russian state that was largely unable to enforce its laws and decrees.12 It was obvious that the Russian elite as a whole was disunited and the country’s fledgling democratic regime was unstable: a rump elite in the
State Duma was repressed by military force in October 1993; several prominent politicians and journalists were assassinated; some business leaders who profited greatly and illicitly from the Soviet elite’s implosion fled overseas; a constitutional referendum in 1995 and presidential elections in 1996 and
2000 were highly plebiscitary and dubiously free and fair; a violent Chechen insurgency broke out; the financial system came close to collapse in 1998; and a noticeably more tight-fisted rule was instituted by Vladimir Putin after
2000. The question is whether the Soviet elite’s implosion presaged what may happen to ideologically united elites in China, Cuba, North Korea,
Vietnam, and, for that matter, Iran, where a powerful Muslim clerical elite presides over a regime that is substantially theocratic in character and quite obviously seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Certainly the Soviet elite implosion provides a basis for thinking that in the long run ideologically united elites are unsustainable. Over a generation or more in the Soviet Union, the state socialist-cum-Marxist/Leninist prescription for social and economic organization, around which the elite was ostensibly united, became increasingly devoid of meaning in virtually all matters affecting elite and public satisfactions. The results of the elite’s economic and social engineering became uniformly dreary, and this was even more evident in the Soviet Union’s satellite countries. A steady deterioration in economic conditions, public health, and other functioning was followed and reinforced by a gradual weakening of party control and spreading corruption within the elite and in large parts of the society.
Aspects of this pattern have been evident in China and Vietnam for some time. Party control has been relaxed, although by no means abdicated, and corruption has spread quite widely. On the other hand, relaxed party control, large reservoirs of cheap labor, and success in obtaining foreign capital investment have so far made the Chinese and Vietnamese socioeconomic trajectories the opposite of the late Soviet trajectory. Economic growth is strong, sizable middle classes exist, and gigantic industrialization and infrastructure projects absorb much surplus peasant labor into urban workforces and broadly better living conditions. It is a shibboleth of social science that these trends are ultimately incompatible: either control by an ideologically united elite and its penetrative party will stifle socioeconomic progress and

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create a crisis, or the growth of middle classes and other social differentiation will break the party elite’s monolithic structure and ideological coherence.
This either/or scenario may, however, be misleading in twenty-first century conditions. It captures well enough what has happened so far in North
Korea and to a lesser extent in Cuba and Iran, where centralized elites professing a single ideology—especially marked in North Korea—have retarded socioeconomic development substantially. But it is less obviously applicable to China and Vietnam, where development has been dynamic and relatively large and prosperous middle classes have emerged without breaking the elites’ hold. To be sure, state socialism is being emptied of meaning in China and Vietnam, but elites in both countries stoke nationalism as a replacement.
Nationalism with a strongly anti-American thrust is a strategy to which
Fidel Castro and his associates in Cuba have long resorted, and it is an important means by which senior clerics in Iran retain their grip on power.
There are additional reasons to doubt that the either/or scenario forecasts the fates of ideologically united elites in this new century. A simple learning curve is one: having watched the Soviet elite implosion, the Chinese, Vietnamese, and other ideologically united elites are on guard against choices and actions that might hasten their own implosions. It is also possible that the postulate of an inverse relation between strong socioeconomic development and the persistence of ideologically united elites is weakened, if not negated, by twenty-first-century conditions. It may be that such elites are finding ways to couple strong socioeconomic growth and political repression indefinitely. Two prominent political scientists, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George W. Downs, suggest that this can be accomplished by dramatically increasing the provision of general public goods—transportation, health care, basic education, national defense—while at the same time continuing to inhibit the spread of what they call ‘‘coordination goods’’— political rights, more general human rights, unregulated media, access to higher education—that enable potential political opponents to organize but are less critical for economic growth.13 Citizens can be allowed to eat cake and still be kept in political check.
We are not forecasting endless tenures for today’s ideologically united elites. The sheer sizes of still essentially surplus rural workforces; problems of environmental pollution, global warming, and water supply; and dwindling or at least sharply more expensive petroleum and other energy resources required for strong and sustained economic development confront such elites (and all others) with major challenges that may prove fatal.14
Implosions like that of the Soviet elite can hardly be ruled out. Yet, in the changed and changing circumstances of the twenty-first century, ideologically united elites have advantages that the Soviet elite either did not have or was too ossified to seize. To this extent, their implosions are less inevitable.

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WILL CONSENSUALLY UNITED
ELITES PERSIST?
Twenty years ago, Giovanni Sartori worried about an imbalance in liberal democracies. Excessive emphasis on their horizontal or non-elite dimension—on electoral, participatory, and referendum democracy—was in his view stifling the vertical, or elite, dimension—subordination, superordination, and coordination—without which democracies become rudderless.15 In his magisterial assessment of ‘‘the short twentieth century’’—the Age of
Extremes, as he called it—Eric Hobsbawm saw the following in the century’s waning years:
The dilemma of an age when government could—some would say: must—be
‘‘of the people’’ and ‘‘for the people,’’ but could not in any operational sense be
‘‘by the people,’’ or even by representative assemblies elected among those who competed for its vote. . . . The democratic predicament was more acute now, both because public opinion, monitored by polls, magnified by the omnipresent media, was now constantly inescapable, and because public authorities had to take far more decisions to which public opinion was no sort of guide.16

Fareed Zakaria echoes the assessments of Sartori and Hobsbawm: ‘‘The deregulation of [liberal] democracy has gone too far. It has produced an unwieldy system, unable to govern or command the respect of people. . . .
Those who hold power devote themselves to placating popular demands while losing the independence that is a prerequisite for tackling issues whose complexities lie beyond the grasp of mass publics.’’17 His prescription is to reassert democracy’s vertical or elite dimension: ‘‘Those with immense power in our societies [must] embrace their responsibilities, lead, and set standards that are not only legal, but moral. Without this inner stuffing, democracy is an empty shell, not simply inadequate but potentially dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life.’’18
The elite dimension of liberal democracies is, we believe, being reasserted.
Elite rule is now more conspicuous and forceful in several liberal democracies, and its reassertion is likely to occur in most others before long. In the
United States, an exceptionally aggressive and tightly knit elite led by
George W. Bush is forcefully reshaping liberal democratic politics. In the
United Kingdom, Tony Blair and his entourage have given the core executive expanded resources and a streamlined capacity to impose policies with relative impunity, taking the grave step of participating in the invasion of Iraq despite massive parliamentary, internal party, and public opposition. The
U.S. and U.K. patterns have been duplicated by the elite clustered around
Prime Minister John Howard in Australia, whose forceful actions—

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participating in the Iraq invasion despite fierce opposition, launching risky military peacekeeping missions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands, threatening preemptive military actions against terrorist redoubts in Southeast Asia, detaining and incarcerating large numbers of illegal refugees, and gaining three reelections through bare-knuckled campaigns—have no clear precedent in the country’s hundred years of independence. In Italy, a governing elite led by Silvio Berlusconi played fast and loose with parliamentary and judicial practices; exerted near monopoly control of television; and, like the Bush, Blair, and Howard elites, engaged militarily in Iraq in the teeth of intense public opposition.
At the national level in all EU member states, a reassertion of elite rule is evident in expanded intelligence and internal security apparatuses, greater surveillance of mass publics, and numerous forcible actions against terrorist cells and migrant diasporas thought to harbor them. Acting jointly, these national elites have attempted to provide the EU—whose construction has always been an exclusively elite project19 —with a power-centralizing constitution that was signed by member state leaders in 2004. The constitution’s ratification was stalled in 2005 when Dutch and French voters voted no in referendums that governing elites in Amsterdam and Paris too readily called, but it is likely that by hook or crook EU elites will get their constitution, or a close approximation of it, adopted before the present decade ends. A symbiosis of politically influential bureaucratic and business elites, headquartered in or centered on Brussels, is, in any event, robust and little beholden to popular accountability. In Scandinavia, democracy’s horizontal or mass dimension still predominates, although in Denmark and Norway strong right-wing parties and movements promise a more vertical style of governance if they gain executive power. In the portions of Eastern Europe west of Russia, the horizontal-vertical balance remains quite fluid due to the conflicting legacies of supremely forceful elite rule under state socialism and the democratic exuberance that followed its collapse. In several countries, nonetheless, political elite coalitions backed by business elites imposed EU membership on recalcitrant or at least skeptical publics.
The reassertion of elite rule appears to be accompanied by a stronger articulation and increasing separation of elite factions that have recently or long been consensually united. As we said at this chapter’s outset, political elites in the Western liberal democracies are tending to divide into more tightly organized and mutually antagonistic camps deploying large financial and other kinds of resources, including heightened powers of incumbency and the ability to manipulate mass media, in their contests for executive power.
Increasingly, they portray these contests in winner-take-all terms. Mobilizations of popular support become more plebiscitary, stressing patriotic and religious commitments that narrow the room for elite compromise and power sharing. If we are right that elite rule is being reasserted at the same

