FASS Economics academic Alan Shipman's new book, 'The New Power Elite: Inequality, Politics and Greed', has recently been released. This book provides "a compact, comprehensive account of who’s at the top, and why we let them get there".

About This Book

‘This book is a useful contribution to the current debates on the growing influence of the plutocracy. With its comparative and international focus, it adds an important dimension to the ongoing debates in the US and Europe.’ —Michèle Lamont, Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies, and Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, USA

‘C. Wright Mills rides again, over 60 years later, in this vigorously argued analysis which is based on a powerful alliance of class and elite theory.’ —William Outhwaite, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University, UK

Elites have always ruled – wielding inordinate power and wealth, taking decisions that shape life for the rest. In good times the ‘1%’ can hide their privilege, or use growing social mobility and economic prosperity as a justification. When times get tougher there’s a backlash. So the first years of the twenty-first century – a time of financial crashes, oligarchy and corruption in the West; persistent poverty in the south; and rising inequality everywhere – have brought elites and ‘establishments’ under unprecedented fire. Yet those swept to power by this discontent are themselves a part of the elite, attacking from within and extending rather than ending its agenda. The New Power Elite shows how major political and social change is typically driven by renegade elite fractions, who co-opt or sideline elites’ traditional enemies. It is the first book to combine the politics, economics, sociology and history of elite rule to present a compact, comprehensive account of who’s at the top, and why we let them get there.