Elite circulation and the convertibility of knowledge: comparing different types and forms of knowledge and degrees of elite circulation in Europe

Abstract

According to classical elite theory, increased circulation is related to increased integration which is thought to increase elites’ power. Based on a comparative analysis of some European countries’ elite education systems, recruitment to elite positions and degrees of circulation – with a specific focus on administrative elites – this article investigates how certain types of knowledge may reinforce elite circulation and integration. The role knowledge plays in facilitating elite circulation is one element, among others, which may be significant in understanding the nature of power held by elites in various societies. 135 interviews with top bureaucrats, students preparing for administrative careers and teachers in the public administration in France, Norway and Britain constitute the empirical basis for this investigation. With an analytical approach focusing on knowledge content and forms of institutionalisation, I examine the competences that legitimise these three countries’ administrative elite positions, and their possibilities for circulating across areas and sectors. The comparative analysis shows how extensive, formalised general knowledge, like the one favoured in France, may facilitate elite circulation more than the more specialised knowledge in Norway and the more informal knowledge favoured in Britain by the training and recruitment systems there.

Keywords:

• Cultural capital
• elite education
• elite circulation
• knowledge
• power

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Olav Korsnes, Oddgeir Osland, Agnès van Zanten and in particular Claire Maxwell and the two anonymous referees for having read drafts of this article and for their insightful comments. I would also like to thank the Norwegian Research Council for funding the project Elites in an Egalitarian Society, out of which this paper has come to exist, and indeed all the interviewees for giving me their time.

Notes

1. ‘General skills’ are defined in line with the interviewees’ definitions.

2. Pareto is well known for discussing elite circulation in the sense of the degree to which elite groups are replaced by new elites, rising from the masses, and the questions of degeneration or renewal of elites. In this article I will study elite circulation in a different sense, more in line with how Mosca, Mills, Dahl and other classical elite theorists have discussed it, as a question of the circulation of elites between different societal sectors (such as politics, business, public administration).

3. In line with Scott’s arguments, I consider both the possession and the exercising of power to be relevant to the study of elites.

4. Vanneuville and Israel’s article in this issue analyses this kind of struggle as to which types of knowledge and skills should be defined as most central within the legal profession. Educational institutions, employers and other actors disagree about how to define the core of the discipline, and the type of training that should be most important and valuable for those who want to practice law.

5. To preserve the anonymity of the interviewees while letting the reader know whether the same or different interviewees are quoted, each interviewee is identified with his or her institutional and country affiliation and a number. Interviewees from the ministries of finance are quoted somewhat more often than those from the ministries of culture because they more succinctly expressed what was discussed at both ministries. However, the quotes are representative of what was said at both ministries.

6. This is related to the way in which French elite education (approximately since the French Revolution in 1789) has been established outside the universities, and as more professionally oriented institutions often without research, and with a significant part of the teaching staff having primary occupations as practitioners in public administration, business, and so forth. This clearly contrasts with German and Norwegian traditions, where research universities have a more dominant position in the education system. For a more in depth discussion of this, see Mangset (2009).