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time that elites are tending to become more separate and bitterly opposed, what accounts for this? Our answer is that elites in liberal democracies are recognizing a need to deal boldly with a variety of pressures and challenges, the enumeration and adequate discussion of which would require another book. But let us encapsulate a few of these pressures and challenges.

UNEVEN WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Although China and India have experienced impressive economic growth during the last several decades, elsewhere outside the West relatively little growth has occurred, and numerous countries have suffered economic stagnation or regression. Between 1987 and 1998, the numbers of people living on less than one U.S. dollar a day increased substantially in Latin America,
South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the transition economies of Eastern
Europe and Central Asia.20 World Bank projections for yearly economic growth between 2000 and 2015 are sobering: 1.6 percent for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2.5 percent for the Middle East and North Africa, and
1.4 percent for sub-Saharan Africa.21 Yet sustained growth rates on the order of 6 percent or better are necessary to lift large numbers of people out of poverty and create sizable middle classes. Elites in nearly all the stagnating or sluggishly developing countries are deeply disunited, which makes it unlikely that effective economic policies will be enacted or adhered to. Most of the countries are ensnared in financial indebtedness, a lack of investment capital, vulnerability to hyperinflation, rampant corruption, weak or at best wildly fluctuating markets for commodity exports, and, especially in Latin
America, labor costs that are now uncompetitive with those of Asian producers.
Populations containing large numbers of demoralized people are a principal result. Millions of people lack the morale that gainful employment in flourishing occupational structures would generate, and they lack moral respect for the social and political orders that fail to utilize their labors and talents and yet provide tiny elites with lavish lifestyles. For demoralized people without an assured and recognized place in society, otherworldly salvation beckons. Such people are deeply religious in belief and behavior, often with a ‘‘revolutionary millenarian’’ thrust.22 In much of the non-Western world, politics that have long entailed no-holds-barred elite power struggles are today further enflamed by the mobilizations that rising elites and selfproclaimed prophets leading fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and
Buddhist movements undertake.23 These elites and movements incubate
‘‘martyrdom’’ actions against the hated regimes that seek to repress them and, where possible, the ‘‘Western devils’’ believed to be a root cause of their predicaments. 194

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The desperate migration of millions of people to Western Europe, North
America, Australia, and New Zealand, and, increasingly, Japan and South
Korea, is another main result of uneven world development. Assimilation of these migrants to the host cultures and populations is difficult, and some observers and analysts start to wonder if it is possible, given the migrants’ numbers and cultural allegiances.24 Technologies for instant worldwide communication and rapid transportation—combined with the perception of hostility and discrimination at the hands of host populations and governments—facilitate transnational identities in migrants and an uncertain allegiance to the host country. During the summer of 2005, London’s ‘‘7/7’’ experience of carnage in the Underground at the hands of homegrown Muslim suicide bombers (followed two weeks later by another homegrown group’s failed attack) showed that problems of assimilation are not limited to first-generation migrants. Proliferating nonallegiant or only semiallegiant immigrant communities challenge the norms and practices of liberal democracies by eschewing restrained partisanship, provoking the rise of virulent anti-immigrant parties and movements, and inducing illiberal crackdowns on suspect groups.

DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENT INSECURITIES
Employment and career insecurities are now deep seated and widespread in the liberal democracies, for several reasons. The nebulous products and services of most postindustrial work create uncertainty about the need for labor. Employers frequently conclude that they can function as well, if not better, with fewer workers, so downsizing becomes widespread. Through their open-ended capacity to perform many jobs that humans still do, computers and robots heighten uncertainty about career trajectories. Technologies of instant worldwide communication and rapid transportation virtually dictate the outsourcing of many well-paid Western jobs to cheaper areas in the global labor market. Strictly entrepreneurial calculations about job tenures and benefits exacerbate insecurities. The propriety of such calculations is a cardinal tenet of the revived faith in laissez-faire principles that has seized the more conservative politicians and policy experts. Social democratic parties and governments are obliged to accommodate such calculations in order to maintain their countries’ economic competitiveness.
What are the political implications of employment insecurities? An important part of the answer involves realizing that they create a demoralization crisis abstractly similar to that in non-Western countries with millions of people whose labor is unneeded. The loss of individual morale and moral respect for Western political and social orders that generate insecurities is an increasingly widespread, albeit largely unrecognized and uninvestigated,

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condition of mass publics in today’s liberal democracies. As in non-Western settings, demoralized people in the West tend to seek otherworldly and magical salvations. Employment insecurities are, we posit, a prime reason for the spread of religious fundamentalism in the liberal democracies—and for its close correlate, ultranationalism.25 Holders and proselytizers of such absolutist dogmas are, of course, outraged by the bargains and compromises that are the main practical consequences of consensually united elites.
POLITICAL CLASSES IN MASS SOCIETIES
Elite competitions in liberal democracies take place primarily through omnipresent mass media and carefully staged presentations that bypass intermediate associations and institutions, which are in any case thought to be attenuating.26 This is one aspect of the politics of mass society—an apparition that has loomed over the liberal democracies for half a century.27 The politics of mass society, Harold Wilensky observes, have as principal features:
(1) the debilitation of culture-bearing elites (and of the core values they sustain) brought on by their diminishing insulation from popular pressures; and (2) the rise of the masses, who, for various reasons, are increasingly susceptible to demagogues and extremist movements, the carriers of fanatical faiths of race, religion, nation, and class. . . . Elites, themselves mass-oriented, become political and managerial manipulators responding to short-run pressures; they fail to maintain standards and thereby encourage the spread of populism in politics.
. . . [The danger is] the subversion of representative democracy by the increasing vulnerability of the masses to manipulation; and the debilitation of culturebearing elites whose standards and values erode as mass pressures mount.28

Through ubiquitous polling and focus groups, elites in today’s Western democracies closely monitor the mass pulse and construct appeals to fit it.
The life of a democratic politician is one of constant campaigning, especially in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, where legislators must seek reelection every two or three years. The public and private lives of politicians and most other elite persons are subjected to intense public scrutiny.
The proliferation of tabloid journalism, boosted to warp levels by twentyfour-hour cable TV news channels, talk-back radio stations, and online blogs, spurs even ‘‘reputable’’ journalists to pry into every nook and cranny of the lives of elites. In the unchecked pursuit of commercial profit, media outlets and Internet scandalmongers dig for information that grabs audiences and sells advertising. In these respects, liberal democratic politics have seldom been riskier, which repels potentially capable leaders and selects for those who are more adept and ruthless in playing a destructive political

