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Self-Image, Legitimacy and the Stability of Elites: The Case of France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Ezra N. Suleiman
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Why do some elites endure whereas other die? This is a question to which many historians and social theorists have addressed themselves in trying to explain the severe conflicts that have plagued particular societies. It is, of course, a truism that certain societies are more prone to conflicts and to instability than others. But even within such societies there often lies, beneath the all too evident turbulence, a considerable stability of certain groups and institutions. The change that occurs in the wake of crises often distributes its impact on different sectors of society so unevenly that sweeping changes sometimes completely by-pass, or are successfully resisted, by certain groups. The result is that some groups and institutions manage to preserve their dominant positions and their privileges even while the society as a whole is experiencing crises, instability and change.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 191 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

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2 For data on the positions occupied by members of the grand corps in the political, administrative, parapublic, financial, industrial and educational sectors, see Suleiman, Ezra N., Elites in French Society: The Politics of Survival (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, forthcoming 1977), Chap. IV.Google Scholar

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6 The theoretical literature while not unconcerned with the problem of the elite's acceptance by the society, stresses above all the need for self-consciousness and self-confidence on the part of the elite. Similarly, our data bears largely upon the elites' self-image rather than on the reaction of the society to the elite, something about which we have little data.

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41 The Fulton Committee, The Civil Service Vol. I (London: HMSO, Cmnd 3638, 1968), pp. 133–7.Google Scholar