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Policy Elites (policy + elite)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Legal Change and Gender Inequality: Changes in Muslim Family Law in India

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2008
Narendra Subramanian
Group-specific family laws are said to provide women fewer rights and impede policy change. India's family law systems specific to religious groups underwent important gender-equalizing changes over the last generation. The changes in the laws of the religious minorities were unexpected, as conservative elites had considerable indirect influence over these laws. Policy elites changed minority law only if they found credible justification for change in group laws, group norms, and group initiatives, not only in constitutional rights and transnational human rights law. Muslim alimony and divorce laws were changed on this basis, giving women more rights without abandoning cultural accommodation. Legal mobilization and the outlook of policy makers,specifically their approach to regulating family life, their understanding of group norms, and their normative vision of family life,shaped the major changes in Indian Muslim law. More gender-equalizing legal changes are possible based on the same sources. [source]

Paul D. Cravath, The First World War, and the Anglophile Internationalist Tradition

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 2 2005
Priscilla Roberts
The First World War played a central role in the creation within the United States of an Atlanticist foreign policy elite or establishment, a group of influential Americans drawn primarily from upper class lawyers, bankers, academics, and politicians of the Eastern seaboard, committed to a strand of Anglophile internationalism which to date has received considerably less scholarly attention than that of Wilsonian universalism. The evolution of the Atlanticist Establishment can be traced in the career of Paul D. Cravath, one of New York's foremost corporation lawyers. For Cravath, in his mid-fifties when the war began, the conflict served as an epiphany, sparking an interest in international affairs that dominated his remaining career. Fiercely Anglophile, he strongly supported American intervention in the war, and hoped that close Anglo-American cooperation would be the guiding principle of post-war international organization. In the 1920s Cravath urged the reduction of both German reparations and inter-allied war debts; he also supported United States membership in the World Court. Before his death in July 1940 Cravath, though initially far from optimistic that his country would once more take arms against Germany in the Second World War, was as staunchly pro-Allied as during the previous conflict. [source]

German Interests in European Monetary Integration

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 1 2002
Karl Kaltenthaler
This article explores the sources of the German govermnent's position on European monetary integration since the first attempt at monetary union. I argue that German policy on European monetary integration was, until after EMU, driven by German foreign policy elites' perception that integration could be used to achieve their primary geo-political goal, embedding Germany in European institutions to dismantle the security dilemma with its European neighbours, particularly with France. After the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, this situation was reversed, as domestic economic interests and state financial authorities have taken the lead in shaping Germany's policy on European monetary integration, with foreign policy elites playing a secondary role. Thus German policy has come to resemble more the policies of other European monetary union member states, in that domestic economic concerns have taken precedence over geo-political interests in the making of policy on European monetary integration. [source]

A Loss of Faith: The Sources of Reduced Political Legitimacy for the American Medical Profession

THE MILBANK QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2002
Mark Schlesinger
Writing at the beginning of the 20th century, Shaw identified one of the significant contemporary transformations in industrial democracies. In part as the result of advances in science and technology, in part as a rejection of the monopolistic abuses of industrialization, and in part as a consequence of assiduous efforts by the professions themselves, this was a period in which the legitimacy and social authority of professionals increased dramatically (Brint 1994; Krause 1996; Larson 1977; Sandel 1996). Nowhere was this more evident than in medicine. Over several decades, medicine changed from an occupation with a mixed reputation and little political influence into one that would "dominate both policy and lay perceptions of health problems" (Freidson 1994, 31). In a number of countries, the professional authority and political influence of physicians also rose during this era (Coburn, Torrance, and Kaufert 1983; Krause 1996; Stone 1980), most dramatically in the United States (Starr 1982). The political legitimacy and policymaking influence of the medical profession have greatly declined in American society over the past 30 years. Despite speculation about the causes, there has been little empirical research assessing the different explanations. To address this gap, data collected in 1995 are used to compare attitudes of the American public and policy elites toward medical authority. Statistical analyses reveal that (1) elites are more hostile to professional authority than is the public; (2) the sources of declining legitimacy are different for the public than they are for policy elites; and (3) the perceptions that most threaten the legitimacy of the medical profession pertain to doubts about professional competence, physicians' perceived lack of altruism, and limited confidence in the profession's political influence. This article concludes with some speculations about the future of professional authority in American medicine. [source]