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game. Room for the careful maneuvers, complex compromises, and tacit quid pro quos that are essential to containing explosive issues and mollifying public discontents narrows.
An important dynamic in this ominous trend is the swelling size of political classes in liberal democracies. Prosperity and expansion of higher education have increased the proportion of citizens who are knowledgeable about political developments and whose circumstances—some quite comfortable, others quite insecure—incline or impel them to follow and regularly engage in politics. Prime examples are professional social activists who make careers of stoking and then representing mass discontents and interests. Other examples are professional campaign consultants steeped in manipulating electorates for handsome incomes. Manifesting the swelling size of political classes, protest and direct-action groups multiply.29 Those able to create or tap into what are often narrow public followings gain access to key decision makers in national capitals. Sidney Tarrow discerns a ‘‘lowering of boundaries between conventional and unconventional politics,’’30 which is illustrated by how social movement activists now penetrate party nominating and local candidate selection processes. He observes, ‘‘Judging from survey results, Western Europe and the United States have become virtual ‘movement societies,’ in which contentious political activity has become a routine way of opposing competing groups, asserting collective identities, and influencing power-holders.’’31 There is also a question about political socialization in conditions of mass politics. As avenues for moving to political elite status or pressuring political outcomes shift away from traditional massmembership, translocal, and cross-class civic organizations to professionally managed checkbook organizations,32 more people enter politics with little socialization into the norms of compromise and restrained partisanship. In particular, youthful ‘‘political gunslingers’’ with scant experience of— indeed, an open disdain for—compromise and restraint increasingly occupy influential positions in political campaigns, social movements, and the media punditry. Religious leaders who have large mass followings are also a rising force in the political classes of liberal democracies. In the United States, where this development is most pronounced, such leaders are primarily evangelical
Christians; in Europe, they are mainly Muslim and evangelical Christian immigrants, with the latter increasing so rapidly that they may come to outnumber the former.33 Television, the Internet, mass mailings, and megachurches, combined with sophisticated and crowd-pleasing marketing techniques, enable religious leaders to multiply and reach ever larger audiences, parts of which are often enticed away from competing leaders. Advocating absolutist positions drawn from literal readings of sacred texts, these leaders demand tough actions by elites in exchange for their support, and in this way they contribute to the reassertion of elite rule, but also to an erosion

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of the restrained partisanship that underpins liberal democracies. This is well illustrated by the large Dominionist movement in America. Its leaders have played a major role in getting out the vote for George W. Bush and other
Republican politicians who court their favor, but they demand nothing less than a fundamentalist Christian domination of America and the world.34
The political classes whose members speak with voices that must be listened to by political elites are expanding, and also diversifying, quite substantially. The number of persons who have career stakes in electoral and lobbying outcomes is large. Especially at the national level, elections involve protracted struggles between armadas of political class members for whom the outcomes have pivotal career and income consequences. The United
States is probably again the extreme case. The winning side in a U.S. presidential election disposes of several thousand reasonably plum political appointments, and the fortunes of many thousands of lobbyists in Washington depend crucially on who wins. As the deeply divisive and highly organized struggle that followed the 2000 presidential election and the viciousness of the 2004 presidential campaign illustrated, American political elites have difficulty resisting political class pressures to win at any cost and by any means—to go down and dirty.
Similar tendencies are observable in other liberal democracies, where swelling and more organized and divided political classes are evident. In most European parliamentary systems, the politicization of top civil service echelons and the expanding size of ministerial cabinets, together with platoons of political, public relations, and media advisors, multiply the number of people whose careers ride on electoral and policy outcomes.35 In their recent assessment of the ‘‘expanding executive core,’’ or ‘‘political center,’’ in the United Kingdom, Martin Burch and Ian Holliday have found that it is ‘‘increasingly coordinated and coherent, and increasingly proactive and performance-driven. . . . Overall, it seeks to function like the corporate headquarters of a multinational company, monitoring and assessing the performance of subordinate units.’’36 As in the United States, professional lobbyists and social movement activists proliferate in Europe, the media’s gaze is intense and nonstop, and elections have a do-or-die cast for many political class members.

THE BUSH ELITE: ABERRATION
OR HARBINGER?
Elite factions that alternated in executive power in the American and other liberal democracies during the second half of the twentieth century were seldom clearly distinct from their predecessors and successors. Typically, they were enmeshed in extended circles and networks of political influence and

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personal acquaintance that tied together several thousand of the uppermost figures in politics, government administration, business, trade unions, the media, and assorted interest groups. These interlocked formations were tighter than the ‘‘plural elites’’ model depicts, but more far-flung than the
‘‘power elite’’ model portrays.37 Through circles and networks, individuals and factions reached executive power, osmosis-like, via lengthy careers in elective, party, administrative, and other politically relevant arenas. Once in power, elites found their actions checked in many ways. Radical policy innovations were stymied by the complexity of established institutions and by programs inherited from the previous power holders; truculent congressional or parliamentary supporters had to be placated; political debts incurred during the rise to power had to be paid; preparations for the next election tempered actions; the power of elites in other societal sectors had to be respected; and the personal behaviors and political decisions of the governing elite were subject to media scrutiny and criticism. All in all, a singleminded pursuit of political aims that broke sharply with what had gone before was exceedingly difficult. As S. E. Finer put it, elites habitually took in each other’s washing.38
The elite clustered around President George W. Bush in the United States has deviated quite sharply from this pattern. In composition and structure, the Bush elite has been exceptionally well articulated and tightly woven. Its principal members have long been political intimates who possess a marked elan and a distinctive set of moral and political beliefs. The elite has possessed
´
an internally agreed upon and remarkably ambitious program as regards
America’s role in the world and domestic changes that it views as imperative.
Much of this program was formulated years before the elite gained power at the start of 2001, and the 9/11 attacks later that year provided a basis for justifying the program’s implementation publicly. Although some improvisation was unavoidable, the Bush elite has been tenacious—many would say ruthless—in pursuing its beliefs and program.39
The elite has been a study in network density and integration. Many welldocumented books and articles by journalists and persons who held highlevel positions in the first Bush administration (2000–2004) portray an exceptional degree of integration and uniformity of belief.40 Following the
2004 presidential election, the elite’s marked integration was further tightened. Nine of Bush’s fifteen cabinet secretaries were replaced by persons as close or closer to Bush and the White House than the previous secretaries had been. A number of important officials below cabinet level who had sometimes been out of step with the White House were purged and replaced by loyalists. From the start of 2005, in short, a small knot of Bush confidants had thorough control of the executive branch, eradicating or at least reducing the jurisdictional rivalries and policy disagreements that sometimes occurred during the elite’s first four years in power.

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Especially during those first four years, the elite’s choreographing of public support was impressive. Bush and his most senior associates, especially
Vice President Dick Cheney, regularly invoked the horrors of 9/11 and the necessity for a ‘‘global war on terror.’’ The elite’s program was couched in strong value terms: ‘‘spreading democracy and freedom,’’ ‘‘an era of individual responsibility,’’ ‘‘no child left behind,’’ ‘‘compassionate conservatism.’’
It was also dressed in nationalist garb, to wit, ‘‘America’s duty as the greatest and strongest country the world has ever seen.’’ Speeches and TV newscast appearances by Bush, Cheney, and principal cabinet members were carefully sequenced by the White House Communications Office to escalate public fears of threats facing the country, and they were delivered to audiences from which opponents and skeptics had been culled beforehand. Key elite members were made available for background briefings of local television news anchors to promote a nationally uniform and sympathetic media presentation of the case for forceful actions. Journalists and pundits who promoted the elite’s policies appeared on government payrolls, and some government departments expended funds on the production of semi-anonymous videos that touted elite policies and were supplied to unsuspecting television stations for use on news programs.41 Cable TV channels, especially Rupert
Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, aired programs that demonized America’s enemies and glorified America’s military might, depicted heroic sacrifices in places like Fallujah, and rehearsed victories in previous wars fought to
‘‘defend freedom.’’ Journalists and television and radio talk-show hosts sympathetic to the Bush elite were fed leaks and materials by the White House, government public relations offices, Republican Party national headquarters, and the array of conservative think tanks allied with the elite. This enabled media pundits to deride domestic critics and stir xenophobic perceptions of the French, ‘‘old’’ Europe, the United Nations, and other foreign entities said to be working against America’s efforts to rid the world of terrorists and tyrants by spreading democracy and freedom.42
Although the Bush elite had firm control of the executive branch during its first term, Congress was less reliably under its sway. Before the November 2002 midterm elections the Democrats had knife-edge control of the
Senate, while the Republicans, who controlled the House of Representatives, had to contend with diverse factions and constituencies that diluted their leaders’ support of the White House. The victory won by Bush for his Senate supporters in the 2002 elections was so narrow that the elite’s ability to get important parts of its domestic program through Congress remained limited. However, the plebiscitary campaign waged by Bush for the 2004 presidential election, coupled with an unscrupulous Republican redistricting of congressional House seats in Texas during 2003, produced substantial
Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. During 2005 and 2006 the Bush elite and its congressional and judicial allies held full control of the

