Today at a seminar hosted by the critical political economy cluster we discussed about theory of elites.
I definitely have to read more about this, but at the end of the seminar I felt still unclear about the difference between the concept of elites and that of the existence of different fractions of the ruling class.
I have probably been influenced by the reading of the excellent book by Grant Amyot: Business, The State and Economic Policy: The Case of Italy. There, Amyot present the case of Italy (chosen as the “most unlikely case”, given the peculiar development of Italian capitalism) to corroborate the theory of autonomous state (inspired by the late Greek political scientist Nicos Poulantzas). That is, the state can have a high degree of potential autonomy vis-a-vis the ruling class.
In his book (and in a paper entitled “the relative autonomous state: the case of Italy) Amyot shows that the particular Italian economic trajectory and the fragmentation of its capitalist class (which historically shows a divide between big conglomerates and SMEs) allowed for relative autonomous actions of the Italian government.
This autonomy was however constrained: the state elites did not have absolute freedom to act, but they had to act so to satisfy the most important element of the electoral base of the ruling Christian Democrats: the petty bourgeoisie.
The book of Amyot is enlightening because it shows that the structural economic conditions of a country (in this case the peculiar economic Italian development) tend to shape the power of different fractions of capital, as well as leave a certain degree of freedom to state elites. Which implications could this have for my research? I still have to reason about this.
Vincenzo Maccarrone 