Economic Elites in Enlarged Europe

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Economic Elites in Enlarged Europe

Introduction

Studying elites gained popularity with the breakdown of the socialist systems. Elites were seen as the drivers of social change, the constructors of the new economic and political system. While the old system was demolished from below, post-communist transformation - or such was the expectation - was carried out from above. Much attention was therefore paid to the question of who the new elites would be. Would the old elites be able to stay in power, or would they disappear with the system they created and sustained? Thus, the classical questions of elite research were most prominently studied during the early 1990s: recruitment of elites via reproduction or circulation; the sociostructural composition; the origins and backgrounds of elites. Interest diminished when political stabilisation and economic reform seemed to have been ac...

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