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federal government, and Republicans also controlled a majority of the state governments. Has the Bush elite been an aberration in American politics, or has it been a harbinger of a political elite reconfiguration that will persist and have counterparts in other liberal democracies? It was certainly possible to regard the elite’s initial ascendancy as the accidental and presumably short-lived result of the political train wreck that the 2000 presidential and congressional elections constituted. Not only did Al Gore fumble his presidential campaign but the third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader, and Florida’s deeply flawed voting machinery, combined to deprive Gore of an Electoral College majority that would have reflected his nationwide vote plurality. Even then, the
Bush elite had to rely on a friendly majority of Supreme Court Justices to gain power through a decision, in Bush v. Gore, that most constitutional scholars agree was without sound legal basis. In short, the elite’s initial hold on power could be seen as an accident, with its program, which was largely concealed from the public during the 2000 campaign, lacking an electoral mandate. It was plausible to expect that in the normal cycles and practices of
American politics the elite would be stymied and soon driven from office. It was simply an aberration.
After the 9/11 attacks and the Bush elite’s political exploitation of them in the 2002 and 2004 elections, this expectation became less plausible. The elite’s exceptional coherence, its long gestation as a self-perceived and increasingly powerful conservative counterelite, its concerted assault on the competing Democratic elite, and its use of power to entrench itself— strikingly manifest in the White House’s tightened command of government departments and purge of dissenting officials after the 2004 election—might signal a more fundamental elite reconfiguration. The strong centripetal pressures on the United States and other Western countries that stem from the uneven world development that we encapsulated lend credence to this possibility. All Western elites recognize the dangers posed by a world potentially out of control. This implies that leonine elites similar to the Bush elite will form and come to power as Western countries seek to hold these pressures at bay.
The underlying political dynamics of American and other Western societies, which we also encapsulated, are another reason or set of reasons for regarding the Bush elite as a harbinger. These dynamics contribute to plebiscitary and polarizing electoral contests that advantage elites tightly organized around leaders who evoke a sense of overwhelming crisis, the need for a closer integration of a purer community, and the superiority of their own instincts.43 When asking if the Bush elite is more than an aberration, we must also remember that the personalities, choices, and mentalities of elites do much to alter political agendas and institutions in ways that make the status quo ante irretrievable. They create foreign and domestic foes that outlive

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them, and economic problems that encumber their successors. Such lasting changes will be the Bush elite’s legacy. Its decision to invade and occupy
Iraq will reverberate in foreign and domestic political arenas for many years to come. And even if the elite’s zealous tax cuts are reversed, they have contributed to a mammoth budget deficit that will constrain domestic policies long into the future.
There are grounds for thinking, in sum, that the Bush elite is a harbinger of changes in the structure and functioning of consensually united elites in liberal democracies. To be sure, the Bush elite’s genesis and many of its actions can be traced to the American polity’s institutional and cultural peculiarities: a historically weak national state and government that derive from the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers, combined with federal decentralization and the pronounced individualism and populism of American political culture. The national state and government have strengthened mainly during wars, and the Bush elite’s concentration of power in Washington and peremptory actions in a time of peril are no doubt an instance of such wartime strengthening. But we suspect that more is involved—that the Bush elite has culminated, to date at least, a decentering of American politics and a dilution of American democracy’s horizontal dimension.44 Elites in all Western liberal democracies must now deal with the centripetal pressures stemming from uneven world development, domestic employment insecurities, and swollen political classes (and, of course, other ominous problems, such as global warming, environmental despoliation, increased petroleum competitions and costs, threats of disease pandemics, etc.). Elites sense that policies and actions must be bolder, with errors and misjudgments becoming that much more costly. It is worth recalling one of
Pareto’s dicta: ‘‘The need of the weak for protection is constant and universal, and seeks fulfillment at the hands of whoever possesses power. . . . When centripetal forces are dominant, the central government will be called on to provide it. Whenever circumstances turn in favor of this centripetal phase, a pre-existing central government, or a central authority new both in form and substance, asserts itself sooner or later.’’45 To an important extent, elites in liberal democracies are now more threatened and insecure. As they attempt more drastic responses to pressures, they lash out at those standing in their way. We are certainly not prepared to conclude that such actions are a prelude to the disintegration of consensually united elites and the demise of liberal democracies. We simply posit that elites are reasserting themselves and altering the balance of liberal democracy’s vertical and horizontal dimensions. After a half-century during which the horizontal mass dimension was predominant, the political pendulum is swinging toward the vertical elite dimension, but with the danger that elite collaboration and restraint is lessening.

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CONCLUSIONS
It is appropriate to end this book by returning briefly to elite theory and to a current illustration of its utility: Iraq. Elite theory holds that those who have serious and sustained effects on political outcomes are practically always few in number, are fairly well situated in society, and are mainly individuals who see some clear personal advantage in political action, despite its risks. These individuals and the tiny groups they form—elites—mobilize larger numbers of people into more or less reliable blocs of supporters for various measures and causes. In this respect, all politics, whether autocratic or democratic, are elitist in character. Although the basic interests and sentiments of mass publics impose broad limits on what elites can do, the detailed handling of most specific political questions is primarily a matter of elite choice and manipulation. The extent to which conflicting political inclinations and interests within mass publics are activated depends heavily on whether elites articulate them and organize political movements around them. If elites cooperate, they normally have enough autonomy and latitude to ameliorate or contain mass discontents.
Elite interactions are, thus, critical for understanding how and why different political outcomes occur. Some interaction patterns provide all or most elite persons and groups with considerable security and ways to defend and advance their personal and factional interests peacefully; other patterns make elite power wielding precarious and highly risky, with conspiracy and violence being key elements. Different interaction patterns generate over time different modes of elite behavior, be it relatively benevolent or predacious, relatively calculating or capricious, or relatively cooperative or conflict ridden. A central claim of this book has been that predacious, capricious, and conflict-ridden behavior has characterized most elites in modern history and continues to do so today. Only where elites have been willing to moderate their conflicts and hold politics to relatively small risks has liberal democracy or its frequent precursor, liberal oligarchy, been possible. Elites must share a consensus not to push partisan interests to the point where compromise becomes impossible, to obey largely unwritten rules of political conduct, and to support and protect existing political institutions and processes. They must, in our term, be consensually united.
Elite theory and analysis cast a distinctive and circumspect light on what is possible in politics. If we view countries in this light, the chances of avoiding mistaken assessments and counterproductive actions are improved. The
Bush elite’s embroilment in Iraq illustrates this. Throughout Iraq’s independent existence, its elites have been deeply disunited, and political ascendancy has been achieved and maintained at gunpoint; this was never more evident than during Saddam Hussein’s rule. The country also displays ethnic and

