This compelling and convincing study represents the culmination of the authors' several decades of research on the pivotal role played by elites in the success or failure of political regimes. Revising the classical theory of elites and politics, John Higley and Michael Burton distinguish basic types of elites and associated political regimes. They canvas political change during the modern historical and contemporary periods to identify circumstances and ways in which the sine qua non of liberal democracy, a consensually united elite, has formed and persisted.

The book considers an impressive body of cases, examining how consensually united elites have fostered 45 liberal democracies and how disunited or ideologically united elites have thus far prevented liberal democracy in more than 100 other countries. The authors argue that obstacles to the emergence of elites propitious for liberal democracy are more formidable than democratization enthusiasts recognize. They assess prospects for the transformation of disunited and ideologically united elites where they now exist, ask whether current challenges to Western liberal democracies will undermine their consensually united elites, and explore what the rise of the distinctive elite clustered around George W. Bush may portend for America's liberal democracy. 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.

About the Author

John Higley is emeritus professor of government and sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he held the Jack S. Blanton Chair in Australia Studies. His books include Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes; Elites after State Socialism; Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy; The Endangered West: Myopic Elites and Fragile Social Orders in a Threatening World; and the Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites.

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