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religious cleavages that coincide roughly with geographic regions, a pattern that in other countries has nearly always prevented consensually united elites from forming. If it was judged desirable to replace Saddam’s rule with a more democratic regime that might trigger replacements of authoritarian regimes in neighboring countries, then identifying and planning a way to transform
Iraq’s disunited elites was the overriding task before invading the country.
Accounts of preinvasion planning show, however, that a way to unite Iraqi elites was never sought.46 Key policy planners in the Bush elite, located mainly in the vice president’s office and the Pentagon, failed completely to recognize how serious the problem would be. Their lapse was due to an unwillingness even to contemplate the political and strategic costs of a nation-building effort in which Iraq would be effectively colonized, and democratic practices nurtured by the United States over a long period.
Instead, a view of democracy’s foundations that is the opposite of this book’s gripped elite thinking. With President Bush first and foremost, elite members gave every indication of genuinely believing that masses of people, given the chance, create democracy simply by participating in the free and fair elections that a momentarily occupying power like the United States can insist upon, as it did in Germany and Japan after World War II (where, as we saw in chapter 5, a decades-long process of elite convergence nevertheless had to ensue before stable liberal democracies became apparent).
As things quite predictably turned out, the Americans were thwarted by the clear and deep-seated antipathies among Iraqi elites, which were made worse by the deliberate and wholesale displacement of the Sunni Baathist elite clustered around Saddam and of thousands of predominantly Sunni midlevel functionaries, together with woeful failures to establish order and a functioning infrastructure. The Bush elite broke the Saddam pottery easily enough, but it had no way to ensure that Iraqi elites, the only actors who could do so, would unite to build the kind of democracy that the Americans so blithely expected.
NOTES
1. Freedom House, ‘‘Democracy’s Century: A Survey of Global Political Change in the Twentieth Century,’’ December 7, 1999, www.freedomhouse.org/reports/ century.html (accessed July 17, 2004). See also Seymour Martin Lipset and Jason
Lakin, The Democratic Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004).
2. Francis Fukuyama, ‘‘The End of History?’’ National Interest 16 (Summer
1989): 3–18.
3. Larry Diamond, ‘‘Universal Democracy?’’ Policy Review 119 ( June–July
2003): 3–25; see also Larry Diamond, ‘‘The State of Democratization at the Beginning of the 21st Century,’’ Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 6 (Winter–Spring 2005): 13–18.

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4. Thomas Carothers, ‘‘The End of the Transition Paradigm,’’ Journal of Democracy 13 (January 2002): 5–21.
5. Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa (New York: Public Affairs Publishers,
2005), 686.
6. Jean-Pascal Daloz, ‘‘Ostentation in Comparative Perspective: Culture and
Elite Legitimation,’’ Comparative Social Research 21 (April 2003): 29–62.
7. Kurt Weyland, The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
8. Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000).
9. Elites in three of Snyder’s thirty-five countries were in our estimation consensually united—India, Israel, and the United Kingdom. India’s elites have presided over recurring and extremely bloody communal conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, Israeli elites have been embroiled in the struggle with Palestinians for territory outside Israel proper, while British elites have had to contend with the regional secessionist movement and insurrection in Ulster. In Snyder’s listing, Spain had to deal with the violent Basque insurgency before and after its elites united via the 1976–
1978 settlement that we recounted in chapter 3. Three more countries—China, Iran, and the USSR—had elites that were ideologically united and that brutally crushed uprisings by Tibetans and Ughurs, Kurds, and Lithuanians and Ukrainians, respectively. Other countries in which elites are disunited at least in part over ethnic and ethnoreligious conflicts, but in which one thousand or more people have not as yet perished or in which recent events require their addition to Snyder’s list, come quickly to mind: Bolivia, Ecuador, Fiji, Ivory Coast, Peru, Thailand, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan.
10. See, e.g., Evan Mawdsley and Stephen White, The Soviet Elite from Lenin to
Gorbachev (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); David Kotz and Fred Weir,
Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System (London: Routledge, 1997).
11. Jacek Wasilewski, ‘‘Hungary, Poland, and Russia: The Fate of Nomenklatura
Elites,’’ in Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes, ed. Mattei Dogan and John Higley (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 147–68; John Higley, Judith Kullberg, and Jan Pakulski, ‘‘The Persistence of Postcommunist Elites,’’ Journal of
Democracy 7 (April 1996): 133–47.
12. Thomas F. Remington, ‘‘Democratization and the New Political Order in Russia,’’ in Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, ed. Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 145–46. See also T. H. Rigby, ‘‘Russia’s Clientelism, Cliques, Connections and ‘Clans’: The Same Old Story?’’ Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 25 ( July
1998): 109–23.
13. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George W. Downs, ‘‘Development and Democracy,’’ Foreign Affairs 84 (September–October 2005): 77–86. The authors allude to a study they have made of the provision of public goods in about 150 countries between 1970 and 1999, major findings of which are that ‘‘the greater the suppression of coordination goods in a given county, the greater the lag between economic growth and the emergence of liberal democracy,’’ and that ‘‘except at the highest levels of per capita income, significant economic growth can be attained and sustained even while the government suppresses coordination goods’’ (p. 84).

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14. It is reported, for example, that some 74,000 local protests occurred in China during 2004, a marked increase from 58,000 protests the year before and from 10,000 a decade earlier. In August 2005 the government in Beijing announced the formation of special police units in thirty-six cities for the purpose of quelling riots and countering ‘‘terrorist threats.’’ Howard W. French, ‘‘Land of 74,000 Protests (But Little Is
Ever Fixed),’’ New York Times, August 24, 2005.
15. Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited, vol 1, The Contemporary Debate (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1987), 131.
16. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 579.
17. Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003),
240–41.
18. Zakaria, Future of Freedom, 256.
19. Keith Middlemas, Orchestrating Europe: The Informal Politics of European
Union, 1973–1995 (London: Fontana Press, 1995).
20. World Bank, World Development Report: Attacking Poverty, 2000, http://site resources.worldbank.org/INTPOVERTY/Resources/WDR/overview/pdf (accessed
August 16, 2004).
21. These figures are based on averaging World Bank projections for 2000–2006 and for 2006–2015. World Bank, Global Economic Prospects 2005: Trade, Regionalism and Development, November 2005, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGEP
2005/Resources/gep2005.pdf (accessed January 8, 2005), chapters 1, 17.
22. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
23. Malise Ruthven, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004); Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of
Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
24. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National
Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). A spate of terrorist bombings, assassinations, and other threatening actions carried out by extremists among the large immigrant populations of France, the Netherlands, Spain, and other West European countries has greatly undercut the credibility of multicultural aspirations in those countries, while anything like full assimilation appears unlikely.
25. Ruthven, Fundamentalism.
26. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Theda Skocpol, Diminished
Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).
27. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956);
William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: Free Press, 1959); Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New
York: Basic Books, 1973).
28. Harold L. Wilensky, Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and
Performance (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 131,
143.
29. Russell J. Dalton, ‘‘Value Change and Democracy,’’ in Disaffected Democra-

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cies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? ed. Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 252–69.
30. Sidney Tarrow, ‘‘Mad Cows and Social Activists: Contentious Politics in the
Trilateral Democracies,’’ in Pharr and Putnam, 280.
31. Tarrow, ‘‘Mad Cows,’’ 282.
32. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy.
33. Jenkins, Next Christendom, 96–99, 204–7.
34. Chris Hedges, ‘‘Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters,’’
Harper’s, May 2005, 55–61.
35. Edward Page and Vincent Wright, Bureaucratic Elites in Western European
States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
36. Martin Burch and Ian Holliday, ‘‘The Blair Government and the Core Executive,’’ Government and Opposition 39 (Winter 2004–2005): 20.
37. John Higley, Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, Charles Kadushin, and Gwen Moore,
‘‘Elite Integration in Stable Democracies,’’ European Sociological Review 7 (May
1991): 35–53.
38. Samuel E. Finer, ed., introduction, Vilfredo Pareto: Sociological Writings (New
York: Praeger, 1965), 67.
39. See, for example, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
40. Among portraits of the elite’s composition and workings between 2001 and early 2004 are Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); and Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004); David Frum, The Right
Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Random House, 2003);
Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004); Richard A. Clarke, Against
All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004).
41. David Barstow and Robin Stein, ‘‘Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged
News,’’ New York Times, March 13, 2005.
42. Mark Danner, ‘‘How Bush Really Won,’’ New York Review of Books 52 (13):
48–53.
43. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2004), 219–20.
44. Hacker and Pierson, Off Center.
45. Vilfredo Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy (1921; repr., New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1984), 47.
46. George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 110–48; Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American
Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times
Books, 2005), 27–31, 291–94; Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II:
The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon,
2006).

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Index

Accion Democratica (AD), 77
´
AD. See Accion Democratica
´
Adenauer, Konrad, 151
African National Congress (ANC), 94,
96
Alfonsın, Raul, 164
´
´
Algerian crisis, 145
Allende, Salvador, 165–66
American colonies, 110–13
American elites, 36
American politics, 200–210
ANC. See African National Congress anti-globalization, 186–87 apartheid system, 120–21
Aquino, Benigno, 131
Aquino, Corazon, 131
´
Argentina, elite convergence in, 164–65
Arroyo, Gloria Macapagal, 131
Asia, 90–100
Australia: colonial origins of consensually united elites, 115–16; indigenous peoples, 115; representative regime in,
43; Westminster mode of government of, 116
Austria, elite settlement in, 71–72 authoritarian regimes: democratic countries breakdowns to, 50; and disunited elites, 3 AWS. See Solidarity
Electoral Alliance
Bad Godesberg program, 153
Balaguer, Joaquın, 163–164
´

Belgium, elite convergence in, 159–60,
174
Bendix, Reinhard, 35
Berlusconi, Silvio, 192
Betancourt, Romulo, 77, 102
´
Bill of Rights: English, 58; U.S., 112–113
Black Death, 121–22
Blair, Tony, 191
‘‘blame colonialism’’ thesis, 49
Bolıvar, Simon, 78
´
´
Bolshevik power seizure, 23
Bordaberry, Juan Marıa, 81
´
Bosch, Juan, 162
Botha, P. W., 94, 120
Boulanger, Georges, 41
Bourguiba, Habib, 133
Brandt, Willy, 153
Brazil, and disunited elites, 167; possible elite convergence, 167–68
British colonialism, as a major origin of consensually united elites, 49–50, 135
Brownlee, Jason, 130
BSP. See Bulgarian Socialist Party
Bulgaria, 171–172
Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), 171
Burch, Martin, 197
Burton, Michael, 93
Bush, George W., 1, 191, 197–201
Bush administration, 198
Bush v. Gore, 200

219

220

Index

Caldera, Rafael, 79
Camargo, Alberto Lleras, 76
Canada, consensually united elite’s colonial origins, 116–17
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 167, 174
Caribbean Sea politics, 129–30
Carothers, Thomas, 139
Catholic Party, 159
CDU. See Christian Democrats
Ceausescu, Nicolae, 172
Chakkri dynasty, 47
Charles I (king of England), 55–56
Charles II (king of England), 56, 66
Chavez, Hugo,leading antiregime move´ ment, 79–80; and paradox of democracy, 187
Cheney, Dick, 199
Chen Shui-bian, 99
Chiang Ching-kuo, 96
Chiang Kai-shek, 96
Chile, elite convergence in, 166–167
China: imperial regimes of, 46; local protests in, 205n14; party control relaxed in, 189
Christian Democrats (CDU), 146, 151
Christian Socialists (CSU), 152
Chun Doo Hwan, 91
Churchill, John, 57, 64, 65
Civic Democrats, 170
Civil War: in England, 55–56; in U.S.,
Federal and Confederate elites retained consensual character, 36;
U.S. elite cooperation after, 114
‘‘clientelistic democracy,’’ 130
Coalition of Parties for Democracy
(CPD), 166
Cold War, 144
Collins, Michael, 119 colonial home-rule governments, 182 colonialism: consensually united elites forming under, 119, 122–23, 132–33; countries emerging from, 48; elite/ regimes consequences of, 108–9; end of, 52; liberal democracies emerging from, 134–35; as liberal democracy route, 135–36; route closed, 183

colonies: as home country extensions,
124; opportunities of, 4
Columbia, elite settlement in, 76–77
Communist elites, 148, 149
Communist Party (JCP), 156
Communist Party (KKE), 160 consensually united elites: as sine qua non of liberal democracy, 1–2; recent fragmentation of, 183–84; key features of, 14; interaction networks of,
11–12; persistence of, 12, 191–93; political behavior of, 13; pre-WWII rarity of, 181–82; stable representative regime origins, 51–52; the three origins of, 3–4; transformations to,
53; value consensus of, 10–11, 13, 14
Constantinescu, Emil, 173 coordination goods, 204n13
COPEI. See Social Christian parties
Costa Rica, elite settlement in, 76
Cromwell, Oliver, 56 crowned republic, 59–60
CSU. See Christian Socialists
Currency Act of 1764, 111
Czechoslovakia, socialist regime imploding in, 169
Czech Republic, stable liberal democracy in, 170
Dahl, Robert, 2, 12, 16
Danish elites, 143 da Silva, Luiz (Lula), 167, 168 de Chambord, Comte, 40
Declaration of Independence, 111
Declaration of Rights, 58; colonial legislature passing, 110; as sacred text,
111–12
decolonization, 48 de Gaulle, Charles, 133, 144, 145, 152,
163
de Klerk, F. W., 94 de la Rua, Fernando, 165
´
de Mello, Fernando Collor, 167 de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno, 190 democracy: elections create, 203; French
Third Republic as, 40; illiberal,
170–71; military force creates,

Index
187–88; recipe for, 1; Spain’s consolidation of, 63–64. See also liberal democracies Democracy’s Century, 184 democratic elections: elites exploiting,
140; liberal democracies with, 139,
176
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), 87
Democratic Opposition of Slovenia
(DEMOS), 88 democratic politics, 162–63
Democratic Socialists, 156 democratization: disunited elites and,
50–53; elites in, 3; third wave of, 51,
52
DEMOS. See Democratic Opposition of
Slovenia
Denmark, elite convergence in, 143–44 de Paris, Comte, 40 de Rivera, Primo, 60
De Valera, Eamon, 119
Diamond, Larry, 2, 3
DiPalma, Giuseppe, 11 disunited elites, 9; authoritarian regimes produced by, 3; conflicts of, 185; democratization and, 50–53; European countries destabilized by, 42; free elections and, 185–86; ideologically united elite transformation from, 23; in Latin America, 47–48; long persistence in Europe, 34–43; national states formed with, 38; outside the West, 46–50; range of, 14; still the norm, 184–88; vicious circle of,
182; Western political change with,
43–46
divine right, 56–57
Dollfuss, Engelbert, 70
Dominican Republic: democratic politics in, 162–63; political developments in,
163–64
Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD),
162
Downs, George W., 190
Duhalde, Eduardo Alberto, 165
Dutch republic, 114–15
Dye, Thomas R., 112

221

economic development, 38 economic stagnation, 193
Edward, Charles, 124
Egmont Pact of 1977, 160 elections: countries having, 139–40;
CPD winning, 166; democracy created by, 203; disunited elites and,
185–86; elite accommodation tested by, 99–100; Lee Teng-hui winning,
97–98; in Poland, 87–88. See also democratic elections elite(s), 2–3, 6–7, 25–28, 41, 202; accommodation of, 99–100; accommodative political practices learned by, 125; capricious behavior of, 202; characterizations of, 5–6; Civil War influencing, 114; colonialism’s consequences for, 108–9; consensus of, 98; democratic elections exploited by, 140; democratization with, 3; dominant conservative, 39; elite convergences caused by, 176; foundational origins of, 24–25; inevitability of, 5–8; interaction networks of,
9–10; liberal democracy relationship to, 140; mutual understanding of, 59; national states formed by, 20, 107; non-elite interdependence with,
25–28; political ascension of, 34; political behavior of, 11; regimes’ relations with, 19; rule reassertion by,
192; settlements transforming, 95; sociological characteristics of, 6; transformation of, 26; unification of,
203; U.S./European configurations of, 44; value consensus of, 13, 14; variations of, 8–15; warring factions of, 185. See also consensually united elites; disunited elites; political elites elite circulation, 25–27, 102–3 elite convergences, 4; in Belgium, Portugal, and Greece, 158–62; conditions required for, 140–41; disunited elites in, 140; in East Central Europe,
168–73; elite actions causing, 141,
176; in France/Italy, 144–50; France’s

222

Index

first phase of, 145; Italy’s first phase of, 146; Japan begins, 155–56; Japan completes, 157–58; in Latin America,
162–68; liberal democracies from,
141; non-elite parameters of, 27; preconditions of, 183; in West European countries, 175; in West Germany,
150–54
elite formation: in first colonial era,
109–23; in second colonial era,
123–29
elite politics: economic development influencing, 38 elite settlements: causes of, 103; conditions for, 64–68; consolidation component of, 67; constitution expressing, 63; disunited elite transformations in, 100–101; Glorious
Revolution genesis of, 59; in Latin
America, 76–83; liberal democracy connection with, 101–2; other European settlements, 68–72; in South
Africa, 93–96; in South Korea, 91–93; in Southeastern Europe, 83–90; Spain as model of, 61; in Taiwan, 96–100
Emmanuel, Victor III, 42 employment insecurities, 194–95
England: civil wars in, 55–56; elite settlement conditions in, 64; political crisis of, 59–60; politics of, 58. See also
Britain
Erhard, Ludwig, 152, 153
Estrada, Joseph, 131, 132
Ethiopia, 47
Europe, East Central: consensually united elite in, 174; elite convergences in, 168–73; liberal democracies in,
173–74
Europe, Southeastern, 83–90
Europe, Western, 141–68, 175
European countries: disunited elites destabilizing, 42; disunited elites persistent in, 43; disunited elite transformations in, 72; elites configurations in, 44; elite settlements in, 68–72; empires built by, 124; parliamentary systems in, 197; populations of, 33 executive power, 17–18

Falklands War, 164
Ferreira, Wilson, 81 feudal societies, 8
Field, G. Lowell, 27
Fifth Republic, 147 first colonial era: consensually united elites forming during, 123; elite formation during, 109–23; second colonial era differing from, 124–25
First Continental Congress, 112
Flemish region, 159
Fourth Republic: France’s collapsing,
173–74; as unstable democracy, 145
France, colonial rule by, 132–34; disunited elites in, 39–40; elite convergence in, 144–50; elite factions in, 10;
Fourth Republic collapse in, 173–74
Franco, Francisco, 61
French elites: and Algerian crisis, 145; disunited, 144; organization of,
146–47
French Revolution, 23
Frıas, Hugo Chavez, 78
´
´
Fukuyama, Francis, 184
Gaitan, Jorge Eliecer, 76
´
´
Gandhi, Indira, 51, 125, 126
George, Lloyd, 119
Glorious Revolution, 22, 58–60, 110; constitutional monarchy produced by, 67; elite settlement during, 59; as history’s first elite settlement, 60; significance downplayed, 66
Gomez, Jose Pena, 163, 164
´
´ ˜
Gomez, Juan Vicente, 77
´
Gomez, Laureano, 76
´
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 84
Gore, Al, 200 grand coalition governments: in Japan,
157; in West Germany, 153–54, 174
Greece, 160–61, 174–75
Gustav III (king of Sweden), 68
Haider, Jorg, 71
¨
Havel, Vaclav, 169
´
Hindutva, 126
Hitler, Adolf, 42

Index
Hobsbawm, Eric, 191
Ho Chi Minh, 107
Holliday, Ian, 197
Honasan, Gregorio, 131
Houphouet-Boigny, Felix, 133, 134
´
¨
Howard, John, 191 human rights violations, 81–82
Hungary, 174; elite settlement in, 84–86
Huntington, Samuel P., 3, 8, 50, 139
Hussein, Saddam, 185
Ibanez, Carlos, 165
˜
Ichio Asanuma, 156 ideologically united elite, 13; conditions negating, 190; disunited transformation to, 23; implosion of, 188–90; national states disintegration with, 25; national states origins from, 21;
Poland’s appearance of, 86; range of,
14–15; Soviet Union and, 188–89;
Soviet Union as first case, 42–43
Iliescu, Ion, 172
India: in democratization’s third wave,
51; stable representative regime in,
125–26
Indian National Congress, 126 inheritance, principles of, 34 interaction networks, 11–12
Iraq: illustrating elite theory’s utility,
202; impossibility of liberal democracy in, 1–2, 201
Ireland: British rule of, 118; independence struggle for, 118–19; terror campaigns against, 121
Iribarne, Manuel Fraga, 63
Irish Republican Army, 121
Islamic forces, 129
Italian elites: disunited, 144; organization of, 146–47; settlement attempted by, 175
Italy, 175; Communist Party elite in,
148; elite convergence in, 144–50; politics in, 41
Ivory Coast, 133–34
Jacobite invasion, 59
Jamaica politics, 128

223

James I (king of England), 56–57
James II (king of England), 66–67
Japan: conservative-progressive cleavage in, 174; elite convergence in, 155–58; leadership vacuum in, 155; political chaos of, 154–55
Jarulzelski, Wojciech, 87
Jesuits, 68, 69
Jimenez, Marcos Perez, 77, 102
´
´
Johan, Carl (king of Sweden), 68
JSP. See Socialist Party
Karamanlis, Constantine, 160
Karl, Terry, 101
Kenya, 128–29
Kenyatta, Jomo, 129
Kenyatta, Uhuru, 129
Kiesinger, Kurt-Georg, 153
Kim Dae Jung, 92
Kim Il-Sung, 9, 21, 107
Kim Jong Il, 13
Kim Young Sam, 92
Kirchner, Nestor, 165
´
Kiszczak, Czeslaw, 86
Klaus, Vaclav, 169
´
KMT. See Kuomintang
Knight, Alan, 101
Kovac, Michal, 171
´
Kuomintang (KMT), 96
Kwasniewski, Aleksander, 87
Latin America: colonies lost in, 109; disunited elites in, 47–48; elite convergences in, 162–68; elite settlements in,
76–83; liberal democracies in, 174; representative politics in, 82–83
LDP. See Liberal Democratic Party
Lee Teng-hui, 97–98, 99 liberal democracies: colonial rule route to, 134–36; democratic elections leading to, 139, 176; in East Central
Europe, 173–74; elite challenges in,
193; elite convergences and, 141; elite dimensions of, 191–92; elite settlements origins, 101–2; elite relationship to, 140; employment insecurities in, 194–95; Iraq impossibility of, 1–2;

224

Index

in Latin America, 174; foundations of, 3–4; political classes in, 196–97; prospects for, 181, 183; in Western countries, 39–40; world development’s uneven effects for, 201
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 155 liberal oligarchy, 68, 133–34, 188
Linz, Juan J., 2, 61, 65, 139
Lipset, Seymour Martin, 2
Lukanov, Andrei, 172
Mach, Bogdan, 88
Maier, Pauline, 111
Malaysia, 127–28
Mandela, Nelson, 94
Marcos, Ferdinand, 51; martial law imposed by, 130–32
Masashi Ishibashi, 156
Mason, George, 112 mass foundations of liberal democracy,
2–3
mass society, 195–97
Mathathir, Mohammed, 128
Matteotti, Giacomo, 42
Mbeki, Thabo, 96
McDonough, Peter, 10
Meciar, Vladimir, 169
Medgyessy, Peter, 85
´
Menem, Carlos, 164
Mexico, elite settlement in, 73–75
Michels, Robert, 4, 26 military: intervention by, 133; officers,
81–82
military force: democracies created by,
187–88; U.S. using, 163
Miloevic, Slobodan, 89
Mitterrand, Francois, 148 monarchies: power centralized in, 35; principles of inheritance in, 34
Monch, George, 56
Moro, Aldo, 150
Mosca, Gaetano, 4, 5, 8, 15, 26
Movement for a Democratic Slovakia
(HZDS), 171
Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), 146
MSI. See Movimento Sociale Italiano

Murdoch, Rupert, 199
Mussolini, Benito, 148
NAC. See National Affairs Conference
Nader, Ralph, 200
Napoleonic Wars, 33, 120; power struggles during, 35; Spain/Portugal colonies lost after, 109
National Affairs Conference (NAC), 97 national roundtable, 84 national states: consensually united elites forming, 20–21, 107–8; creation of,
45; disunited elites forming in, 38; elites in, 20, 107; European, 36–37;
European populations organized into, 33; ideologically united elites forming in, 21; Napoleonic War power struggles of, 35; political elites and, 21–22
Navarro, Arias, 61, 66
Nazis, 42–43, 48
New Guinea, 130
New Zealand, 117–18
New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852,
117
Nixon, Richard M., 12 nomenklatura systems, 10
North Korea, 190
Norway: antisocialist elites cooperating in, 143–44; elite convergence in,
142–43; foreign affairs independence of, 122; modern historical period entered by, 121–22; stable period of,
123
Norwegian Labor Party, 142
Nyerere, Julius, 129
O’Donnell, Guillermo, 139
Orange Revolution, 90
Orban, Victor, 85
´
Ottoman Empire, 38
Ouattara, Alassane, 134
Panhellenic Socialist Movement
(PASOK), 160
Papandreou, Andreas, 161
Papandreou, George, 160

Index
Pareto, Vilfredo, 4, 5, 15, 26
Park Chung Hee, 91
Parliamentary systems, 197
PASOK. See Panhellenic Socialist Movement
People’s First Party (PFP), 99
Perez, Carlos Andres, 79
´
´
Peron, Juan, 164
´
peronistas, 165
Peter the Great, 36
PFP. See People’s First Party
Philippines: ‘‘clientelistic democracy’’ in, 130; disunited elites in, 132
Pinilla, Gustavo Rojas, 76, 102
Pinochet, Augusto, 166
Plakkaat van Verlatinge, 114
Poland, elite settlement in, 86–88; ideologically united elite appearance in,
86; power alternations in, 88; presidential elections in, 87–88 political classes, 195–97, 196–97 political configurations, 45 political elites: defined, 7; estimated sizes of, 7–8; political outcomes influenced by, 7; regimes created by, 18; state formation process and, 21–22; transformations of, 19–20; types of, 14; untamed politics of, 13 political parties, 80–81 political pluralism, 88–89 political regimes, 15–19 polyarchies, 12 populations, demoralized, 193
Portugal, 174, 175; colonies lost, 109; liberal democracy evolution in, 161–62 postcolonial countries, 49
PR. See Reformist Party
PRD. See Dominican Revolutionary
Party
presidential elections. See elections
Prewitt, Kenneth, 11
Proclamation of 1763, 111
Przeworksi, Adam, 18
PSOE. See Socialist Workers Party
PT. See Worker’s Party
Putin, Vladimir, 90, 189
Putnam, Robert, 2, 9, 11

225

Radical Civic Union (UCR), 164
Reformist Party (PR), 163 regimes, 15, 19, 43; executive power transfer in, 17–18; imperial, 46; representative, 16–17; stability of, 16; types/subtypes of, 18 religious cleavages, 127 religious leaders, 196–97
Renner, Karl, 70
Rhee, Syngman, 91
Roh Tae Woo, 92
Roman, Petre, 172
Romania, 171; disunited elite in, 172–73 royal absolutism, 123
Russia: Bolshevik seizure in, 23; disunited elites in, 36–37; disunited elites overrun by, 48; as unstable illiberal democracy, 90
Ryu, Jai P., 93
Sagasta, Praxedes Mateo, 42
Sartori, Giovanni, 2, 191
Saxer, Carl J., 93
Schumacher, Kurt, 151
Schuschnigg, Kurt, 70
Scotland’s rebellion, 55–56
SDJP. See Social Democratic Party
SDS. See Union of Democratic Forces second colonial era: elite formation during, 123–29; first colonial era differing from, 124–25
Senegal, 134
Senghor, Leopold, 133, 134
´
slavery, 113
SLD. See Democratic Left Alliance
Slovakia, 174; Czech ‘‘velvet divorce’’ from, 169–70; elite convergence in,
171; illiberal democracy in, 170–71
Slovenia, elite settlement in, 88–89
Snyder, Jack, 187
Social Christian parties (COPEI), 78
Social Democratic Party, Portugal, 162
Social Democratic Party (SDJP), Japan,
157
Social Democrats (SPD), 151, 153 socialism, 83–84, 89–90
Socialist elite, 147–48

226

Index

Socialist Party (JSP): factionalism in,
156–57; reunification of, 155; SDJP changed from, 157 socialist regimes: Czechoslovakia’s imploding, 169; waning of, 186
Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), 62
Solidarity, 86
Solidarity Electoral Alliance (AWS), 87
South Africa, 17; colonial political experience in, 119–20; elite settlement in,
93–96; majority rule in, 121; secret negotiations in, 94–95; settlement influence on, 95–96; white rule in,
90–91
South Korea: elite settlement in, 91–93
Soviet Union: elite networks in, 10; elite transformation in, 24; ideologically united elite and, 42–43, 188–89
Spain: democracy consolidation in,
63–64; disunited elites in, 36–37, 39,
42, 60; Dutch elites ruled by, 114; elite settlement in, 61–64; new constitution for, 62
SPD. See Social Democrats
Sri Lanka (Ceylon), 127
Stalin, Joseph, 83
Stamp Act of 1765, 111 state formation, and disunited elites,
33–37
Statute of Westminster, 115
Statutes of Autonomy, 63
Stepan, Alfred, 2, 61, 139
Stone, Alan, 11
Stoyanov, Petar, 172
Suarez, Adolpho, 61, 62, 64–66
Sweden, 17; elite settlement in, 68; Norway ruled by, 122
Swiss Confederation, 69
Switzerland, elite settlement in, 68–70
Taiwan: authoritarian regime in, 96; elite settlement in, 96–100; political divisions in, 100; political reforms in, 97
Taliban, 21
Tanzania, 128–29
Tarrow, Sidney, 196 terrorism, 150, 199

Thailand (Siam), 46–47 theocratic regimes, 18
Thiers, Adolphe, 40
Tito, Josip Broz, 83
Tomiichi Murayama, 157
Tory leaders, 58
Trujillo, Rafael, 162
Tunisia, disunited elite in, 133
UCD. See Union of the Democratic
Center party
Unido. See United Democratic Opposition
Union of Democratic Forces (SDS), 172
Union of South Africa, 120
Union of the Democratic Center (UCD) party, 62
United Democratic Opposition (Unido),
131
United States (U.S.): consensually united elite origins, 109–10; elite configurations in, 44; Iraq invaded by, 1, 201; military force used by, 163 universal suffrage, 158–59 unstable regimes. See disunited elites
Uruguay: disunited elites in, 80–81; elite settlement in, 81–82
Vazquez, Tabare, 82
´
´
Venezuela: clandestine antiregime movement in, 78; coup attempts in, 79; disunited elites in, 80; elite settlement in,
77–78
Videnov, Zhan, 172
Vietnam, 189
Vikings, 121–22
Wade, Abdoulaye, 134
Walesa, Lech, 86, 87
Walloon region, 159
War of Independence, 36
Wasilewski, Jacek, 103
Weimar republic: elites disunited in,
150–51; Nazi elite power gains in,
42–43
Wesolowski, Wlodzimierz, 88
Western colonization, 47

Index
Western countries: consensually united elites in, 35; disunited elites in, 37–43; disunited elites outside of, 46–50; liberal democratic properties in, 39–40; political change in, 43–46
West Germany: disunited elite in, 151; elite convergence in, 150–54
Wilensky, Harold, 195
William, Prince of Orange, 57, 58
William and Mary, 58

Worker’s Party (PT), 167 world development, 193–94, 201
Yeltsin, Boris, 90
Yugoslavia: elite networks in, 10; national states resulting from, 24
Zakaria, Fareed, 191
Zeigler, Harmon, 112
Zhivkov, Todor, 171

227

About the Authors

John Higley is professor of government and sociology and holds the Jack S.
Blanton Chair in Australian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He chairs the Research Committee on Political Elites of the International Political Science Association, and he has in recent years been chair of the Department of Government and director of the Center for Australian and New
Zealand Studies at UT-Austin.
Michael Burton is professor of sociology at Loyola College in Maryland and directs its program in global studies.

229